We started our London performances on Thursday morning with a private showing for Minister of Culture Heather Klimchuck and the Executive Director of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Jeffrey Anderson, along with several of their staff (one of whom has run 9 marathons). They brought their photographer and we learned that seeing ENDURE was an official part of the Alberta Government's mission at the London Olympics. 

Mr. Anderson arrived in a full suit and tie with mirrored aviator sunglasses. He looked like a CIA agent! All of them had meetings and formal government luncheons scheduled later that morning, so we weren't sure how much of the show they'd be able to see. I was desperately hoping they'd be able to experience the whole show, so I dove in and gave it all I had.

Let's just say: everyone stayed to the end, meetings and luncheons be damned. They loved it. Jeffrey Anderson was choked up and Minister Klimchuck was gushing over the experience. It was such a brilliant way to start our run of shows, I can't even tell you. We rested a bit in the afternoon and then headed back to the theatre for opening night and the most surprising show of my life.

At the beginning of the piece, after the crew has lead the audience to the park, I join them and start the performance. I do some dance movement and then I take off running. The audience follows. At least...the 50 audiences I've had thus far have followed. My London opening night audience DIDN'T. They waited there, patient and reserved, until my crew finally had to lead them to the next scene's location! It was hilarious and baffling and totally unexpected. We got a sudden insight into British culture as it relates to intimate, interactive theatre! 

It was still a great performance, though. And, as always, I got 'em in the end. No one can resist the power of that ending!

The next day we made some tweaks to our beginning in order to help our audience understand that they have permission to move and interact and engage. They were just minor tweaks, but if the second audience was any indication: they totally worked. The second show was the show of my life. It was exactly the experience we came here to create. A nice big group, all totally engaged and with me on the adventure. 

Yesterday we had a morning off for the first time since we got here, so Mary, Julie and I went for DELICIOUS breakfast (scones! clotted cream! tea!) and then ventured down to Hyde Park for a bit of sightseeing. Bad idea. All we saw were gates and barricades as they set up for a cycle race and the triathlon events. It was a mob scene of people and we had a hell of a time getting anywhere. So the whole thing just kind of wore me out further. I'll have to go back to London and explore it under different circumstances.

Last night's performance was a weird one for me, but a great one for the audience. Early on in the show, during a scene we call Sugar Burn, I collapse to the ground and drag myself along it for a period of time. This time I dragged myself forward and overshot it somehow, slamming my chin right into the ground. It jammed my jaw back into my skull and hurt like hell. I carried on with the scene but was so discombobulated I then ran into a tree. I did several more scenes, seeing stars, surreptitiously trying to test out my jaw and see whether it was functional. For a while it wouldn't open, but I kept on performing, hoping it would loosen up.

From later reports, apparently I gave a great show! The pain and weirdness in my jaw forced me to get fully present and that performance was definitely an exercise of endurance. I still find it hilarious that the only injury I've sustained in 50 performances was not to an ankle or a knee, but to my face.

After the show, we walked back to Riverside Studios for a bite at the restaurant. I had just sat down with my glass of wine when who should walk in but Miss Christine Owman! She and Jessica had conspired to surprise me with a visit from Sweden. Her parents have joined her here and they'll be coming to tonight's closing show. We've got a big audience tonight and it is forecast to rain all day, so I'm hoping things clear up and we can finish up our London experience with a...I was going to say bang, but I think I'll leave it at...great show.

(My face feels better today, by the way!)

Suchan and Mary started working first thing Monday morning, scouting Ravenscourt Park and roughing out a route for the show. Julie and I landed later that day. I dropped my bags, hugged Jules, changed into crew clothes and hoofed it to Riverside Studios. There, the lovely Stacey and handsome Guy showed us our dressing rooms(!), showers(!), box office(!) and the gorgeous terrace overlooking the Thames(!) where our show will start.

What's with all the exclamation points, you ask? Let's just say that the last time I toured this show to my hometown of Calgary, my dressing room was a borrowed Honda CRV in an underground parking garage. I basically feel like a Disney princess here.

