Today we’re recapping the last few weeks since I’d been off IG and Substack. I recommend listening to the article voiceover just because it’ll feel more like we’re hanging out. Scroll to the end for wedding photos if that’s all you have the bandwidth for right now. Zero hard feelings, babe.
Say you’re over at my place. Say it’s been a long, hard day and we’ve decided to commiserate at the kitchen island over wine (so us). I pour you a glass of something $4.99 from the Trader Joe’s in Princeton where they sell alcohol (what luxury!), and you gasp at the price because it’s really decent… or we’re just that miserable that anything hits. Low lighting, the new Khruangbin album. I put the vanilla sugar cookie wax warmer on. Mmmm. We go dig for dig on a bag of chips because in this house, long, hard days only end one way: CRUNCH!
Say you ask me, Dia, what are your roses and thorns these days? Say you actually give a shit. You want the long-winded truth. You won’t pit the state of the world against my regular ass problems in some condescending attempt at “offering perspective” (even though you could and maybe should).
This is what I’d tell you.
Thorns
Let’s start with the bad stuff because if you read no further, you should at least feel my pain. Remember, COmmiserating! I mean, at this very moment, my premenstrual tits are so sore that a cotton tshirt feels like it’s made of forks. Anyway…
Apparently I stood before God and said, eight scoops of your finest life change, please, and make it snappy! Because after getting married last month, everything started shifting.
The Sunday after my wedding, I ran 20 miles. I’ve already hit my 20-miler lore quota so I won’t belabor the anxiety leading up to it. But it was, ya know, an electrifying blast until it wasn’t.
I had this idea to pause for a few minutes at the halfway point to eat something. That was not my usual fueling strategy. It would have been wise to test it on a shorter run. But I was so sick of gels by this point in the training cycle that I thought I’d go for it.
I ran the first 10 miles straight through at an 8:03 pace, feeling pretty good, pretty loose. My body wanted to keep going, but I stopped my watch as planned and shoved soggy blobs of honey-soaked white bread into my dry mouth as I stared out over the Schuylkill River, the trail a desolate stretch of golden evening. It actually didn’t taste half bad, but lord, if my stomach wasn’t shot. Not to mention, I simply did not get the carbs I needed to power through another 10 miles at that pace.
I don’t even need to tell you that I was gassed by the 15th mile. We—yes, you and I—have BEEN. HERE. BEFORE. Andrew came and met me on the bike and the poor guy had to endure a lot of pauses and crying. The fatigue was a goddamn science experiment. An emptiness so singularly defeating, you’d actually consider getting hit by a train if given the option.
By mile 19, I was pissed enough to bust out an 8:09 pace. Then Andrew bet me a burrito if I ran mile 20 sub-8. When he saw I was gonna ride it til the wheels fell off, he told me he got to choose what kind of burrito unless I ran sub-7:45. I ran it in 7:37—my fastest split of the day. I was smiling and screaming LET’S FUCKING GOOOOO that whole mile, psychologically revived by the promise of the Frito Pie from Jackass Burritos. Talk about crunch! Pauses omitted for ego’s sake, I averaged 8:12 for 20 miles.
That may read like a happy story of perseverance and lessons learned and all that romantic shit us runners love to indulge. It’s not. Running 20 miles is hard enough on the body. Zapping your glycogen stores and running on warm Gatorade and self-loathing… that is your immune system’s worst enemy.
I didn’t just get sick. I got SICK sick. Like, literally the next day. A full week of body aches and chills, shortness of breath, congestion so bad I could barely lift my head. And now, two weeks recovered, I cannot hold an 8-minute pace for longer than one mile. And that mile is a struggle. Even easy pace isn’t easy anymore; I check my heart rate when I’m jogging at my slowest, most awkward pace and it’s in the 150s.
So all this is to say that after 16 weeks of working my ass off, doubling my grocery bill, and compromising my social and family life to pursue a Boston Marathon qualifying time at the end of April, I cannot run the required pace for more than one mile. In fact, toward the end of a workout the other day, I couldn’t even hold it for a three-minute interval. A pace that I was running for multiple hours straight just a few weeks ago. Trippy.
