I Run These Towns

Those who know me know what I expect in the cities I love. I want a place that feels authentic. I want a place that has just the right amount of grit. What is that amount? I know it when I see it. Last week my husband had a conference in Milwaukee, and I was really excited to go. People seemed surprised by this excitement, but it's a Midwest industrial city on the water that's famous for making beer. What's not  to like? Plus I could walk around with the Laverne & Shirley  theme song in my head for four days. I flew from Lansing with my champion toddler traveler to meet my husband who was already there. We were on our way downtown from the airport when I was already raving about street design because that's what I do. We stayed across the street from the convention center which was surprisingly cute. My experience with convention centers is they often look like a building out of a horrible Soviet Union photograph from 1987. Milwaukee has managed to break the horri...

I am a firm believer that all it takes to be a "real" runner is to lace up your shoes and get out there. I wrote a blog about this complicated formula to being a real runner nearly five years ago. Although I'm nowhere close to being a competitive runner, I've spent the last 12 years logging regular miles and changing who I am by becoming a runner. In the last eight months I've begun to question whether I'm still a runner.  After a serious few years of speedy races, 2017 was a disappointment. I ran the Detroit Half Marathon in October of 2016 and ended up in the hospital the next week with a serious abscess. It sidelined my running for months. Finally l ast summer I ended my running drought by running three 5ks in July.  They weren't my fastest or best work, but I was feeling like myself again. After the third 5k in as many weeks I tweaked my knee but thought it was no big deal. In August I found I was unable to run at all. And then after a few months ...

I've never had a child biologically, so I can't compare my experience to those who have. All I know is our situation: three years of trying to get pregnant, deciding to adopt and waiting three years for the birth of our son with what I call our false start in the middle (a birth mom who changed her mind once the baby was born). It was laborious (no pun intended), emotionally draining, and given the amazing outcome, I wouldn't change a minute of it. At one point all of the starts and stops made me lose hope. I thought it would be easy. I thought we'd get married, I'd get pregnant, and that would be it. I remember shopping with a girlfriend during the throes of Clomid, daily temps and sex on command. I tried on a cute pair of shorts and shirt, and I hesitated. I told her, "What if I buy this and I get pregnant?" Without a beat she answered, "What if you don't?" I remember being so hurt. I remember thinking how dare she? It was definitely going...

I have an insatiable desire to learn and have ever since I was a kid. Being a perfectionist means I'm always harder on myself than anyone else could be, and I expect myself to learn a lot. I recall being in first grade and completing a worksheet. My paper had been xeroxed wrong, and it was missing the reverse side of the sheet (and back in the mid-80s still smelled like the copy machine. I loved  that smell). When I realized I had a worksheet that wasn't complete I had a total meltdown. It was easily fixable, but I hated not excelling.  I don't know if I've ever, at any level of school (to include law school and the Bar exam) been the second person to finish my work. I've almost always finished first, and on the rare occasion where someone beat me, I was totally stressed out. I've always needed a lot of challenges to keep from getting bored. I realize this probably made me a difficult student in a lot of ways. I got detention once in my life: for talking in ...

I've been a super active person my entire life. Fitness isn't something I intended to take seriously; it simply became a part of who I am. It makes sense that I started distance running a dozen years ago as the next step in my fitness evolution. I have never had serious fitness motivation problems. Even after my month-long hospital stay in 2014 I was ready to start running again a few months later. This last year, however, has been different. For the first time in my entire life I'm having serious motivation issues. There are legit health reasons for them, but that doesn't change the fact that they exist. And it's not the first time I've been sidelined by my health. This time it's just been harder to come back. The timeline is brutal. Abscess in October 2016 (a week after the Detroit Half Marathon, my last half). That abscess drained for ten months until the drain was removed in August of last year. It definitely affected my running. I spent a week in th...

Nearly five years ago I wrote a post about whether or not women can have it all. This was before I had a child, and I had a lot of preconceived notions about what would happen once a child joined my life. And you know what? My opinions haven't changed. I've decided that I can indeed have it all.  Tonight I re-read that blog post, titled I Don't Know How She Does It . Nearly five years later, post having a child, I can affirmatively say that it is possible to have it all. It means being exhausted and constantly feeling like you're off balance, but it's possible. When I wrote the blog five years ago I assumed my life would change once I had a child. It did, but not in the way I expected. I'm still as anal as I was five years ago. My house is tidy. My laundry doesn't pile up. I push myself to the limits, and my schedule is out of control. The major challenges have been 1) lack of sleep; 2) lack of time to myself and 3) inability to exercise like I used ...

It was touch and go for a while. I found myself wearing flat, black Puma shoes...half sneaker; half flat. I reasoned that flats are so terrible it didn't matter what I was wearing. And I found myself not caring about my shoes for the first time in my professional career. They were dark days indeed. Seventy days ago I had surgery to repair my torn meniscus. I'm a runner. I also love heels. Going without these two things left me with an extraordinary identity crisis. People began to realize that I was only 5'4" tall instead of 5'7". I began to enjoy walking quickly and my feet feeling comfortable. Who was I without running? Who was I without the shoes? On New Years Day I began wearing heels again. It was inauguration day for Lansing's new mayor (aka my boss). I wore my favorite three inch booties all day. My knee actually felt okay. In the coming days I've been back to myself culminating in wearing my favorite leopard print wedges today. I am back. ...