Book Tour Stop: Honey Do You Need a Ride?

Last summer I got the honor of reading an advance copy of Honey Do You Need a Ride? Confessions of a Fat Runner (Breakaway Books 2012), by Jennifer Graham. 

I can't say I've ever identified as a "fat runner" (although I've had a few brushes with the experience post childbirth when I got to run with my "loaner boobs"), but throughout the book I found myself identifying with Jennifer so often--she is transplanted from a southern state to a northern state, she has four kids and had her last at 40, she loves to run and yet, like me appears to be uncoachable. I couldn't help cheering for her as she took on running, initially to lose weight, and then to own her identity as a runner, so much so that she might be the only runner coached by Steve Prefontaine (yes, from the dead). But her memoir is also about a few other things I can't identify with, and still find myself cheering her through: a divorce she doesn't want and owning donkeys she only pretends not to want.

She is a fun writer to read and to prove it to you I've interviewed her for Mama Sweat. I've also interspersed a few excerpts of the book for background and your enjoyment. Is there a free, signed book available for a Mama Sweat reader? Details at the end of the interview...

KT: It's hard to know where to start. I am quaking in my yoga pants fearing that I will come across as one of those “skinny jerks” that you describe in your book. Do skinny jerks still bother you?

JG: Jerks still bother me, yes, but I truly have nothing against skinny people. I would like to be one myself someday. But apparently I still haven’t figured out that “eat less, exercise more” thing.

You skinny people, you have no idea what a gift it is to move around without your inner thighs rubbing together like a couple of superglued haps. Since childhood, I’ve had a major case of Thigh Rub, which sounds like a fried-chicken seasoning, but is just another hidden indignity of the chronically overweight.

KT: I have a friend who sometimes refers to me--lovingly of course, or at least I perceive it that way--as her "skinny bitch friend." Despite that--and I hope you find this satisfying--I still get wicked thigh chaffing when running long distances.

JG: Well, we all have skinny bitch friends in our lives, or we should, anyway, because you guys are like an endangered species that we should protect and cherish. Seriously, have you looked at the US obesity rates lately? Your type is on the way out.  You cannot survive in a nation filled with Shake Shacks.

But yeah, on the thigh chaffing--there once was a time when I wouldn’t have believed you, but I went to a symposium last year featuring the first eight women to legally run the Boston Marathon, back in 1972, and these women were hard-core athletes, and every last one of them was complaining about chaffing. So I now accept that this is an affliction all runners share, and I will stop being so pathetically self pitying about it.

I don’t want to train... I don’t even want to run...It is a pity party of one. My invisible coach refuses to participate. “Get up,” Pre says to me harshly. “Get up, and go change your clothes.” I roll over in a show of defiance and lie on my stomach for a while, the sun sympathetically warming my shoulders...But I can’t lie here on the floor until the kids come home. The room is all glass, and the neighbors can see in. Worse, the coach in my head is growing increasingly surly. “Get going,” he snarls.

KT: I've often split athletes into two groups, but not based on weight: the funcore and the hardcore. Skinny jerk/bitch that I am still competes as a funcore athlete. I'd definitely put you in the hardcore group. Because it's not about size or even speed, but the way a person approaches training and racing. You know Pre, obviously hardcore. Dr. Sheehan, fun core. I know you love them both, but if you had to pick one to run along side you who would you pick?

JG: First, those are great terms, indicative of genius. Second, Dr. Sheehan would come back and whomp you with a stethoscope if he knew you were calling him funcore. The man was a serious competitor in his day. And I think you’ve misjudged me, too. If I were hardcore, I’d be a skinny bitch. I love running way too much to take it seriously. I will frequently stop in the middle of a hard workout to A) eat blackberries on the side of the road and B) lie down in the sun and watch deer graze. Then I will go on my merry way, even though I just blew up my workout. But a serious hardcore ultrarunner just offered to coach me, so I may yet turn hardcore yet. Check back in a few months if I’m not dead.