After we met with the Riverside folks, we broke bread as a team and then got to work. We timed the warm-up walk to the park and reviewed the locations for the show, talking through what I will be performing as of our opening tomorrow(!). Ravenscourt Park is INSANELY BEAUTIFUL. Mary ran me through the new Endorphins location and I burst into tears it was so gorgeous and perfect. The show Sootch and Mare put together made my heart sing. We came back to our fabulous Hammersmith apartment and tucked into the supplies our host/landlady Selina left for us: fresh bread, strong English cheddar, chocolate and wine.

So that sucked.

Day 2 was a big one. We were up first thing with a team breakfast and then hitting the park, restaging and rechoreographing the show in detail in the new space. We worked it piece by piece and as we turned the corner to work the approach to our finale we got the shock of our lives. A inflatable Stonehenge the size of a basketball court had suddenly appeared right on top of our ending. Bouncy. Stonehenge.

Slackjawed and jet-lagged, we stared at the dozens of merrily boinging children before returning to the proverbial drawing board. Our ending requires a giant open field and those flopping air-filled runes were on top of the only one around.

Keep calm and carry on...is pretty much what we did. We re-built the ending in a different space and worked backwards from there. Then we went into this wild and tangled conservancy area to work the "Nemesis Chase" scene. We planned out a route for the chase scene through the brush and bramble, hit Play on our iPods and I took off like a bat out of hell. Which is when I found out what two legs full of stinging nettle feels like. (It hurts a f*ck of a lot. And then crazy bubble-welts emerge all over the place, then it goes weird and tingly and then, later, it all goes away and is fine.)

So there were some speedbumps, but we worked incredibly well and made great time. At 7pm we did a run of the whole show. It was some seriously high-five-worthy stuff. We hit the pub to celebrate and fell asleep happy.

And we did it all again today. Up early, eating as a team, hoofing it to the park, fine-tuning and walking back to Riverside for a 2pm dress/tech rehearsal in full costume. Walking up to the theatre, I saw our beautiful poster hung on display for the first time. Riverside is plastered with them! I stood there, staring in awe, when a man walked by and said, 'Are you the girl in the poster?' It was THE BEST.

We ran the show, which went brilliantly. I kissed everyone goodbye and ran home to shower and change to head down to Trafalgar Square for the Alberta Reception hosted by Premier Alison Redford and, y'know, the Canadian High Commissioner. So, I basically spent my day sweating and dodging dogshit, then I got all dressed up to hobnob with politicos over paté. I love my job. 

Entering Trafalgar Square I finally felt the thing I'd been waiting to feel: Olympic fever. That place was buzzing! It was full of people and Olympic media tents and weirdos selling Jesus. I caught sight of the big red maple leaf hanging in front of the Canadian embassy and it was all I could do to keep myself from running full tilt, screaming, "I'm HOOMMMEEEE!"

The event itself was really great. I met some incredible people including a bunch of other Alberta artists here performing during the Games. I met Jeffrey Anderson, the Executive Director of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and was so happy and grateful to meet the man that I bypassed the handshake and went straight for the hug! He and I have been emailing to plot a special secret something I'll reveal tomorrow and this was the first time we'd met in real life. And, most deliciously, I heard the "oots" and "aboots" of the Canadian accent which I have missed terribly.

And then I zipped home on the Tube, grabbed some take-out and got back to work. It's 10:30pm and Team Endure is still prepping for our opening tomorrow. We've got dozens of iPods to charge, audio to edit, show bags to pack and supplies to organize.

I'm just thrilled beyond words to be here. I'm so proud of how quickly and brilliantly the team has worked to make a beautiful show and tomorrow we get to the fun part: sharing it with London! There are still a few tickets left, so if you've got friends, family or collagues here, send them here for tix! (Oh, we're featured on the home page of Riverside Studios right now. Whoo!)

Here's what I wore to meet the Premier:

And a close-up of my fancy footwear:

The new material went fine, but some old material felt off. About a third of the way in, I did my headstand and pressed up out of it slowly, noticing that my arms didn't have the strength I remember. Later, in the wind sprints, I felt...winded. By the finale, several minutes of sustained race-pace running, my lungs and legs were on fire.

