The first time I met Candy I was fifteen or sixteen-years-old, awkward as a thirteen-year-old. She wore a gray, silk skirt with a kick pleat and had the most beautiful, open face I’d ever seen. We met outside my dorm at the boarding school I attended and, after politely shaking her hand, I walked puppy-like behind her, staring at her perfect shoes all the way to the car.

Despite her name, Candy was neither an erotic dancer nor air hostess. She was the mother of a girl I’d become friends with at school, come to take us out to lunch in town.

Meeting Candy somehow made me feel the same way I felt when meeting a cute boy: My personality simply seemed to evaporate. I was embarrassed of whatever I was wearing at the time (likely with good reason) and had an overwhelming urge to become her favorite, over any of her three daughters. Or preferably, become her.

I don’t remember much after those first few moments. Lunch was, no doubt, filled with incessant babble on my part, trying too hard to seem effortlessly charming. But my first true friendship with an adult began to take shape that day, as did my first inkling of how I wanted to be perceived as a woman.

Twenty-three years later, Candy has given me some of my most precious life moments, both directly and inadvertently. My first taste of Dom Perignon. My first copy of Madame Bovary. An actual fondness for the nickname, “Urine.” A knit cap handmade for my daughter, after my own mother had just passed away. Infinite moments of laughter at her home in Charleston, and on the lake and river. And a best friend in the form of her sister, Charlotte, whose presence in my life has completed the family of my own creation.

But the most precious gift Candy has given me is that of my friendship with her daughter, Angela. It is something I hold more dear than nearly anything else, a meaning I could never duplicate or do without.

So to Candy I dedicate every run and laugh and cheers and story and adventure, from here on out. Because life is amazing. And your life has made so much of the amazing in mine come to be.

Love you always,
Urine

The last few weeks have been nothing if not… hard. Full of loss. Disappointing, in ways that are too huge to be encapsulated by that little word.

I have a hard time recovering from loss. Usually I just write it all out. But over the past weeks it is hard to know what to say about any of it  – deaths, near deaths, anniversaries of deaths and lives that have never taken shape. I have mostly said and written nothing to honor other peoples’ privacy,

But on my part, there have been a lot tears. Snotty, torrents of tears. Oh, the tears. I cry and I cry and I cry.

Oh, and sometimes I cry.

Tears. My foe. And my friend. My release. My eyes well up so easily that the need for Kleenex is a joke the Byron and I have.

“Again,” he says, at Walgreens, when we are in the tissue aisle. “You are out already?”

“I cry a lot,” I say. And it is true.

But I feel lucky to have emotions, especially after a conversation with a friend who said, “I wish I could cry. My antidepressants make it impossible.” She squeezed my hand in her fist and said, “I envy tears.”

Mine come freely enough that I am ashamed of them sometimes. I want to put the covers over my head and not let people see how often I need a good, deep cry.

But with this pledge that I have made, I have to get out and walk a fucking mile every day of my life. So I have been taking the covers off and just doing it.

More than once I have slapped on sunglasses, cursing both my sister and my mother, and just walked, crying the whole way.  Once I was crying so hard that I had to stop in a doorway to wipe my nose and calm down.

That was on the way out the door. The interesting thing is that I have never walked my mile and come home crying.

On the way home I always realize: I feel good. I hear birds chirping. I notice that the sun is shining. But it does take a while.

At least a mile, I have found.

Once, on my way home after one of my cry-fests, I saw her, clear as day. A woman walking towards me wearing sunglasses and bawling her eyes out.

She was having her own moment with herself.

She was walking it off.

I was so proud of both of us.

I’ll be the first to admit that the only reason I’ve successfully completed every run to date isn’t so much because of dedication or good character on my part. Rather, it’s due to my intense fear of public humiliation. And someone recently told me I looked skinny.

That said, I can now count this gentleman as an inspiration to keep on going:

I mean seriously, people. I’m not sure if you can tell, but he’s about 100 years old. If this guy can get out of bed in the morning and haul his butt to the gym a couple of times a week to run, then I (and you…and you over there!) certainly can too.

So I dedicate my runs to him. Because he’s an amazing role model. And because he may be one of the few people on the planet I could beat in a race.

See you soon.

When I first mentioned this challenge to my husband, Dave, he was quiet. Anyone who knows Dave knows that when you mention nearly anything to him, he is quiet.

