On the Run

Life is better on the run.

Whether your completely barefoot running at full speed through the grass into the sand- Life is much better on the run. 

As snow collects on the ground, we have that choice to stay in on the treadmill or face the music outdoors where our toes freeze and our faces sting. I miss summer runs. so, so much. But the trick is to find your beach where ever it is that you are. Paradise is motion and just being able to run is bliss. So blissful in fact that if you are like me, and you are injured you feel like you want to punch everyone in the face outside you see running past happily and just ruin their precious little jog because you are so inwardly miserable and depressed from not being able to run. #runnerprobs. #tendonitislife....which leads me to my original whole saga for this blog of my life on a stationary bike. Slowly rehabilitating tendonitis post Chicago Marathon has been mentally awful. Yes, I can run an hour now again happily a few days a week. Like a mule, I stubbornly still go out for runs a few times a week to not totally lose my mind (not that I recommend people doing this...because sometimes injuries just work themselves out the more you run...again...probably best to avoid doing what I do)....I quote the lyrics of Roger Alan Wade...

If your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough!

When you get knocked down you gotta get back up.
Thats the way it is in life and love
If your gonna be dumb you gotta be tough. 

So for me right now. my beach is sitting on a spin bike in my room pretending like im running on my days of no running.

YOU'RE FINE. "you're fine"..so keep going.

That’s absolutely 1000% true. You are fine. Whatever is raging on can be temporarily calmed. Yup. Try telling that to someone who is suffering from any sort of abuse. Try telling that to someone who is giving birth without the happy drugs. Try telling that to someone who is in a war zone. So, why not. Just suck it up. Keep going. You’re fine. Fuck that. Those are the most annoying words ever expressed to anyone who has ever tried to swim upstream in shit creek. Until it happens to you- YOU DON’T KNOW.  

But you will know why I race in purple. Maybe even reddish purple or pinkish purple because I am broke and I can't afford Lady Gaga's matching purple punk ensemble with meat shoes. 

So let us begin this whole horrific tale at the beginning of the end and work our way through. After I got out of grad-school I started working in corporate fitness for Motorola- not mobility because I don't rep those phones- I was on the side of Solutions. My clients were mostly software engineers and sales peoples and random other levels of upper and lower I have no idea what the hell they did but I enjoyed the presence of every single one of them. I taught a ton of group fitness classes and specifically this tale begins with my regular Friday's Core training class. That's where this horrible phrase entered my life before it really meant something. " YOU ARE FINE". is what I would repeatedly say to my class as they held planks on their elbows or repped out hundreds of push ups only to sink back into that goddamn plank position without any hope of recovery. "YOU ARE FINE." I would tell them in the most calm-almost laughingly sweet voice. It was fun to make them hate me. It was fun to be the villain making them push through tough workouts. My class would laugh at this phrase and they got my crazy sarcasm. But to a point I was dead serious, because if the hardest part of your day is gritting through a fitness class- yes, YOU ARE FINE! you can preserve through far worse situations. So you know what, quit your bitching and hold that damn plank. Don't let your butt sink down. Fix that shit. Suck it up and keep going. YOU ARE FINE. You haven't yet scratched the surface of human mental tolerance and survival.

I wish I could give you a tell-all of what it was and what it felt like since 2012, but until I write that anonymous novel, you're only getting maybe a quarter of the story. Here are the "Facts" you should know:

1. I stand against any form of abuse. Love should be kind. Verbal, mental, emotional, physical, sexual-all of it is extremely harmful and we should be educated on how truly awful it is and courts and family counsellors, lawyers, all of them should be educated on all forms of domestic abuse and how it affects victims and their children.

2. I am FINE and will always stand and continue to fight for the rights of those who are just a number in the court docket. Fight for those who feel they have their rights silenced through advocating education, awareness, and support. 

Roses are red. Violets are blue. Red and blue make purple the color of bruises and scars. I race in purple from my hair to my socks to bring awareness for domestic abuse and much needed family court reform. 

We can all stand together and be more than FINE because We can help heal. 

This is just good for the soul.

I was told that if you cry in the shower; no one can hear your tears. Those are the days,  the nights that my feet pound will pound the pavement with a fury of a thunderstorm. The water pours. My heart, my head, my lungs radiate the intensity as though my scream has shattered a mountain. Those are the days the road is my therapy. The world turns to slow motion because everything becomes beautiful again. All of it. The anger, the sadness, the love. I re-fall deeply in love with life. Although it can hurt tremendously still I carry on and seek out the beauty that is still out there in this world. Because I believe with a hope it still does. I used to believe in the power of the human condition. The heart would always triumph and saints were saints because they were ordinary people showing their strength and humans like this are still out there created in the universe. And some days you must internalize this belief and become your own rescue.

I rescue myself every time I go out there. If I never raced again, I wouldn't care at all. I love the freedom, the flight, the feeling that running gives me. I would still do speed work when I felt like it because I get the urge to push. I want to feel fast. Sometimes I need to slow and take in the world around me because it provides a calm to the internal thunderstorm that rages. Realize that you have the power to amaze yourself with how incredibly strong you are and that you are not afraid to challenge yourself and step completely out of your comfort zone and just go.