I’m a mess. I’m a newly divorced, emotionally bankrupt, serially broke, unemployed, single mother of four; a southern girl marooned deep in New England, a thousand miles from her family and closest friends. For reasons I can’t fully explain, there are two donkeys in my backyard... 

KT: When you finished the book about a year ago the wounds were still fresh from your divorce. Tell us how you're doing now. How are the kids? How are the donkeys? Any other races to tell us about? 

JG: Somebody asked me today if I am happily divorced, and I said no, I can’t say that yet, but I’m getting there. I still think divorce sucks with a capital S, and that unless there is physical or substance abuse or something else catastrophic going on, that parents need to get over themselves and stay together for the kids. Yup, I’m a dinosaur who truly believes in utilitarianism (remember from philosophy 101? The greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people?), and also I dislike poverty and kids being shuttled back and forth like they are packages. But apparently that’s just me. So I muddle along, and am sad some days, but deliriously happy most of the time because I pump myself full of sunshine and endorphins. My kids are 10, 13, 18 and 20, now, and all still live with me even though I keep leaving rental ads in conspicuous places around the house. The donkeys, who would be beasts of burden in any other country, remain shiftless loafers who do no meaningful work other than cutting (i.e., eating) the grass. Races – I’m registered for Kiawah again in December, but that’s the only thing on the schedule right now.

It’s ironic. I started to run because I wanted to be thin. Now I wish I were thin because I run.

KT: And I have to ask about your weight. This would only be an insensitive skinny jerk question if you hadn't written an entire book about it. And I know you think I'm asking about the number--I'm not. I want to know where your relationship with your weight stands. In the book you vacillate between using it to your advantage as comedic material and despairing that despite the incessant miles the scale stands firm.

JG: I have no problem giving my weight. As you point out, comes with the territory these days, particularly since people look at my picture on the back cover and start screeching “she’s not fat!  she’s not fat!” I would like to point out, however, that NO ONE has ever said that as they’re watching me jiggle down the road.

When I finished the book, I was hovering around 150, which, as I pointed out, was downright skeletal for me, and was causing my publisher to hyperventilate, thinking I was about to get into some James Frey-like scandal. But no worries, I never lost a pound I couldn’t regain, and when one comes back, he always brings friends. Because I’m an emotional eater, and I had a turbulent year, I gained a lot of weight this year.  This morning, I weighed 161.5, which is a weight I hate, not only because I swore I’d never get into the 160s again, but because my clothes are tight, and when I weigh this much, and run on city streets, I am violating all kinds of indecency laws. Boobs running wild, or something like that. There just isn’t enough bra to contain me. I gain all excess weight in my thighs and breasts, which is just unspeakably horrible for a runner. So yeah. My weight issues are still my weight issues. There’s something broken inside me that keeps me from losing weight. Haven’t given up on fixing it, but I’m like Thomas Edison, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” 

Over the weekend, I take my youngest kids roller skating, and since I know the strenuous life tastes best, I join them in the rink... At one point, my senses under assault by pulsing disco lights and adolescent karaoke, I look around and realize I am the oldest person on skates... I’m the only woman old enough to be a grandmother and dumb enough to don Rollerblades. Hallelujah.

KT: What do your kids think about your running? If they don't run, are there other ways your passion for running has influenced them?

JG: They don’t run like I do – i.e., it isn’t part of them yet, but I’m still hoping. My 20-year-old has done a couple of races with me to humor me, and he’s been running fairly regularly for the past couple of months. My 18-year-old sneaks out sometimes when she thinks that I don’t see her. It has yet to infect my younger kids, but I think it will. It’s hard to watch someone doing something that clearly makes her ecstatic, and not want to do it yourself.  

In the book, I write about standing in line at the Kiawah Island Half-Marathon behind a mom and her two grown daughters, talking about what race they would run together next. That’s my dream … to one day have grown-up kids who not only still want to do things with me, but who would want to do things that involve running. 