The show kicked my ass.

I was shocked. Where was my fitness? Where was my arm strength? Every performer knows you've got to have a bad rehearsal right before you open, but this felt different. What the hell was going on?

I figured it out quickly. The Prospect show is more physically challenging than any version of the show we've done this year. With only two days to scout and re-stage, there's only so much geographical area our team can cover. So, by default, the show gets smaller and the distances between scenes shrink with it. And as far as the upper body strength is concerned? Apparently that's the one T that didn't get crossed. We've mastered restaging. We've re-worked choreography. We've raised $45,000 and produced an international tour. But that fact that my handstand dismount isn't quite a given and my finishing kick appears to be on vacation? Well now.

It was humbling. A week to the London premiere and I feel like an unprepared weak-ass.

The decision was made before I made it: that wasn't my last rehearsal. No way.

I know my body. I know how fast it responds to exercise (fast) and how quickly my neuropathways would return to the deep grooves of body memory patterned in from performing this show upwards of 40 times now (like a boomerang). The Prospect version is the toughest I'll face. So if I've got that down, I'm ready for whatever the UK throws at me. I asked Mary to crew for me Thursday morning and set up rehearsal buddies for Friday and Saturday, too. 

Thursday morning arrived and I made my way to the park. I saw the dark cloud moving in and was excited to rehearse in the rain like we'll almost certainly do in the UK. I met Mary at the picnic house and suited up just in time to hear the hugest thunder crack of my entire life. To call the downpour that unleashed itself upon Prospect Park 'rain' would be like calling the apocalypse a bummer. The storm was epic. I stood there, watching the deluge, feeling the anxiety rising.

We had iPhones for audio, no waterproofing capabilities on us and lightning streaking right above our heads. I looked at Mary. "We can't do the run." 

The downpour lightened up enough for us to head home. I ran home in the rain trying not to listen to the sour voice chirping away in my head: "You're screwed. You're not ready and you won't be ready. All this work and you're going to fail. In London. At the Olympics. Way to go, Champ. Way. To. Go."

I got home and stretched for half an hour, thinking about what just happened and what to do next. I realized I'd pinned my preparedness on being able to run the show three more times. Was that true or just superstitious? Didn't matter. I had to let that go. You'll be ready when you're ready no matter how many times you run this thing. I analyzed what stopped me from doing the run that morning and determined it was because I didn't have my new UK-ready waterproof show armband and my tiny iPod Shuffle. I had a big awkward iPhone and I wasn't willing to drown an $800 piece of technology in order to rehearse the show. Okay. So you don't have the right equipment. Let that go, too. Let go of everything you thought you needed in order to do this thing. 

Surrender, I told myself. Trust. 

Then my friend Jeff reminded me of the greatest training montage of all time. The one from Rocky IV where Dolph Lundgren is tricked out with the latest technology, hooked up to VO2 max machines and crazy blood tests while Rocky is 100% lo-fi: running up mountains in knee-deep snow and shoulder pressing horse carts full of humans. 

I fucking love that training montage.

I looked outside. The rain had stopped. Mary was long gone. I laced up my shoes, left my iPhone on the table, and walked the 40 minutes back to the start line. I'm going Rocky on this one. No tech. No crew. Just me, the park and the bone-deep knowledge I have and I am everything I need. 

I rocked the living shit out of that run.

London? Let's do this.

Don't get me wrong: it's all amazing. After months and months of chipping away at things, gaining one inch here, one inch there, suddenly everything is moving at light-speed.

You get so wrapped in chasing up all the bits and pieces, you sometimes forget that they actually form a whole. So when, finally and miraculously, the pieces start connecting and the thing starts taking shape, it is no less than astounding.

Tickets are on sale (and they are selling). This seems so simple. If you only knew how much went into the the fact that I can now paste two links and you can buy tickets in London and in Edinburgh! IF YOU ONLY KNEW.

