- 528 days ago by Hailey Eber
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3:30:28!!!!!!!
Just kidding. Let’s get it out of the way. I finished my first marathon in 4:57:07. More
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- 535 days ago by Hailey Eber
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I’m 12 miles in, nearly halfway through the marathon, by the time I realize that I haven’t yet stopped for water or fuel. And, I’ve somehow forgotten my precious fuel belt and the valuable turbo jelly beans and dried fruit it contains. Thankfully, the course passes through a little cottage–an art gallery perhaps–and on the second floor there’s a kitchen. There’s a sign on the oven reading “treats for marathoners.” I open the oven up, find a selection of muffins, grab a big lemon poppy seed one topped with curls of bacon— why not?—and start shoving it in my mouth as I jog down the stairs and back on the road. It’s pretty much empty. Spectators are few. Where is everyone? Where are the great supportive New York fans I’ve heard so much about? Did I accidentally start late and miss all the excitement? Have I been moving that slowly? More
- 549 days ago by Hailey Eber
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Since I started training for the marathon, the vast majority of my friends and family have been overwhelmingly supportive and enthusiastic. They’ve made me training mix-tapes; put up with the lame, boring person with little to talk about besides miles who goes home early that training has turned me into; and are excited to come out and watch the race and hold a glittery piece of poster board. But, in recent weeks, I have also encountered another, intriguing species: The anti-marathon friend. More
- 563 days ago by Hailey Eber
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In Erica Jong’s 1973 read-it-in-a-gender-studies-class novel, Fear of Flying, the protagonist is forever in pursuit of what she calls the “zipless fuck.” More
If only they knew. I’m running down Williamsburg’s Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn around 11am on a Sunday. The hipsters, the cool dads, the too-chic toddlers, all of them are just beginning to shake their fluffy heads to amble along the streets in search of brunch. The line at the fair-trade, single-origin coffee shop stretches out the door.
Surely, I look crazed to them. This tired, sweaty thing clutching an empty water bottle, running not very fast down the main drag, my tank occasionally flapping in some way so as to reveal an unflattering glimpse of bare belly. They don’t know the truth. They don’t know that I’m not just another weekend runner trying to jog off the excesses of the night before. They don’t know I had a lame Saturday night and went to bed at a decent hour because of this. They don’t know that my Garmin reads 17 miles. They don’t know that today I am completing my first 20 mile run. More
- 591 days ago by Hailey Eber
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“It’s so boring doing all this running,” the fiancé exclaimed the other night to a friend on the phone. The statement rang with a bold truth…as if it were uttered by Omar on The Wire or something. Actually, I think I was just in a daze and hadn’t yet had a post-gym shower, so it sounded really amazing, as if I were stoned and someone had just revealed an obvious fact about an 80s pop song. More
- 598 days ago by Hailey Eber
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It’s always something. The cliché rings true with marathon training. If there’s not a twisted ankle or a shin splint or a case of the flu or a bad hangover… it’s a friggin’, well tropical storm. More
- 605 days ago by Hailey Eber
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I sometimes wish they made “It Gets Better” videos for people other than gay teens. It’s not that LGBT youth don’t deserve or need them–typically, they do more than other sorts (please don’t get angry in the comments)—but I think that other groups of people could also use such reinforcement, too. From personal experience, I think young 20-something girls crying in the bathroom at work could use a reminder that “it gets better”… or at least you eventually learn to save your cries for shameful cathartic late night viewings of Grey’s Anatomy reruns. Also, I think runners, especially people just getting into or back into running, could use the occasional witty YouTube video imparting the wisdom that the miles will get better, easier, faster. More
- 612 days ago by Hailey Eber
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The other day I ran into an old college friend I hadn’t seen in a year or so. We exchanged pleasantries and “what-have-you-been-up-to’s.” He’s been up to law school. I’ve been up to training for the marathon, which he did last year. “Any words of advice?” I asked. More
What We're Reading:
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8 Things You Shouldn't Do Before Bed
Source: YourTango -
True Or False: Marathoners Can Eat Whatever They Want
Source: Well And Good NYC -
The Sweetest Twitter Marriage Proposal You’ll Ever See
Source: Intent Blog -
Clueless Mom Gives Birth on a Bike Without Realizing It
Source: The Stir -
Why Don’t More Women Talk About Masturbation?
Source: The Frisky
- 619 days ago by Hailey Eber
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“Yeah! That treadmill is my bitch!” I said this aloud a few days back as I strode up the Crunch cardio-farm floor. It was Tuesday, just after 7 pm–a prime workout day and hour. Yet, there she was, shimmering in front of me. The second treadmill from the left. She had a working television. She had never faltered and skidded to a halt mid-run. She didn’t make the sad sounds of a slowly dying treadmill. All this made her a truly rare being at Crunch—and she was, empty, waiting for me. More
- 626 days ago by Hailey Eber
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The search for the right sports bra can reach mythic proportions—requiring Oprah specials, credit card debt, and advice from long lost friends… or so the world would have you believe. I’ve typically favored some cheap numbers from Target, on the rare occasion when Target has any left in size medium that aren’t neon green. But, as I’ve said in previous posts, my increasingly long long runs have been finding fault with Target’s offerings… and by fault, I mean more than a wee bit of chafing. Let’s just say I’d be embarrassed for someone to see the aftermath lest they imagine I’m frequenting leather bars on a nightly basis and/or engaging in a line of employment far my profitable than my current one. More
- 633 days ago by Hailey Eber
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“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age,” Matthew McConaughey’s character, David Wooderson, says in an oft-quoted moment from Dazed and Confused.
I thought of this quote as I was circling my local park for the fourth time the other day; while my runs keep getting longer, the distance around said park stays the same, and that I don’t love. More
Marathon training…it takes time. A lot of time. No really, it does. This, of course, should be fairly obvious. Running 20- or 30-some miles a week will cut into the time you might have previously used to see friends, watch Twin Peaks on Netflix, get a manicure, or call your mother. It somehow requires quite a different amount of time than putting in 15 or 20 miles a week. And, it’s not just the running that’s a time suck. More
- 647 days ago by Hailey Eber
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You see them occasionally running around the park. Invariably, she has a ponytail, and he a floppy mane that seems to lift up and down to the same beat that her ponytail bobs back and forth. One or perhaps both of them is showing belly button, as they have the sort of bellybuttons – entire upper torsos, really – that deserve to be shown.
They are a running couple. More