Here, all these years, I’ve been thinking I haven’t achieved anything because I haven’t lost any weight, but there it is. A sense of achievement that didn’t come from my children, or my writing, or my oft-admired ability to remember birthdays. A sense of achievement that comes from the simple fact that I run.

KT: You live in an enviable place--Hopkinton, the start of the Boston Marathon (that right there is hardcore). Have you figured out yet that you'll run the Boston Marathon some day?

JG: Yeah, it’s kind of inevitable. I mean every runner wants to run Boston, right? But when you’ve been standing on the sidelines slapping hands for eight years like I have, the desire is pretty intense. The only problem is, I haven’t figured out yet how to run Boston without hurting. I’ve driven the route, and it hurt me to go up those hills in my CAR. Plus, I kind of like my toenails. So I’ve been putting it off, but I don’t think I’ll be able to put it off for much longer.

KT: I think other running readers will agree that toenails are overrated. You won’t miss them when they’re gone and they grow back anyway. I DO think you have another memoir in you. The next one will be about how you came to love the body you're in and how that body ran Boston.

If you'd like to enter the drawing for a free--signed--copy of "Honey Do You Need a Ride?" join the conversation on the Hot (Sweaty) Mamas Facebook page and let us know, if you could have any coach in the world to help you become a better runner or cyclist or yogi or tennis player or whatever it is you'd like to do better, who would it be? (Yes, you can pick a dead person too).

And one more thing--Happy Birthday Mom!!

Flashback: Finding Fitness in the Chaos of Motherhood

First, I hope you had a happy Mother's Day. No matter how frustrated you've been at any time during the year--whether with the mundane, such as dirty socks peppering the hallway, or deeper feelings of ineptitude, such as forgetting to pick your child up from karate, on Mother's Day the slate is wiped clean with one handmade Mother's Day card. Because, no matter how you feel you've failed, you see--in bright colored markers--that you are "The BEST Mommy in the world."

A hard copy pat-on-the-back for my efforts to raise a fit family. In her drawing the sun is shining brightly. But in the actual picture we are speeding back to the car to avoid an oncoming rain storm.  There's been a lot of singing, dancing, and fitness in the rain over the years.

Today is another celebration for me. Five years ago on this very day I wrote my first post for Mama Sweat. Maybe you missed it? Unless you are my husband or my mother you most certainly did. So I gotta pull it out again, with an update.

Finding Fitness in the Chaos of Motherhood

May 13, 2008

Maybe it's ironic that my first post on this blog is made possible because I skipped my morning run. That's sort of the whole point of this blog though, how we have to make choices and trade offs in order to balance motherhood and everything else we do, which in my case includes fitness... and now blogging, too. It feels a little insane to be adding one more thing to my list. Anyway, that choice was made easier today because my devoted running partner is out with a sinus and ear infection. Her name is Pam, by the way. I'm sure you'll hear more about her in subsequent posts, like posts about our "commune without walls" with food sharing, clothes sharing and child sharing (we draw the line at husbands). Seriously, she's front and center of my "village," and I wouldn't be as sane or as fit without her. Back to choices though, I was glad to type away in the early hours this morning instead of run because I conjured up the perfect plan this afternoon: while my twins (Mc and K) are at their nature class I will run with my 3-year-old (JC) in Pam's jogging stroller (see what I mean--but the only jogger I have is a double) with our 8-year-old dog, Zoe, a black squirrel dog, also known in our house as a "black greybador retriever," due to her lab-like head and greyhound like body. This is the perfect plan, so long as it doesn't rain. OK, I just checked the weather. By 3 pm, when my plan is to unfold, it should be 53 degrees (only in Minnesota) with a 50 percent chance of rain. Crap. Can't you just see it: dog, toddler, jog stroller, determined mom in the middle of a cold downpour? Will she find fitness in the chaos of motherhood? Stay tuned.

