Welcome to Bootleg Therapy: an advice column for wayward hearts. Think of me as your virtual stranger at the bar with a raspy voice and a weird scar on their cheek. The truth is in the worm at the bottom of the mezcal bottle. Submit your questions anonymously on brokebutmoisturized.com for a chance to be featured.
Aspiring Runner
28-year-old female. Hi Dia! What is your advice for someone who wants to get into running? Some background for me is that I played field hockey in high school and college. I ran I would say 5 miles a day at one point consistently for a few years. I stopped exercising completely around 21 years old. Was a bartender so still moving a lot just nothing else. Now I have given birth to 2 kids, I am 5 months postpartum and I haven’t worked out in years. I want the discipline of running back in my life but don’t wanna hurt myself ha
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Dear Aspiring Runner,
You have no idea how surreal it is to answer this—an actual sports girl asking me how to get back into a sport! I am the least athletic person alive. I will cherish this moment forever.
I actually get a lot of running questions. So if you’ve seen me answer some over Instagram and I sound like a broken record, it’s because good advice stands the test of time. I’m glad to have gleaned some repeatable nuggets from all the injuries sustained and lessons learned over the last 13 years. So let’s get into it.
You’re in a really good place in that, physiologically, you’re not starting from zero. Between field hockey and those years of five-milers, you probably have muscle memory. It’s a real phenomenon and it is fascinating.
Nonetheless, that won’t keep this from sucking complete and total ass. Because it will. But there are two groups of people in this world who can handle suck like nobody’s business: bartenders and moms.
Now, I’ve never been a mom unless you count my poodle. But I have been a bartender. I was raised in a dive bar. And I can tell you at the center of the bartender/runner Venn diagram is GRIT. You have to harness that which carries you through personal adversity to get the fuck up every day and say, “today, I choose to be a runner.”
Whether it’s day one or day 365, it will always be a choice. And this choice requires a bunch more choices to make it a sustainable lifestyle. For example, you expressed concern toward getting hurt. Here are some choices you’ll have to make to avoid that:
Stretching and mobility. Dynamic stretches before every run and static stretches after. Mobility work to maintain range of motion. Go on Instagram and search “dynamic running stretches” or “mobility workout.” Use the save feature and start a collection. I do this and it has saved me.
Running 80% of your runs at easy pace. Whatever you think easy is, you’re wrong: GO SLOWER. This is probably the most common mistake runners make due to ignorance, ego, etc. Most of my runs are at a 9:30-11-minute pace so that I don’t stress my body and can hit 6-something paces on speed days.
Speaking of speed days, bookending those workouts with 1-2 miles each for warm-up and cooldown. Again, easy pace. I never did that shit before I got a coach. Now I wouldn’t dare step into a workout without something.
Strength training. Oh, I am the worst at this. Which is funny, because I actually like to lift and adore how it makes me feel. But it takes TIME. And when you’re already logging miles, who has time to hit the gym? Especially with TWO KIDS? I don’t know, man. But you gotta make it. Even once a week doing lunges and pelvic thrusts at home is better than nothing.
So that’s just baseline maintenance to avoid screaming when you walk up a flight of stairs! Need I say more?
I like that you have an open desire for discipline, Aspiring Runner. People love acting like discipline is overly rigid or extreme when in reality, it’s more the steady hum of your life’s engine. It doesn’t have to be associated with some huge goals. (Though, it can be. More on that later.) Discipline is just structured consistency.
For someone just getting back into running, this will be the most important part. I recommend starting with a run-walk workout three days a week. Nothing crazy. 20 minutes. Run two minutes at your easiest pace, walk for one (or vice versa). Steadily increase that run time as your endurance builds. Don’t fear the treadmill, either! That’s where I got my start, and I found it helpful to see everything in front of me and have that accountability. It’s also great during these hot months when running outside discourages anyone.
There’s an old African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” That’s low-hanging fruit even for me, a cliche queen, but it’s especially true for beginner(ish) runners: community can make all the difference. Nothing inspires one to keep moving like a crew with a common goal. Look for a running group in your city. If you don’t find one but like the idea of having company, try starting your own. There’s unmatched camaraderie between moms who find that sliver of time to get out there.
I’ve been struggling with mental weakness in my own running lately, so I’ve opened my heart to our lord and savior, David Goggins. This guy is psychotic. But I’ll be damned if I don’t hear his raspy voice in my head whenever I think about quitting mid-mile. His audiobook Never Finished includes all these great podcast tidbits between chapters. In one clip, he talks about how, whenever people ask him for advice on something like how to train for a half marathon, the first thing he asks them is, “Why not a full?” We tend to set goals we know we can achieve. And sure, it makes sense from a feasibility perspective. It makes sense to people who say “don’t get your hopes up.” But we get our hopes up in this house. And we strive toward something sexier than mediocrity, if only marginally.