We have the most beautiful tour poster on Planet Earth. This, too, was months and months of chasing, herding, waiting, feedback-ing, hurrying, negotiating. And it was worth every single moment of it.

Julie's home looks, as she describes it, like an ENDURE retail store. It's filling up with boxes full of stickers, temporary tattoos, racebibs, logo-ed umbrellas, crew t-shirts. She has managed the bits and pieces that are all the print and promotional material we'll be using to sell and market the show.

The other day she posted the design for the racebib every audience member wears, which has the show's program printed on the back. For all the productions up until this point, we've done colour copies at Staples and hand-punched holes in them. But this time, we've gone with a real racebib printer who prints Tyvek bibs for real races. Seeing that image and the image of the nine-foot-tall START banner that will be towering above us in the UK, I had a moment of total convergence. 

I remember so clearly, sitting with my notebook in 2009, scribbling ideas: how audience members would pick up race goody bags filled with swag, how they'd put on their racebibs and there'd be a Start line, a huge timing clock, Dixie cups of Gatorade. The theatre of race day. It's 2012 now and those Tyvek racebibs and that giant START banner have lifted me up from the head-down work of this production to see that my dream – the secret little "nothing" parts of my dream, the tiny details no one knew or cared about but me, the things I let go of last year because there was no time and no money – are coming true. And they are coming true not because I hammered away at getting those little things but because I have an amazing team of people who have inhabited the vision of this thing and are making it happen.

I am not so great on the details. I will have a crazy, gargantuan, impossible idea and I will dive in with all my being to make it happen. I'll crash around and work my ass off and trust my gut and rally the troops and drive them all crazy. And that gargantuan idea will happen, come hell or high water. But, at a certain point, I'll drop the plot. Especially when it comes to print deadlines and graphic design and promotional stuff and signage. But the beautiful kicker of it is, my team doesn't. They care about those details. They care a spectacular amount.

And now, Julie's lovely home is covered in the incredible logo my friend Russ designed and the unbelievable photo my friend Dan took and the designs Suchan and Jessica stayed up until 2 in the morning to perfect. All of that stuff is there because Julie made sure it got done. We're able to have all these incredibly beautiful things because this tour is fully funded thanks to the generosity of more than 100 people and agencies. People are buying tickets and magical things are happening like crazy award nominations and special VIP showings in London.

And I think about another moment years ago, scribbling in that journal again, thinking not about this show specifically but my life in general. I wrote down a dream that seemed so simple, so far-reaching, so impossible to fully imagine that I almost laughed when I wrote it down. But once I read it, I knew would change everything. Oh god, I remember thinking, wouldn't that be great?! And then years went by with a lot of crashing around, making crazy ideas happen, but now, suddenly I've lifted my head and to find that dream has come true. 

My creative work is fully supported.

So this is what it feels like. 

And by “hunting,” I mean I called two friends who literally INSIST on giving me money to support my projects. Yes! I have friends like that!

The two people I called were Jon Huyer and Andrea Brassart. I said, “Hey, I have this idea where sponsors pony up $2012. Cool, right?” And they both said, “I’m in.” Just like that. That is how generous these people are. 

Meanwhile, they are both wickedly talented in their own rights. Jon is one of the most sensitive and loving nature photographers I’ve ever seen. Each of his photos is like a poem to the planet. Andrea and her husband run Cassis Bistro on 17th Ave in Calgary. It’s a French bistro in which every single iota of the building, staff, environment and food are literally made with love. No word of a lie, the place is magical.

I need you all to experience these people’s brilliance first hand. And so I give you...

The ENDURE 2012 UK Tour We Heart Our Sponsors Contest!

There are two ways to win:

1. You go to Cassis Bistro (corner of 17th Ave and 24th St SW). You let Gilles or Andrea know that you're an ENDURE fan. You take a photo of yourself having the time of your life at Cassis Bistro. You post, tweet, share that photo (don’t forget to include @CassisBistro and @runwomanshow in you tweet or Facebook page post). The first 10 people who post get an ENDURE prize pack.

