Tanner Garrity

There’s a bizarre state of being I can’t seem to avoid on international vacations. I’m standing in front of a painting or a statue, a little hungover, caffeinated, but almost too caffeinated, on edge, thinking about lunch, thinking about dinner, 15,000 steps into another 30,000-step day, reading the little card next to the art, then looking at the art, back and forth, three times, four, until I can generate some meaning from the moment, enough to justify all the money it cost to get here, enough…

According to surveys conducted by the American Dental Association, less than 50% of the country flosses on a daily basis. I’ll fess up: I’m in the sorry majority here, and have fibbed to my dentist since grade school. (Though my bleeding gums reveal all about 15 minutes into every visit. Pre-appointment “emergency flossing” is never enough.) Why don’t I floss on a daily basis? I’m not really sure. I brush my teeth two to three times a day, and have reliable routines in other hygienic departm…

Running has a real knack for mimicking life’s rhythms. The standard run is as familiar and formulaic as a workday commute. It has to be — only by dragging yourself dutifully out of bed and around the same block over and over again are you ever able to lock in the habit, build that base and cultivate a relationship with the sport. Things stick when you stick to them. But it’s not all pushing a vacuum around. There are rewards along the way: Race days. Runs with nice views. Running camps…

Last time you hopped a fence? I only know my answer because I hopped one about 50 times a month ago, while in Australia for Christmas with my girlfriend. Her little cousins were teaching me to play cricket in the backyard (basically: I’d bowl, they’d thwack, for hours on end) and they had a habit of launching the ball past the farm gates for a six. As the gate had a somewhat tricky latch, I found it quicker and easier to simply hop over the fence. I handled myself okay, all told, but the…

Generally speaking, I’ve been trying to slow down this year. That’s to say: cook more ambitious meals, take extra time with each rep in the gym, plan my trips more thoughtfully. In a hyper-plugged, time-pressed, consumption-centric age, it feels really nice (and practically imperative) to take the foot off the gas pedal and act with some actual intention. I have one massive caveat for this approach, though — when I’m alone and out and about, I’m walking faster than ever. If I’m waiting at an…

It feels like an especially bleak time to be a kid. A few weeks ago, I came across a video captioned something to the effect of: “1990s party NO PHONES.” In the clip, teenagers are milling about, cracking jokes, cracking beers, causing trouble. As the caption implied, it’s fascinating (and even somewhat jarring) to see so many young people interacting eye-to-eye, none of them fishing to grab a phone from their pocket. But I was struck even more by the incredulity in the comments section — the…

Some of the most dedicated workweek walkers I’ve known like to keep a spare pair of shoes under their desk. These designated walking shoes are meant to A) protect nicer shoes from wear and tear and B) hold their owners accountable. There’s no excuse: they’re well-equipped to sneak an extra 3,000 steps in over lunch. If you’ve got a system like this, don’t disrupt it on account of me. But lately, I’ve been wearing a shoe that I think efficiently (and fashionably, believe it or not) stream…

I saw a great Instagram reel a few weeks ago, courtesy of skating/culture mag Jenkem, in which an intramural soccer player points out a 73-year-old member of his team, named Kang. “I’m sure he’s turning 74,” the man says. “If you can walk, like without any problem [at the age] of 73, you’ll be stoked...that man plays like a 20-something-years-old guy every fucking day. He never misses a game. Never.” I loved what Kang had to say about his Iron Horse-esque reliability, over 21 years of pl…

Of the many viral workouts to emerge from TikTok over the years, perhaps the most popular is the “12-3-30” cardio workout, a treadmill endurance challenge. Here’s how it works: Elevate the treadmill to a 12% incline Set the speed to 3.0 mph Walk for 30 minutes Invented by a content creator named Lauren Giraldo, the workout has racked up millions of views and supportive comments, with followers claiming that the regimen helped them gain focus and lose weight in the gym. One per…

I’ve always wondered how “well” one can possibly get on a wellness retreat. The phrase’s individual words are somewhat oppositional: a retreat is a short-lived reprieve, while wellness, as we’ve come to understand it in recent years, is a lifelong pursuit. Today’s wellness retreats have come a long way, to be sure. They don’t operate like the “fat farms” of yore, where self-loathing adults absconded to eat too little and spend too much. Interested parties can now choose between running camps…