Unlike me, Dave stores his words like a squirrel storing eggcorns, only using what’s absolutely necessary to get his point across. A typical conversation in our house goes like this:

Me: “Hey babe, about this weekend: I was thinking we could drive out to the country. Maybe go to dinner at that place? Or, no…grill? Make steaks? Stop at Guido’s on the way up…and…let’s ask Shoo and Kyle to come…do you think Eric and Kelly would come? Or maybe we should go to the country alone. Or just stay home and have a quiet weekend without the driving. I could use some alone time with you, it’s been forever since we’ve had a date, right? I just don’t feel like we’ve been connecting. So maybe we’ll stay home. And then we can get it on. Hey now. What do you think?”

Dave:    ”…………………………………………………………………….sure.”

We’ve been together for nine years so I now have the ability to read his silence just as clearly as if we’re actually having a conversation.

For instance, if there’s silence in combination with nail biting, he’s mad at the Giants in general, just Eli Manning or the traffic.

If there’s silence in the context of a great day of outdoor fun, he’s saying that he has to use the facilities and we need to leave immediately.

If there’s silence peppered with rapid eye fluttering, he’s saying,
“Bye babe, I have a 9:30 am. Be good. Love you. I’ll pick up dog food.”

The silence that resulted from first hearing about this challenge was his way of saying: ”Is this going to be like that time you were vegan?” But what he said after that, once he realized that I was serious (and using real words) was,
“I will help you in any way that I can.”

And here’s the thing about Dave and the reason I fell in love with his silence, along with the rest of him: When he does use words, he actually means them.

So to my bridegroom I dedicate my runs. Because last night, instead of being a responsible person and coming home to launder the running clothes I’d run out of, I opted to go out with a few of my ladies and get hopped up on frozen pomegranate margaritas.

Meaning Dave came home to Lu at 6 pm.
And I came home to Dave at 12:30 am, lit up like a candle.
Only to find him sound asleep.
The laundry done.
And my running clothes laid out for me
from my shorts, right down to two pairs of socks so that I don’t get anymore blisters.

And that spoke volumes.

In short, there was no way in hell I was going to set foot in the YMCA to get my workout done today.

Instead I took the loveliest of all walks with my friend Kristi, who is battling through day two of the Can Can Cleanse. For someone who hasn’t eaten a morsel of food in almost 48 hours, she was remarkably good company.

We walked roughly 2.4 miles, according to my Google Maps calculations. Here was our route (one way, since I still can figure out how to map it round-trip):

I wish you all could have taken this walk with us. In lieu of the real thing, I have documented some of what we saw along the way. Join me, won’t you?

People say that Ice Plants are invasive. I think they are beautiful.

The lupins are in bloom. Oh, the lupins!

This view makes me think, “I can’t believe I live here!” every time I step onto Baker Beach.

These little birds spend all day out running the waves and frolicking in the foam. It’s a nice gig if you can get it.

“Go into the light. There is peace and serenity in the light.” (A joke only my sister will get.)

Forget a pedicure. Sand is is nature’s pumice stone.

The path home.

]]> http://fittobeequal.com/2012/04/20/heather-day-8/feed/ 0 yoheathero day 8_map iceplants lupins GGBridge_April2012 birds_bakerbeach bakerbeach_april2012 baker_beach_april_2012 Presidio_path http://fittobeequal.com/2012/04/19/lorrin-day-8/ http://fittobeequal.com/2012/04/19/lorrin-day-8/#comments Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:30:08 +0000 pieoneill http://fittobeequal.com/?p=227 Continue reading →]]> Miles: 3.1
Power song: On The Floor
Run dedicated to: Leanne Schmidt

I met my friend Leanne years ago at Pacifico, a Mexican place in our Brooklyn neighborhood that’s responsible for roughly 84% of my life’s worst hangovers.

Pre-baby, Dave and I used to meet up with our dear friends Charlotte and Kyle every Friday night at Pacifico to get food, get toasted and get into in a sloppy, philosophical debate or play a bizarrely heated tournament of Buck Hunter.

At the time Leanne was a waitress there. We first took notice of her not for her friendly demeanor or lovely smile, but for her seemingly horrific mathematical skills: Somehow, at the end of an evening, a $100 worth of food and booze would mysteriously translate into a $20 check.

After the third or fourth time we dumb-dumbs finally caught on and started requesting her section (supplementing the $20 checks with $50 tips). And it was at that time, between monolithic pours of Jamesons and free pitchers of margaritas, that a genuine friendship was born.

We learned, in addition to being extremely generous with other people’s food stuffs, that Leanne was a dancer and choreographer and that she ran her own dance company. And one night, after many months of growing to adore her, Leanne invited us to one of her shows.

I am not going to lie: I was nervous. The show was in a small but lovely venue called Triskelion Arts in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Which, being a Manhattan-bred, Boerum Hill-dwelling New Yorker, seemed to me to be about as close and welcoming as Sing Sing.