Running is more than therapy. It's a central way of life. Yeah, I can be a gym rat, but that's just for fun. This getting out there -- it's just plain good for the soul.

So go forth.

Paradise is a state of Mind

Paradise is not a state of being, but a state of mind. It exists within us not always around us. It is our creation.


Real life is messy; I started this blog back in 2012 to help keep my training on track for the Olympic Trails. I failed. I'm way off track with where I was going with the most successful failure during my November attempt; but I understand where I need to be and yet I carry on. I may color outside the lines here and there but I'm still headed in the same general direction to move forward towards that goal experiencing life's ups and downs and ins and outs. I use my running as happiness, therapy, justice, politics, hope-- all of it. It's messy. I'm sweaty, my hair is never brushed. But that's how it is and I can't picture it going any other way but imperfectly. 2020 is a short ways away in terms of the grand scheme of things so yes, I keep going in my mustache sported knee socks. You want to see my training journal? it's pretty messy too... I write on a dry erase calendar in my kitchen, the note app on my phone, scrawled out in a hand written day planner. There's order, kind of.

This week so far:
Sunday- 9 miles with last 3 miles at half marathon pace (final mile was close to a flat 6)
Monday- 9 miles easy
Tuesday- 60 minutes spin bike in afternoon, 45 minutes before bed
Wednesday- 10 miles easy
Thursday- 12 miles in a bit under 1:20:00 for a happy widdle tempo.
Friday & Saturday are going to be high mileage in attempt to prep for the Chicago Marathon this Octoberuary :)


I have been averaging around 75-95 miles per week like the village idiot. But it's a paradise mental state I've created for myself with running. And I'm using my happiness to bring awareness to purple. yeah, shut up, I'm still on my purple streak. and you should be too!

I'll be rocking all purple even the purple hair did again for the marathon to raise hope for domestic abuse survivors and push the message LOVE IS KIND.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

 Love is patient, love is kind. 

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 

It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

You are all you have got so stand the hell up.

I have copied this article from : http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/9/29/1333112/-Attorney-Fights-to-Reform-Family-Court-May-Lose-Law-License

And we all need to read it. Please. When you see someone through this struggle. Please stand beside them and wear your purple.

Fed up with family court judges ignoring evidence of child abuse, last year Louisiana attorney Nanine McCool announced she was running for state district judge. A week later she was fighting to keep her law license.

“I don’t regret what I did,” McCool said of her actions that spurred the Office of Disciplinary Counsel to recommend she be disbarred from practicing law for a year. “If I lose my license for insisting that judges look at the evidence and apply the law before they make a decision, I can live with that.”

After more than a decade of practicing family law, McCool said handling multiple cases where abused children were not protected prompted her to run for a judgeship. “Parents go to the courts expecting to have the courts help them protect their children, and are stunned that not only will the courts not protect their children, but will actively seek to prevent the parent themselves from protecting their children,” McCool said. “That’s what makes you nauseous.”

Cindy Dumas, founder of Safe Kids International, has been asking people to write on Daily Kos about their efforts to protect children in family court. Saying the courts had failed to protect him, her son Damon married a stranger in Las Vegas at age 16 to become legally emancipated and escape the family court system.

Nanine McCool

McCool is running against Louisiana 22nd Judicial District Court Judge Dawn Amacker, one of two judges that McCool had written a blog post about in 2011 concerning the welfare of two children in a custody case. In the post, McCool, who was representing the mother, urged the public to call the judges and ask them to hear all the evidence before making a ruling.

The November 5, 2013, disciplinary complaint accuses McCool of multiple violations of professional conduct in regard to the blog post and motions she filed calling on Amacker to recuse herself from cases. McCool also was accused of encouraging the public to make contact with the judges to influence their rulings.

In the blog post, McCool linked to two audio recordings of the young children. “Harley and her sister Zoey have been telling their mother, their doctors, their therapists, teachers, friends and family that their daddy has been playing a game with them called ‘weewees and butts’ since they were four and three years old,” McCool wrote in the post. “Now consider that no judge has ever heard those recordings. Why? Because for 4.5 years, they have simply refuse to do so.”

The audio of the children is no longer on the internet. According to the complaint against McCool, a Mississippi judge who was hearing the custody case in 2008 ordered that no recordings of the children shall be made available to anyone but the counsel of record and the court. Whether the recordings were entered in the Mississippi case cannot be verified because the judge there sealed the case. The complaint against McCool notes that much of the information was taken from Louisiana filings.

In 2011 McCool was handling an adoption proceeding for the mother’s new husband who wanted to adopt the two girls, all residents of Louisiana. After child support is not paid for children for six consecutive months, according to Louisiana law, a stepparent has the right to ask the court for an adoption hearing over the delinquent parent’s objection.

Amacker presided over the adoption hearing but stayed the proceedings pending the outcome of the Mississippi case and refused to hear evidence regarding the children’s safety, McCool said.