2. You go to Huyer Perspectives Photography’s website. You buy one of Jon’s brilliant photos and receive 20% off by using the discount code ENDURE2012. You post, tweet, share that photo (don’t forget to include #HuyerPerspectives and @runwomanshow in you tweet or Facebook page post). The first 10 people who post get an ENDURE prize pack.

What’s an ENDURE prize pack? It’s a pack of freakin’ PRIZES, yo! It includes badass UK tour memorabilia like signed posters, stickers, tattoos, Olympic and Fringe swag, special audio downloads and a limited edition lino-cut print made by yours truly and amazing NYC printmaker Hilary Lorenz.

Remember to address and tag your tweets and posts so we can see them! Here are the tags to use in Twitter and Facebook:

For CassisBistro: @CassisBistro and @runwomanshow

For Huyer Perspectives: #HuyerPerspectives and @runwomanshow

And to answer the question burning in your brain: yes, you can enter more than once. You can buy a Jon Huyer original and then go to Cassis to celebrate. 

In fact, I think you should do just that.

How do I know we're going to rock? Six reasons. 

Reason #1: We go into the problem
When I trained in Suzuki Method with SITI Company here in New York, they used the phrase: 'go into the problem' Rather than stay safe or appear perfect, this was a call to dive right into the difficult and messy parts of life and performance. The UK will be chaotic. It will be busy, loud, colorful, distracting. There will be millions of people. In Edinburgh, there will be stilt-walkers and naked ladies with megaphones. People will be doing whatever it takes to get attention. And somehow, within that, we have to create a tender, nuanced and intimate experience for our audience. You can't create a intimacy in the middle of a circus by ignoring the circus. So: we make the circus part of our work. Learn to work with, under, around and through the 800-pound gorilla and his thumping house music DJ booth on wheels. I'm mixing metaphors here. You get the picture. Don't resist problems. Go toward them. Dance.

Reason #2: We do the work
There is also no way to learn theoretically how to stage a show in two days. So you have to just do it. At FIGMENT, we spent four long days on our feet, walking, blocking, trying things, running the show, re-scouting the locations as they filled with performers, sculpture and spectators, re-blocking as giant DJ booths set themselves up on top of our most deeply emotional scenes. As our burned-out garage location suddenly became filled with someone's SUV. I say four long days on our feet because our two performance days were as much about re-staging as they were about performing. We kept walking and adapting, walking and adapting. If I wrote a book about FIGMENT that would be the title. Or possibly: Of House Music and Inflatables.

Reason #3: We are willing to let go
When you re-stage site specific work in a seriously compressed timeframe, perfectionism cannot be present. Did we want a sudden, chest-exploding view of the Statue of Liberty in this iteration of the piece? You betcha. Was it possible to get people across an island festooned with inflatable sculpture, concert stages, drum circles and mobs of humans in any kind of timely and aesthetically relevant way? Nope. So we dropped it. And we dropped dozens of other "perfect" locations because if writing is about murdering your darlings then making theatre is too. This isn't to say what we ended up with was 'less than'...it's that we committed to the truly great locations and we let the rest go. The cocktail party dance number up the steps of a grand turn-of-the-century mansion? YES. The comedic sex scene on and around a giant cannon? Phallicious. Ending in a giant field full of people, sculpture, wide open sky and a bazillion-dollar view of Manhattan? Truly brilliant. Say yes to the truly brilliant, choose your chest-exploding moments wisely and trust that the rest will work itself out.

Reason #4: We make mistakes
The beauty of installing ENDURE in a new location or context is it tests a lot of assumptions about the show. And the only way to find out you're making assumptions is to have those assumptions challenged. This is what I mean by making mistakes. So at FIGMENT we made a few mistakes. With the staging of the beginning/Start Line section. With selecting certain audience members to play certain roles. With training our new crew. We learned a lot about a show we thought we knew implicitly. And thank God for that. I found out last year by taking the show to two cities in Canada that re-staging the show can only make it better. This is why. It's an opportunity to take the thing apart at the seams and find out how it works. To shake ourselves out of the 'this worked last time' mind set. To stop making assumptions and start asking the RIGHT questions: how does this scene really work? What's the purpose? What's the goal?