The Update

My enabling workout partner Pam moved a state away a year later. Even though I have to stay fit without her she still plays a large role in keeping me sane. Zoe is not here anymore to run with me either, but she's watching from Dog Heaven. My son, who was then just weeks away from being conceived is now taking the same nature class that my twins were in five years ago. None of my kids need a stroller anymore. They can run with me. So much has changed and so I guess I should find it somewhat comforting to know that it was as frustratingly cold in Minnesota in May then as it is now. Did I run that day five years ago? I had too, so I could write this post about it!

Dare I admit, writing this blog over the last five years has compelled me to workout on those days I'd rather not. I hope, as a reader looking for fitness in the chaos of motherhood, it's done the same for you!

Soaking Dirty

One of my all-time favorite kid sayings came from my beautiful JC, about three at the time, who slipped inside after a long bout in the sand box-turned-mud pit. She walked up behind me as I sat at the kitchen table (probably writing a blog post) and said in her cute toddler voice, "I'm soaking dirty." Indeed, her porcelain skin and curly strawberry locks were besmudged with mud. She was a beautiful sight (and the inspiration behind my only winning haiku).

Along with nutrition, the other important aspect of raising a fit family (aside from, of course, fitness) includes nature. While weather can sometimes bring fitness indoors, the best fitness options are definitely outside. More often than not, of course, getting kids active isn't fitness. It's playing.

A good friend of mine, Patty Born Selly, has just published a book, "Early Childhood Activities for a Greener Earth" and I am delighted to be part of her virtual book tour today. There's something in it for you too--if you'd like to buy the book, her publisher, Red Leaf Press is offering a 30 percent discount if you purchase from its website before June 30th. Use the code: GREENEARTH at http://www.redleafpress.org/Early-Childhood-Activities-for-a-Greener-Earth-P771.aspx

I met Patty in a writing class when our children were babies. I came to know her as someone who would pick up any insect, who would let neighborhood children (even those dressed in party clothes and clearly had somewhere to be) search for frogs her yard (because who was she to decide what they'd rather be doing?) And most recently when confronted with a bat in our writing-retreat cabin, she was the only one of us cooing at it--"look at it's cute face!"--while the rest of us shrieked in horror.

Patty loves nature. As the founder of Small Wonders, an educational consulting company that provides teacher training and support for science and nature education initiatives, she knows her stuff.

If you are involved in early childhood education in anyway, this book is a must for your curriculum. Or, if you are a mother of young children, and are approaching another summer with trepidation (or perhaps feel that way every weekend) wondering what the heck to do next, this book is a must for you, too.

Even for moms like me, who embrace the sight of her children "soaking dirty" the book is filled with thump-on-the-forehead good ideas. Consider "10 Things to do with Rocks." We have our collection at home too, but I had never thought about letting the kids take them to the bath tub. Genius!

More fun (even fitness--tree climbing anyone?) awaits. Get your copy by June 30th for the discount with code: GREENEARTH at http://www.redleafpress.org/Early-Childhood-Activities-for-a-Greener-Earth-P771.aspx.

I'm already eagerly awaiting her forthcoming book due next spring, Common Bonds: Why Children Need Animals.

Poor Pilates

The first rule of embracing a fit lifestyle is to do activity you enjoy.

So why am I doing Pilates if I don't enjoy it?

1) Because I'm still shocked that I don't love it. Someone like me should be a Pilates devotee. Pilates is a "build you up" type of exercise, versus a "break you down" type of workout. It can be challenging, but in a nurturing way. It works to strengthen and lengthen muscles while zeroing in on core and back strength. And yet, it never makes me feel like I've done anything.

2) Because I keep thinking I haven't given it a chance. Like my friend says to her children when trying something new: one bite to try, a second bite to taste, a third bite to decide. I've had the first and second bite. It's not so bad as to make gagging sounds, but my nose is all scrunched up. Now I'm on to the third bite. This time I'll try it in a group setting with a friend. Sounds more palatable that way.