Run-streakers are some of the toughest people on the planet. The current worldwide leader is a man named Jon Sutherland, aged 73, who has logged at least one mile every single calendar day for the last 54.80 years. That’s 20,015 days in a row. Sutherland’s first run took place two months before the United States landed on the moon; it has persisted ever since, trampling through flus, broken bones and shingles. He even went jogging the day doctors performed surgery on his artery. I wouldn…

A couple months ago, San Francisco pickleball players descended on the Presidio to protest a Recreation and Park Department ordinance that they disassemble their makeshift courts. “Dink, dink, this will stink!” some of them chanted. Another exclaimed, “This is pickle disobedience!” Serious stuff, this pickleball. While it can be a thorn in the side of local governments, tennis purists and court-adjacent homeowners desperate to sell (THWACK!), it’s impossible to argue against the passion of th…

Researchers at the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital recently developed a Brain Care Score (BCS) card, which tallies up a variety of one’s personal inputs — physical biomarkers, lifestyle habits, emotional health — then spits out a number from 0 to 21. The closer to 21, the better, researchers found. The idea, as experts at Harvard Health pointed out, is to determine how “current habits might impact future brain health.” Consider the BCS a veritable cheat shee…

I’ve never minded cemeteries. If anything, I’ve long felt a bizarre degree of camaraderie and comfort while moving through them. This is almost certainly because I grew up down the street from a 23-acre graveyard in New Jersey. Even at a young age, the place’s history always appealed to me more than its rotting coffins gave me pause. I liked reading the years on the graves and searching for the few families born before the Revolutionary War. I wondered what you had to do to earn yourself an obel…

If you’re familiar with Tracksmith, you know the running brand loves itself some amateurs. For the last 10 years, the Boston label has championed the running community’s true backbone, hosting weekly workouts and long runs from Back Bay’s 285 Newbury Street, setting aside grants for runner-artists, and helping college athletes transition to professional life. I don’t doubt that this is a smart strategy for getting customers to buy more shorts and shirts, but at the same time, it can make a…

Poppi? Olipop? Culture Pop? Poplooza? I buy, drink and enjoy prebiotic and probiotic sodas, yet routinely forget what the difference is. Some quick internet research confirms that I made that last brand up, but even still: the gut health soda market has exploded over the last few years. The market for these drinks was valued at $210 million in 2022 and is forecasted to more than double by 2032. If you’ve been to a Whole Foods in the last six months — or have a few Gen Z coworkers at the office —…

At this point, it’s safe to say that natural sleep aids work. A cross-sectional study published in September of last year found that “sleep quality improved by 67.6% among those who used sleep aids.” Meanwhile, 88% of adults who take melatonin say it helps them fall asleep faster. As someone who regularly frets about sleep latency and quality, I like to keep a jar of “just in case” OTC supplements on my nightstand, next to a swig of water. These days, I favor Beam’s Dream Capsules, a blend o…

Every runner should own a good pair of trail-running shoes. In the age of Instagram and Strava, trail running might evoke images of mountainous efforts in Chamonix or the Smoky Mountains. But as the kids say, it just isn’t that deep. Anywhere that you can find routes with roots and rocks is worthy of a trail run. And while the majority of the running community is now clustered around cities — where clubs reside and the biggest races take place — many urbanites actually have excellent access to n…

In Ray Allen’s memoir From the Outside, the former NBA sharpshooter recalled feeling surprisingly hollow after winning his first championship (as a member of the Boston Celtics in 2008). I’ve included the brunt of the quote below, as it rocked me the first time I read it: “As the days wore on, there was a part of me that felt empty…I had always believed that when you win a championship you’re transported to some new, exalted place. What I realized was that you are the same person you were be…

During the month of April, we’re publishing a series of interviews, essays, advice columns and reported features about the male friendship crisis in the U.S., a particularly troubling slice of the country’s larger loneliness epidemic. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so we’re breaking it down from all angles in The Male Friendship Equation. A study published in 2022 concluded that 51% of Americans have a parasocial relationship, though only 16% willingly “admit to it.” At first glance,…