Reason #5: We embrace uncertainty
Creating, performing and touring ENDURE over the past year and a half has been an exercise in consciously releasing control and actively engaging with uncertainty. For a year I fought with perfectionism, trying to get the show 'right' and it's only the challenges of this tour that have driven me toward a new direction. I had a breakthrough in this regard during Sunday's performance. Earlier in the day, I made the decision to use everything that was occuring around me (from costumed bike parades to ice sculptures to crowds of people) as exactly what I needed for each scene. So whatever I heard, encountered, smelled and saw, even if it was different than what I thought the scene was about, became part of the world of the piece. I responded to anything and everything that happened, allowing it to change my performance and enrich the show itself. The ice sculpture became a moment for my character to cool off. The man pointing a camera at me provided the impulse to escape. The people pointing and staring at me as I staggered blood-soaked down the street fueled my character's terror and confusion. The little girl dancing through the 'Keep Going' scene became the perfect recipient of a pearl. The lock on my iPod deactivating during the Bear Man scene meant I disengaged from the physical embrace and dove headfirst into the act of truly seeing another human being. I danced in the moment on Sunday and it was incredible. Thinking I know something? Trying to be perfect? Both of these things are blinders to the infinite possibilities that are present and available in every moment. 

Reason #6: We have you
FIGMENT NYC was exactly what we needed seven weeks from our departure to the UK. We learned what muscles are strong and what muscles need more work. It was just the right qualifying race to clarify what we'll need for the big dance in London and Edinburgh. We could not do that without our audience and supporters. This show is impossible without you: impossible to perform, impossible to produce and impossible to tour. Thank you to all who were there with us this weekend and who have been with us all along. We welcomed first-time audience members and, it is my utter delight to say this, people who have now seen all three of our NYC productions. More than 50 people have contributed to our fundraising campaign. FIFTY PEOPLE care enough to trust us with their hard-earned money.

The community that has grown around this show is the most valuable gift I've ever received. 

I'd like to call on this amazing ENDURE community to help us end our IndieGoGo campaign with a BANG! We are now 95% of the way to our fundraising goal for this tour with two weeks left to go. If this were a marathon, we'd be at Mile 25...WE ARE SOOOO CLOOOOOOOSE. You can help us cross the finish line - please contribute and SPREAD THE WORD! Help us kick up the momentum and send us to the UK with the wind at our backs! 

And if the message of ENDURE or bearing witness to this process has touched you in any way, please tell us about it. It was my greatest hope that this show would reach people, speak to a place in them that was afraid and give them something...hope, inspiration, validation...that little push that helped them realize dreams arean't about accomplishing something 'out there,' they are about connecting with something 'in here.' That thing is in you. It's in all of us and the more you connect with it – and with the community of other people tapping into that same resource – the stronger it gets. 

Tomorrow, my intrepid crew boards the Governors Island ferry at 10am. We have 8 hours to scout locations, map a show route and re-block the show. While we're doing that, more than 200 other art works will be getting installed on the island. Friday, we return for 8 hours of rehearsal and re-choreographing the show on, around and through those 200 art works as well as untold numbers of other roving performance works with unknown routes and unknown timing. Saturday, we open and discover how hundreds of art installations and thousands of people affect the experience of ENDURE: A Run Woman Show.

I know there's something called the Peace Parade. ENDURE might have a Peace Parade right on top of it. Or an air horn orchestra. Or a pile of decapitated teddy bears. A laser-light naked mime dance party. Who knows?

This is our chaos test. It's the pressure test. It's proof of concept for the madness of Edinburgh and the tight timeline of London. In London, we have two jet lagged days to re-stage the show before we open. In Edinburgh, we'll be navigating 2500 shows and tens of thousands of people. This weekend, we'll get a taste of both on Governors Island for FIGMENT NYC. It's the first stop on the tour and it's the dress rehearsal for the UK.

