Running Like a Girl by Alexandra Heminsley Page B

our husband or brother would no longer deign to sleep in.
    When I first started shopping for running gear, I would frequently stand in a changing room, heart racing and hair damp with sweat, muttering darkly about why all these clothes were “clearly designed for skinny women who are already fit.” I would wail about it incessantly to anyone who would listen, but the fact is indisputable: There is something out there for everyone. I have hunted for skorts with friends who have recently had babies, discovered tiny zips and pockets that are designed to be the same size as a subway card or a spare tampon.
    No one designed running clothes to make you feel bad. Why should we look like crap because we’re trying hard? I don’t believe we should. Increasingly, sports brands are realizing that for as long as exercise is presented to us as a vile must-do to be robotically fitted in between earning a living and maintaining relationships, we’re going to resist it. Next time you waver at the threshold of a sports shop, don’t think of it as buying clothes to exercise in; approach it as getting some gear to make your body as happy and joyful as possible. It doesn’t matter if nothing matches or it gets ripped or splattered in mud—just enjoy wearing it, and let your body have some fun. You should not have to choose between being a runner and being yourself.

4
We Are Family
    It is a wise father that knows his own child.
    â€”William Shakespeare
    S everal months after I started running, I realized it was time to start listening to my dad.
    I have always loved and respected my father, though he’s not one of life’s big chatters. Apart from family and his military career, I knew little about what made him tick. Far from a cold man, he is simply very self-contained—and used to a home filled with a wife and two daughters who could marathon at chatting itself, leaving him and his son for dust.
    My mother is effortlessly glamorous, as well as somewhat exotic. Raised in the West Indies, she came to London as a teenager and became a dancer. She is rarely not wearing lipstick. She is the kind of woman who painted her nails a fresh specific color before each of our births. And she made staying slim seem effortless. I never saw her sweat. In hindsight, I can see she was on the move from the moment I was awake until long after I fellasleep in a constant flurry of child care and housework. On an emotional level, she can be a bit “turned up to 11.”
    In adolescence, my body changed, and I became curvy, like my mom. I relished it. She was the epitome of grown-up elegance, and I would stare up from my seat on the carpet behind her, mesmerized by her putting on makeup. Or I would perch on the edge of the bed, enthralled, as I watched her choosing clothes before going out. I aped these little rituals when I grew older, painstakingly applying the cheapest and most basic moisturizer that she finally relented to buy me. I would swoosh the unnecessary cold cream over my face, sweeping it across the area where I hoped my cheekbones would grow, desperately hoping that this would launch me into full adulthood.
    Meanwhile, my father seemed to become more distant, or at least different. When I was a child, he had been everything I could ask for in a father. He was endless fun in the garden, constantly inventing games, never tiring of lifting and throwing us from bike to swing and back as we shrieked and gallivanted. He always had time, and he always had energy. Once I had outgrown prancing around, what we had in common decreased at speed. I wanted to chat about lacy bras and makeup, not tanks and foreign policy. As I discovered boys and developed a taste for their associated dramas, it didn’t seem terribly cool that my dad was a polite, charming, and kind man.
    As I headed into my twenties, our relationship seemed fixed. I loved my father, but I didn’t really know how to communicate with him. I