3) Because when I returned to my physical therapist in a better place after not seeing her for five weeks she said I should keep doing whatever I was doing. Damn it if I wasn't doing Pilates.

I'm going to give it another month. That's it. Pilates, if I don't love you by then, we'll have to go our separate ways.

Do you ever endure workouts you don't love? Do you have a good reason or is it time to move on to something else?

Getting Started: Six Strategies to Fit Fitness into Your Day

I spoke to a business group last week about "fitting fitness in" and at the end of the presentation, while taking questions, someone asked:

"How do you start?"

In the book I co-wrote, Hot (Sweaty) Mamas: Five Secrets to Life as a Fit Mom, we tackle this early on. If you are someone who isn't active, getting started can definitely be harder than what any perceived physical challenge you expect to get from exercise. For this we have a chapter on how to make exercise a habit, even a 28-Day Exercise Challenge, and once fitness becomes part of your life, a "Sweaty Decision Tree," for those days when you're asking the question: "Should I workout or not?"

But even for someone who mostly, usually, somewhat exercises regularly, a good funk can set in. Sometimes the funk is a micro blip of blase. Sometimes the funk can settle in and take hold. That slippery slope where one missed workout becomes a week or possibly months of inactivity. We address all that in the book, too. The most effective way to keep from sliding down that slippery slope is to keep from taking an "all or nothing" attitude with fitness. Just because you don't have a full hour to devote to your Plan A workout, doesn't mean you can't fit in 10 minutes. But you read this blog, so you know that's what Mama Sweat is all about.

Still, some days, even the best intentions get stymied. So here are six strategies for getting started:

1. Forecast weekly workouts. Before your week begins, look at what's scheduled. Where does fitness fit in? Which mornings will be most conducive to getting your sweat on? Where can it slide into the schedule? Or, as we put it in Hot (Sweaty) Mamas, how will you Make Time, Take Time, Share Time, or Snare Time?

2) Triage your day. As we all know forecasts can change. On those days when fitness doesn't happen early in the morning when you're most likely to get it done (and often half asleep so that sometimes you forget you've worked out already) go through the "must do" items for your day and decide when and what you will do for fitness.

3) Get dressed for it (literally or figuratively). If you work from home, either head of your domicile or have flexible employment, and can choose your "uniform," make it something that can easily transition to a workout. If you work in an office, pack your workout bag and make sure it goes with you (put it in your car the night before!). This is a huge mental step. Your brain is being conditioned to make room for fitness.

4) Offer a bribe. Speaking of getting dressed. Sometimes treating yourself to some new piece of workout wear is all you need to get moving, inspired to put that new outfit to good use.

5) Involve someone else. If you don't trust yourself to follow through on your workout plans, recruit a workout partner so you're held accountable to something beyond your own intentions.

6) Give yourself an out. When the time comes and you feel like making excuses, tell yourself that as long as you start you can stop if you want to. Just start. If after 10 minutes you still don't feel any love for the workout, you can give it up. I say this to myself quite often. Give myself an out and suddenly starting doesn't seem so overbearing. Once I start, chances are I'll keep going.

All dressed up and ready to start but not sure what to do? I've compiled some of my favorite workouts on the Hot (Sweaty) Mamas site. Get ready, get set, get sweaty!

Not afraid to run. Not afraid to race. Not afraid to finish.

This finish line photo was taken last Sunday, April 14, at the Leadman Triathlon in Tempe, Arizona, the day before the Boston Marathon. I had just finished the 8.1-mile run for my relay team. Throughout my race I was celebrating good health and feeling fortunate to be there enjoying the company of good friends. My friend and cyclist Laura took this picture. My husband was standing right behind her. I never once questioned our safety. I see an innocence in this photo now. It's my last "before Boston" finish.