We've got full houses for both Saturday and Sunday's shows. 

I have no idea what's going to happen. The whole preparation process thus far has been about embracing uncertainty and using it as a tool. I have not been rehearsing this show. It doesn't serve me to practice and perfect something that gets torn to pieces and re-made for every new location. Practicing will not help me. Learning to surrender control will.

Rather than resist the unknown, I have had to learn to embrace it. To stop gunning for perfect and let myself feel unprepared. Because there's no way to prepare. My job is to create an experience that fits a place I've never seen. Google maps will not tell me anything I need to know. Learning to trust my work and myself...will.

My job now is to stay present and stay awake. When we restage and reblock tomorrow, each scene will be in a new place. Each new place is a new opportunity to find something new in the work and bring something new to an audience. Maybe it's a path five times longer than before. Maybe it's a burned-out garage. Maybe it's a bus shelter, a staircase, a gnarly old tree. A view of Lady Liberty. New surprises, new delights, new choreography, new moments of connection.

It's strange as a driven person, an athlete and the one who flung herself at the biggest f*cking goal she could think of to now have to sit here and feel under-rehearsed. But I'm going to let myself feel that way. It's the only way I'll actually prove this out. It won't work if I 'cheat' and run sections of choreography in my living room. That's just me practicing perfectionism again.

I need to cultivate the kind of openness that lets me be the best version of myself. The one who trusts in her own artistry and knows that whatever happens, she'll adapt and respond. The one who has learned how to care for an audience and take them with her on ENDURE's amazing journey and the one who knows that caring for people is something that can't be rehearsed. It's just in you or it's not.

That's in me.

It's why I love this show. ENDURE lets me take people by the hand and lead them through the darkest place I know. It's my way of telling them that everything's going to be all right. That they're more magnificent than they thought and they're stronger than they know. That's what I need to remember now. My job is and always was to give people that gift. To give myself that gift. It's all that really matters. 

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We've still got a ways to go on our fundraising campaign! Please contribute and spread the word. You can help make this happen! Thank you! XOXOXO

Mile #1: Maria Pfeiffer
I met Maria at one of the early shows of our Fall 2011 Brooklyn run. I'm not sure how they all got there, but there were three runner-blogger-ladies at that show and we all went for coffee afterwards. The other runner-blogger-ladies were the fierce Amy Cooper and the divine Hilary Lorenz, who you've met on the pages of this blog.

That coffee was seriously one of the most amazing moments of the Fall run. We had an incredible discussion about running, about the show, about that strange obsessive-therapeutic gray area in which a lot of runners dwell. For the first time, I started to realize who this show is for. It's for a lot of people, really, but in these three women, I saw who ENDURE really speaks to. That insight was hugely precious and I came to it thanks to the amazing and utterly HILARIOUS Maria Pfeiffer. If any of you are hosting a party any time soon, you want this woman there. Trust.

Maria's mile was, like Maria, a truly delightful surprise. Even though I "should"have been going into nuclear reactor mode, the heat didn't affect me at all. There was a perfect breeze and my side of the park was perfectly in shadow. I passed that big beautiful lake and I thought (as I always do) of Pildammsparken in Malmo, Sweden where Christine Owman and I would take our mental breaks (me running, her on a bike) while we created ENDURE's soundscape.

Song: It's an all-Canadian playlist today! 'You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son' by Wolf Parade.

Mile #2: Colette Hubner
There are only a handful of people who were actually with me during my Ironman year. And by "with me" I mean with me in the trenches on a daily and weekly basis seeing the workouts, feeling the workouts, watching the whole process unfold. Most people see the stop-motion photographs of a process like this: they hear someone has signed up, they hear how the 'warm-up' Half Ironman went, they tease the athlete for drinking Gatorade at BBQ parties and then they hear about the race. It is a tiny group of people who actually see the day-to-day, incremental transformation process of preparing for an event like Ironman. Colette Hubner saw me.

