Happy Labor Day
This weekend I drove down to New Haven with Ben and Sarah to Granny's. Andy met us there and today we all ran the New Haven Road Race. They (and our cousin Clayton) ran the 20k (12.4 miles) and I ran the 5k. I haven't been running much lately, maybe once every two weeks (I still don't love it) but I have been walking for an hour every day so I decided to set a goal for myself of finishing in under 45 minutes. I don't like to work hard so in the back of my head I was sure that I was going to quit after five minutes and just walk it but I surprised myself and ran the entire thing without stopping. I finished in 44:15 and I just about bawled at the finish line.
Running is very emotional for me. My dad was a very avid runner. By the time he was thirty-nine, when he passed away, he'd completed thirty-nine marathons. I was never athletic, I wanted to be in a corner somewhere reading, not playing soccer or running races, both things my dad wanted me to do. Sarah and Andy have both fallen in love with running, they've both completed a marathon and are training for their second. I want to love running - there's an enormous sense of accomplishment when I'm done because I've done what I was sure I couldn't do. But while it's happening all I can focus on is how much my legs hurt, how sweaty I am, how much I wish I wasn't running.
This is also one of the last races my dad ran before he died. I have a picture of the six of us sitting on the curb in New Haven, waving frantically to him as he passed my Granny's house. It was Labor Day weekend 1992, three months before he died. So today while I was running, at mile two when I was soaked in sweat (record humidity in New Haven today) all I could think about was I, someone who'd never imagined I could run, was running the same route my dad ran twenty-one years ago. It was really special, even more so because I was sharing it with Sarah and Andy.
Here's a picture of us this morning at 7 before we left for the race.
The following is something Andy shared with me this weekend and I'm putting it here because I'm still absolutely livid and I need to vent.
Saturday, before we arrived in New Haven, Andy and I were texting. He asked if Will was coming and I told him no, Will had decided to stay home. Andy mentioned that he was bummed because he thought if Will saw all of us running he might be inspired to make some positive health changes in his life. And then he said he could do without the homophobic comments and said:
Andy told me this on Saturday and I cannot get past it. Will is incredibly ignorant and uneducated about a lot of things, but I can't let this go. Andy asked me not to confront him about it or make a big deal of it, but I just can't. I can't live with someone who says things like this to people. I talk to Will regularly about being humble and grateful. When he first moved here we all went out to dinner and he got called out by the waiter because he didn't leave a tip on his bill. I asked him about it and he says he never tips. He's twenty-five years old. It's time for him to grow up. I haven't decided how I'm going to broach this with him but for my own sanity, I am going to talk to him about it because I love Will and I don't want him to be the kind of person who says such ignorant, hateful things to people, especially to the people I love.
That's all about that, I just needed to talk about it.
I just got back from New Haven. I went grocery shopping, I cleaned the kitchen and now I'm going to overdose on Tumblr.
Running is very emotional for me. My dad was a very avid runner. By the time he was thirty-nine, when he passed away, he'd completed thirty-nine marathons. I was never athletic, I wanted to be in a corner somewhere reading, not playing soccer or running races, both things my dad wanted me to do. Sarah and Andy have both fallen in love with running, they've both completed a marathon and are training for their second. I want to love running - there's an enormous sense of accomplishment when I'm done because I've done what I was sure I couldn't do. But while it's happening all I can focus on is how much my legs hurt, how sweaty I am, how much I wish I wasn't running.
This is also one of the last races my dad ran before he died. I have a picture of the six of us sitting on the curb in New Haven, waving frantically to him as he passed my Granny's house. It was Labor Day weekend 1992, three months before he died. So today while I was running, at mile two when I was soaked in sweat (record humidity in New Haven today) all I could think about was I, someone who'd never imagined I could run, was running the same route my dad ran twenty-one years ago. It was really special, even more so because I was sharing it with Sarah and Andy.
Here's a picture of us this morning at 7 before we left for the race.
The following is something Andy shared with me this weekend and I'm putting it here because I'm still absolutely livid and I need to vent.
Saturday, before we arrived in New Haven, Andy and I were texting. He asked if Will was coming and I told him no, Will had decided to stay home. Andy mentioned that he was bummed because he thought if Will saw all of us running he might be inspired to make some positive health changes in his life. And then he said he could do without the homophobic comments and said:
Andy told me this on Saturday and I cannot get past it. Will is incredibly ignorant and uneducated about a lot of things, but I can't let this go. Andy asked me not to confront him about it or make a big deal of it, but I just can't. I can't live with someone who says things like this to people. I talk to Will regularly about being humble and grateful. When he first moved here we all went out to dinner and he got called out by the waiter because he didn't leave a tip on his bill. I asked him about it and he says he never tips. He's twenty-five years old. It's time for him to grow up. I haven't decided how I'm going to broach this with him but for my own sanity, I am going to talk to him about it because I love Will and I don't want him to be the kind of person who says such ignorant, hateful things to people, especially to the people I love.
That's all about that, I just needed to talk about it.
I just got back from New Haven. I went grocery shopping, I cleaned the kitchen and now I'm going to overdose on Tumblr.