I thought about writing a race report on the Oakland Marathon but decided instead to spotlight 26 reasons why Oakland is a city that runners—and tourists—would love. Besides, I boiled my race report down to a haiku (click through to read the three-line poem).

Imagine running a 100-mile race. Now imagine doing it every two weeks, and sometimes on consecutive weekends. That's what Monica Scholz, a full-time attorney from Canada, did in 2010. I profiled her to find out how and why she set a record of 25 100-mile races in a year. "Running was not the hardest part—it was the traveling," she says.

I was skeptical about whether it's worth the time and effort to work yoga into my training routine. Then I took a six-week class with top Bay Area endurance runner Caitlin Smith, who's back to winning races and training for the Olympic Marathon Trials after recovery from injury. In this interview and video, she demonstrates some of the ways runners can work yoga into their lives, and she opens up about how it helps her balance a hectic life and achieve running goals.

In this guest post, Taylor Chase describes how a run one day in Budapest planted the seed for starting Blaze Travel Guides. Blaze is a travel-guide startup geared toward runners and other active souls (or should I say "active soles"?). I recently discovered Blaze and wish I knew about the company's super useful city running guides when we were on our round-the-world trip.

Some new gear, apps, and travel tours led me into a la-la land of imagining what I'd add to a wish list. I wanted to spread the word about a few of these cool items, from a do-it-all running pack to a hands-free video cam to a city guide app. What's on your gear and travel wish list this season?