Going forward I will never cross another finish line without thinking about Martin Richard and his family. Because his family is my family. An active family fueled by fitness; where racing has been part of the family fabric as soon as babies enter the world (or even before they enter the world).

Our twins were on the sidelines of the Twin Cities marathon when they were six-weeks old. We have been back almost every year since, as our family grew. Sometimes our kids cheered for mom or dad or their uncle. Sometimes we were there because being at a marathon is what our family calls F.U.N. Our biggest worry was that we might lose a child in the crowd. Never did we think a child might lose a leg, or a life.

Life is different now, isn't it?

Just like that.

But it's clear to me our family won't stop racing.

Even as we began to process the horrors of what happened in Boston last week, I mailed three entries at my daughters' request for the local "Kids Marathon." Despite knowing what happened in Boston my girls anticipate race day next month.

And on Tuesday my girls were eager to join the Life Time Run Club, which requested that runners wear a race t-shirt in support of Boston, and started the run with 26 seconds of silence. Not only did they fearlessly run their "one mile marathon," as they called it, they ran with heart. When we were all finished, one of my 9-year-olds announced that she won. (I had been in the way back running with my almost 8-year-old).

"You won?" I asked incredulously. "You mean you were the first kid?"

"No," her twin sister replied. "She really won the whole thing. I was second."

This means that the rest of the run club held back--let these two little runners through. These little runners who knew a little boy their age lost his life at a finish line just the day before. They weren't scared. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Not afraid to run. Not afraid to race. Not afraid to finish.

What else can we do but follow their lead?

I won't stop running, or racing, or getting to the next finish line. But I don't think I will ever, ever do any of that again without thinking about Martin Richard and his family who are forever changed.

You can send a donation to Martin's family by mailing it to:

Richard Family Fund
Meetinghouse Bank
2250 Dorchester Ave.
Dorchester, MA  02124

My friends at Another Mother Runner recommended this along with nine other ways to do something positive in a great post: 10 Ways to Support Boston.

Flashback: Filling the Void with Family Fitness

I re-read this post and thought... Did I really do this? I am still a recovering scatterbrained mom, prone to relapses. (Like paying for her groceries but forgetting to take them home. Oh yes I did.)

Filling the Void with Family Fitness, April 10, 2009

Have you ever arrived at preschool (late, of course) and noticed the parking lot was nearly empty? And you thought, "Huh." But you didn't let that stop you because, you are late after all. So you unload all four kids, who for once are wearing matching clothes and cute hair accessories (without making them) and you're secretly hoping all the other put-together moms will notice and not think you're a total slacker mom. Then you go into the dark building and proceed undeterred because, damn it, there is so much effort required in the morning to get you, the three girls and now the baby anywhere, you can't fathom that this effort could be all for nothing. Even when you see the first empty classroom you think, they must be in music. But no. They're not. And still, you head downstairs in the eerily quiet building to the next class because you can't convince yourself that the next semi-free three hours will not be part of your morning. But alas, you can'twill the preschool teachers to show up. And you can't leave your three preschoolers there to just play on their own (OK, it just slid through my brain for a nanosecond but doesn't count as true consideration). Not sure whether to laugh or cry, you laugh (to make your kids feel better about the whole situation and to deflect the complete embarrassment you feel) and then secretly seethe that the preschool teacher did not remind you there would be no school this Thursday or say to you, "Hey, don't forget to read those silly little notices I send home every week, you never know when there will be a test!" Finally convinced there is no preschool, you pack up the four kids back in the car and sulk back home. Has this situation ever happened to you? No?

Me either (she said while crossing her fingers behind her back).

But if it ever did, I would sure be glad I read this guest post, "Fit Mommy, Fit Family" from Rachel who blogs at Fitness for Mommies, which is chock full of ways to engage kids in fun activities. The kind of activities you might need, say, if the children had to stay home on a day they expected to go to school and you needed to redeem yourself as a competent mother. For the game, "Put Up Your Dukes" I just let them punch me. Oddly enough, it felt right.