But what really scared me was the performance. I thought, well, great. This show is going to be on par with the self-choreographed, one woman “ballet” my 5th grade math teacher once performed in front of us wearing nothing but an electric blue leotard and ripped pantyhose.

I didn’t like dance. I didn’t know a thing about dance. And, I thought to myself, I’ll be in a theater so intimate, I will have to look into Leanne’s eyes as she dances for me. And then I will have to see her after the show. And I will have to lie to her face about how good it was. Which she will see right through. Which will make it awkward between us. Which will mean we’ll have to stop going to Pacifico. Which will mean no more free hangovers. Great.

But here’s the surprise: The show was fantastic. I literally laughed and cried. Leanne’s choreography was smart and heartbreaking and hysterical, sometimes all at once. I never imagined that someone could teach me something about myself using movement, facial expressions and simulated (comedic) sex acts. Nor did I imagine ever meeting anyone for whom bravery and talent could flow so effortlessly.

The beauty of Leanne’s approach, and indeed the mission of her company, is to make dance accessible to everyone: expert or amateur. And in my case, cynic. So at the end of the show, rather than dodging her gaze, I found myself seeking it out. ‘Cause I now had a certified, full-blown girl-crush on her.

So to Leanne, I dedicate today’s run. Because she is premiering her latest masterpiece this evening and I can’t wait to see it this weekend (info and tickets details below!) And because, while I’ve been shaking my booty to change the world for a mere eight days, she has been shaking her booty and making the world a better place her entire life. She forges great things for herself and she’s fearless, perhaps to a fault. Because only someone fearless would give someone like me access to childhood pictures like this:

See you at the show.

Event details:
Triskelion Arts Presents “The Ostrich’s Way of Dealing With Things is Hardly Productive“, Leanne Schmidt and Company’s sixth evening at Triskelion Arts offers a peculiar and unusual demonstration of how one might “bury their head in the sand” in order to avoid what inevitably needs to be addressed. Set to an epic soundtrack by Vivaldi and Chopin, collaborators Leanne Schmidt and Kimberly Goss poke fun at life’s mini-dramas and personal tragedies combining physicality, humor and honesty. The result is a journey that is rich in metaphor where the audience is bound to find candid similarities between themselves and the performers.

For tickets visit: http://www.triskelionarts.org/leanne-schmidt-company

I’m at day 7 and can now officially call myself a streaker. Happily for you, I am of the clothed variety. (Thank you, Life, for the photograph. I await the cease and desist but until then: Yay! Flying man things!)

I’ve never before run for 7 days straight so I’ve already reached a personal milestone (I did take Soul Cycle classes for 7 straight days last summer in a last-ditch effort before vacation and, I have to admit, that was infinitely harder).

Should I succeed at this challenge (and I should) I will qualify to join an illustrious group: The United States Running Streak Association, of which there are presently only 313 members. I paid them $20.00 to become an Associate Member and am still not quite sure what that’s bought me. But if I am going to do this, I’d at least like my name on a .pdf.

See you tomorrow.

Lorrin

Just got back from an amazing long weekend with my parents where instead of running through city streets amidst the faint scent of bum poo, I ran alongside the ocean amidst the a strong scent of jasmine. A slight improvement.

My daughter is about to turn two and my husband and I try to get her down to South Carolina to see her grandparents every 2-3 months. Before Lucille could speak we adults decided that she would call my dad, “Pappy” for Pappy’s in Totowa, NJ: home to a  beloved family manna known as the Texas Wiener (Notice that Yelp gave it a coveted 1.5 stars). And my stepmom, “Grahm,” for more obvious reasons.

As soon as Lucille started to speak however, she quickly altered their names to monikers infinitely more appropriate: Happy and Ham. Funny how a not-yet-two-year-old can get it so right.

Being with my parents is like being with your favorite drunk, jock friends from school. Days are spent very actively: fishing trips, tennis tournaments, golf lessons, hurricane swims. You almost always walk away sore. Nights are spent just as actively: darts, pool, Wii bowling, bocce—all performed with a drink in hand. You almost always walk away dented.

In between the tee times and the cocktail hours, my parents offer an enormous amount of thoughtfulness (every baby thing you could think of is always at the ready), love (I learned to hug from these people) and support (disciplining a tantruming toddler in front of the people who disciplined you could get wonky, but they are graceful enough to offer advice, not opinions).

In short, my daughter is a genius. Because she knew instinctively what I’ve learned over the last 37.99 years: That at their core, my parents are both really happy. And really hammy.

So to them I dedicate these runs. Not just because I like them an awful lot. But because I’m grateful that, by being their daughter, I have a wonderful lesson in being a mother.
And an athlete.
And a drunk.