I haven’t given my all to much in this life, so I never really knew how it felt to work so hard at something and still fail. Much less, something so physically taxing that how you spend your time outside of doing it is still, essentially, doing it—i.e., when I’m not running, I’m eating to fuel the miles, or stretching, or researching, or soaking in epsom salts, or hitting my quads with the massage gun. I’ve taken vitamins d, c, and zinc every day for like, six months. All of that measured devotion just to start over at a deficit, two weeks before race day? Shit really fucking stings. But that’s why you can’t let running consume you. Anything that consumes you will not spare your health. Look at people who fall in messy, unrequited love: they’ve always got a sore throat.
During this period, we’d also started house hunting. Fun fact: houses are really expensive! And I made the mistake of falling in messy, unrequited love with one we couldn’t afford.
We were standing in the kitchen of a total shithole in Collingswood when I asked the realtor if we could see another house that I’d saved on the app. A *yellow cottage* on—get this—*Paris Avenue* with a yard for growing zucchini and grilling it on muggy nights. A yard for watching a baby chase the dog with their pudgy baby legs and wobbly gait. A yard. A yard! Goodbye squalid concrete slab! Good riddance, Philadelphia!
Cruising down Paris Avenue made me nauseous. Everything was charming. I didn’t belong. But damnit, I wanted to belong. And every creak of those gorgeous original hardwood floors sounded like an I love you.
We knew a bidding war was inevitable. So, I spent hours crafting a letter to the current owner about my vision for the next ten years of our life in her Jersey oasis. The garden, the baby. When the mortgage broker ran the numbers, we said let’s go poor for that house. Then we ingested the numbers and said we must walk away from that house. It all happened so fast—the lust, the love, the heartbreak, the grief. But it broke my delusions about what we can afford and even if that feels like a dream squashed, well, at least we’ll be able to eat.
I want to quickly touch on two more bummers before I get into the good stuff, just because I’m working on essays about both topics:
I broke my “no shopping for a year” thing four months early. Alas, assembling my wedding lewk broke my brain and the discipline left my body.
Back home in central PA, a slew of young women have been recently diagnosed with late stage cancers. I’ve started rallying people to flood the EPA with requests for water supply testing. The whole thing is wrecking my mental health, given I lost both my sister and my best friend to cancer. I just wish I could squeeze all these girls and feed their families and be the person I should have been for the two people closest to me.
Roses
On a much lighter note, I got a new job! The one I was interviewing for in this piece! And it’s a promotion! And I really, really like it! Wow, that feels good to say.
When my company had a mass layoff in November that impacted both of my beloved bosses, I moved into a different role on the team. I was excited, truly. But just to paint the picture of how things went, I spent many afternoons crying in the bathroom—something I’d never done in my life, and I’ve worked with tougher, scarier people since I could hold a broom. I felt stupid every day. I could feel myself shrinking.
One Thursday happy hour, I met an incredible girl from another team who’d gotten promoted and was looking for a backfill. As soon as she explained the role, I was all in. I could tell I was going to enjoy the work, and the team is known for being energetic and supportive. A few interviews and many prayers later, I am happy to be here.
And… drumroll please…
We got our wedding photos back!!!!!! Shot on digital and 35mm film by Snapped Studios in West Chester, PA, I am overcome with gratitude. Tom and Jill were the sweetest, most laid back and creative husband and wife duo on the planet. Precisely whom you want shooting your big day. Such magic! I can’t wait to share these with our kids someday. You guys are my kids for now.
So, who wants snacks?!
The pictures are gorgeous!!!! What a beautiful time in your life, I love all of this for you. ❤️🔥
I'm so sorry you got so sick. Life is such a troll sometimes. REST AGGRESSIVELY, please.
Very much looking forward to those two essays 😍
congrats on the new job and congrats again on the wedding!! some unsolicited advice regarding the running/health thorn below, feel feee to skip if you don’t want to read:
your symptoms sound very consistent with mine when i had covid last spring — obviously i’m not you and i cannot say what happened, but i’m going to give you the advice my community gave me when i had covid just in case that is what happened
- don’t exercise at all (literally at all) for at least 4 weeks until after you feel fully recovered to prevent overworking your heart while it recovers (i know this one is already a foregone conclusion)
- when getting back to exercise, go as slow as you can in terms of ramping it up. i mean start from where you’d start as if you were running for the first time ever. doing too much too quickly increases your risk of developing long covid
- watch for any new extreme changes in blood pressure/HR when changing position (sitting to standing, laying to sitting, etc)