Family court judges are often taught to be suspicious of abuse allegations during divorce proceedings, said DeAnn Salcido, a former San Diego family court judge whogave a child molester custody of his six-year-old daughter in 2003 and has been motivated by that mistake to change the system.

A divorce can spur a child to reveal abuse for the first time, yet this is the time a child is least likely to be believed, said Joyanna Silberg, a psychologist who led a Department of Justice-funded study examining family court cases where judges failed to protect children who were being abused. Family violence is often invisible because people are reluctant to jeopardize the integrity of the family unit, Silberg said. When the family unit is split during divorce, abuse victims, including children, have less incentive to keep secrets.

Some states have adopted “friendly parent” laws that favor custody to the parent who is more likely to facilitate visitations with the other parent. Protective parents, who are concerned about child abuse, can be judged harshly by “friendly parent” law standards.

Many lawyers advise their clients not to bring up abuse allegations because the risk that they will not be believed -- and the judge will give sole custody to the accused abuser -- is too great, McCool said. “If we all stand together we could stop this. We should not be afraid of losing our license for representing our clients fairly.”

But right now, many of her fellow family court attorneys won’t speak to her. “Most of them go along to get along because they have families to support and can’t afford to take a stand and risk being blackballed by judges,” McCool said.

If the Louisiana Supreme Court rules that McCool should be disbarred, she will not be eligible to run for judge. “The (Louisiana) Supreme Court is very political but I am still confident that its vision of the justice system is more like mine than the one the (Office of Disciplinary Counsel’s) recommendations reflect,” McCool said.

Today, I promise to keep going.

Those of you who listen to NPR are probably familiar with "This I Believe" - a segment which features people from all walks of life describing their beliefs.

Katie Harris, a young, talented, aspiring female with a crazy runner for a father, wrote this in loving memory to her mother. In our Motorola Run Club, I have worked with Paul Harris numerous times and as a proud friend of a family who has continued to show strength and courage through devastating times, I wanted to share this very inspiring  NPR segment that his daughter wrote.

It is worth every moment you spend reading it.

**********************************************************************************************************

Enough
On some days, when I feel inadequate, I write on my wrist in small letters, “enough,” reminding myself that I need not be any different than who I am in that exact moment. On other days, I get lost in the “to-do’s,” and “should-be’s,” forgetting entirely that I am an imperfect being. I compare myself to others, trying to measure up to deeply ingrained societal expectations. In this thought, I dismiss the unconditional love and acceptance others have for me. Upon examination, I realize that these thoughts are rooted in distortion- the distortion that I must meet certain benchmarks to prove my worthiness. Unconditional love is not based on inconsequential standards. My sister, who scrambles out of the door to class in the morning, wearing her hair in a messy bun; who comes home late at night looking only for something to fill her exhausted body, bent between family and education, is enough. My father, who works countless hours to provide a home for his family, ensuring that they have a quality of life that was better than his, is enough. My mother, who raised two girls into adulthood, teaching lessons of compassion and self expression rather than societal expectations; who traded the bottle for support groups after realizing that her disease had landed her in a place she did not want to be; who rode motorcycles for the thrill and studied flowers everyday; who felt that her mental illness disqualified her from being the mother, the wife, the friend that others saw her as, was enough. I didn’t fully comprehend this concept until one day, when I rushed home to find my sister’s eyes flooded with tears, and a policeman telling me that my mother took her life. In that moment, I only wanted to hug her and tell her how much she meant to me. When I look back, I realize that every single one of her efforts were enough. From waking up in the morning with heavy eyelids, sitting silently through meals and celebrations, to lifting only one finger because she had not enough energy for two, she was enough. Love connected her to a world without standards. The illusion that my mother’s efforts were inadequate stole her from my life. Now, I crave her simple presence. I crave the way that her motherly hugs engulfed me with love. I crave her patience in the way that she willingly listened to my troubles. Though depression took the first person I ever knew, I gained an appreciation for the value of all individuals, including myself. I understand that each and every person navigates the world to the best of their abilities, and I need not compare their lives to another. A book that my sister has read to me several times states, “When a rose and a lotus are held side by side, is one more beautiful than the other?” Each person possesses individual and unique beauty that connects them to the surrounding universe. In this statement, I remember that there is no one to compare myself to. I have learned to accept the struggles, pain and happiness as a part of life.

******************************************************************************************************************

As a personal advocate of depression awareness, mental health awareness, domestic abuse awareness and love to all; this is something very much worth sharing. Knowing you are ENOUGH. Running is my therapy and out there on the roads, its just me or just me pushing Cael for his run and there is no judge and there is no race, no one to compare myself to. Just trying to do better that the previous day. This passage was so motivational it needed to be shared with the world.

Thank you Katie & Paul.

And yet the pedals still turn

I haven't left, I've just been pedaling. It's been cold, it's frozen over, and I've been running. Hidden away with my life, my thoughts and my dreams. Putting in all the work because the race is won in the off season- all the miles, the training. To race well, to win you must be prepared for it all. The perfect conditions don't exist and one must train very hard through it all. I'm still here. I'll be on the roads, I'll be found in my solitary walls of confinement running on an endless belt. The training will test your will, but the race will set you free.