Aspiring Runner, it may be more important in practice that you, at the very least, heed my advice on injury prevention, or finding a crew. But Goggins sent you a message through me, and that is to sign up for the half marathon instead of the 5k. Set big, lofty goals and fight to surprise yourself.
Make the choice to begin today.
Supportive and Stuck
Hi Dia,
So here’s my situation: I’ve got a new girlfriend (4-ish months). She’s great and things are going really well. I’ve mentioned her in passing to members of my family and they’re getting curious .. I’m feeling like it might be time for her to meet some of them =)
For context, I live outside the US. I came to this country 3.5 years ago at the invitation of my older brother, whom I also work with - he and his wife co-own the business. They have four kids and are my only family in this country. This is who I’d be introducing my girlfriend to.
So the wrinkle in all of this is that my girlfriend is a full service sex worker (brothels are legal in this country). I consider myself sex positive and have open conversations with my girlfriend about her work. In general I’m very supportive as I believe that sex work can play a really important and therapeutic role in people’s lives. Having a background in mental health myself, this is something I admire and value about my girlfriend’s chosen profession.
With that said, I recognise that there is significant social stigma associated with sex work and am quite stuck stuck with how to talk about this with my family. I don’t have any issue telling my brother or his wife what she does, it’s more about the kids. The older three are 7, 11, and 14. I lived with them for a year so we’re all really close. I believe in being age-appropriately truthful with them, I’m just not sure what that would look like in this case.
For reference, I’ve shared with my girlfriend that this is something I’m thinking through and we’ve agreed to talk about it after I’ve drawn some conclusions of my own. I wanted to get your input though, as I suspect you might have some helpful perspective on the matter.
Thanks in advance,
Supportive and Stuck
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Dear Supportive and Stuck,
I went most of my life not knowing a family member was gay.
It wasn’t until one day in my late twenties that my sister mentioned it in passing, and was baffled that I didn’t know. She ran through a list of *insanely obvious signs* that made me feel moronic to have lacked any inkling. I’d just never contemplated anyone in my extended family’s sexuality (which I think, for the record, is normal).
My oblivion didn’t make this lie by omission any less painful. “But our parents are liberal!” I clung to that childishly, as if one’s politics directly correspond with a commitment to truth in their own lives. You can be perfectly pro-gay everything and still forgo honest conversations with your kids out of personal discomfort. Which was par for the course with my mom, anyway. She squirms at even the subtlest mention of anyone’s sex life—like, puts her fingers in her ears and pulls a “lalala I can’t hear you!” kinda bit. (Catholic guilt looks different for everyone.) And though I don’t fault her, I do wish, in retrospect, that the floor was open for navigating human desire and different kinds of love.
I think your heart’s in the right place, Supportive and Stuck. Queerness, sex work, they’re the kinds of topics families have only scratched the surface of making dinner table-friendly. And children mostly just want to be treated like human beings, which can involve talking about that stuff. It’s a powerful thing to be that source of truth for kids—the one who broaches complex subject matter before they encounter it in the wild, where it’s often obscured by stigma and fear. I can tell you’d be great at it.
We’re in this fraught cultural moment where people are pissed about drag queens reading to kids. In spiteful response, some would say you have a moral obligation to tell your nieces/nephews because truth is truth whether it’s conventional or not—lest you be accused of silently reinforcing the notion that sex work is bad!
But because you came to me for advice, I’m going to give you my two cents, which is that your brother and his wife are probably open-minded, well-intentioned, reasonable people, so let them drive the boat. Get a game plan for addressing it together, even if that means they need some time. Even if that means they say no altogether. Where our situations divide is that learning someone’s gay is learning who they are. That is vital. Learning someone’s a sex worker is learning what they do, which is already nonessential information. And people have different ideas of when it’s ok for kids to contemplate literal sex in general, much less sex as a job. I can’t speak for what all parents want. But I can say they deserve agency.
You and I both know that sex work is layered. Your girlfriend is in a healthy situation where she’s doing it legally, and in a loving relationship to boot. That’s not to say “off the books” sex work is unhealthy, but for many folks, sex work is survival work. Final recourse. It can be highly exploitative and dangerous. Would you tell this to the kids? In the collective quest to normalize sex work, we have a responsibility to embrace its multiple realities. This is why I think it’s crucial to be as respectful to, and collaborative with, their parents as possible here, because it’s no quick conversation. It is a lesson in humanity.
And so maybe you get to teach the kids that OnlyFans is no more exploitative than sending emails for a living. Sorry, I just had to dunk on myself. But seriously. Maybe you get to teach the kids that this profession exists and deserves our respect just like any other job.
Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you simply introduce her as your girlfriend, the person who makes you happy, and they learn that she likes yoga and anime and makes a mean pb&j. That, too, is a lesson in humanity: not every mind is ours to mold. But we can still show up. And we can still be an example of gentle, nurturing love between two people. I hear that’s good for kids.