She was in the pool with me three days a week for the whole of 2006. We went for coffees. We went for bike rides. We went for runs. She made me exquisite dinners in her exquisite home. She watched me transform from a marathoner who felt like she dodged a bullet into an Ironman. Someone who understands that no matter how big or impossible something seems, I know will get there.

And then she went and did a bunch of Ironman races herself. She is one of the most fierce humans I know and the CRAZY thing of it is, I'm not sure she knows how fierce she is. Colette 'Spicy' Hubner? YOU ARE A F*CKING MONSTER AND I LOVE YOU.

Song: My favourite, favourite Metric song that I love so much it's crazy. Listen loud, friends. 'Gimme Sympathy' by Metric.

Mile #3: Janet Leeder
Janet Leeder is my dear friend Kristina's mom. Beena (as she is known to me) and I were close, close friends in undergrad. Then we lost touch for a zillion years. Then we got reconnected somehow and now we're email-pen-pals with giant crushes on each other. Janet came to an ENDURE show in Cochrane, loved it, and now we're Facebook friends with giant crushes on each other. 

Janet is basically love in human form. That is what it feels like to have her in my life. 

Janet's mile, in fact all of my five miles, were simple and glorious. This was the definition of a perfect summer run. The park was lively and green. The paths were full of people running, riding, walking dogs, pushing stollers. The sun filtered down through the green of the leaves. The air smelled good like moist earth and flowers. This was a great, great run.

Song: 'Call It Off' by Tegan And Sara (Calgarians! Sisters! Yes!)

Mile #4: Anonymous Contributor #3
Anonymous Contributor makes me think about the fact that ENDURE is anything but a one-person show. Anonymous Contributor makes me think about all the unsung heros that have made this show possible and continue to make this show possible. I'm going to list some of them here and me listing them in no way expresses the amount of gratitude I have for these people. It in NO WAY lets you know how essential and precious their contributions have been. So you are going to have to trust me: whatever you've seen and loved about the show, these humans had a hand in it.

First is Kym Bernazky. She paved the way for me to stay in NYC and has since paved the way for ENDURE to get to the UK. This lady opened up the world for me. She is also giving up TV for a whole year and you will love her blog. Next is the original creative and production team of ENDURE: Michael Buffer (director) and Erica McLaughlin (marketing). I need to include the beautiful Donna Costello here too because some of the best images of the show come from her suggestions, Devin Assuncao whose script feedback changed my life and, of course, the luminous Miss Christine Owman. The thing that needs to be said about these incredible people is that they believed in this show before there was ever a show. ENDURE would not have been made if it wasn't for them.

Two people came on board last summer and have become essential parts of ENDURE's DNA: Jessica Baker and Suchan Vodoor. There is literally no way to measure the contribution of these two people. They have spent more hours working on this show than anyone else. That seven week run in the fall? (SEVEN FREAKING WEEKS.) All Such and Jess. Jess works one zillion hours a week producing Blue Man's new Las Vegas show. Then she makes sure ENDURE doesn't go broke or get sued. THEN she plots ENDURE's world takeover in the form of Canadian tours, North American tours and who knows what else. She invented the term F*cking Monster and she is the Original Monster. Suchan is the show's director and his unsung status is about to change for real. This is the guy who will stage the show on Governors Island, then again over two jet-lagged days in London and then a THIRD time in Edinburgh all the while making ME look good. MONSTER.

Next is my fierce Canadian production duo: Graham Kingsley and Mikaela Cochrane. Graham gets a whole mile to himself so I'll wax poetic about these kids then, but suffice to say: I worked them like DOGS and they are STILL committed and passionate about this show. There's also Stephanie Plaitin who crewed in the summer and tipped us off to FIGMENT and is also my big ole Canadian cheerleader. (And when I say 'big' I mean big of heart because physically she is wee to the power of WEE.) And then there's Tiffani Joy Butler who crewed in the fall come rain and sleet and snow. Brave lady. Fabulous hair.

And finally, I give you Julie 'Howitzer' Threlkeld. When I think about how important this lady is to me now and how I found her by Googling 'Brooklyn women runners' and randomly contacting her through her blog and how lucky I am that she didn't think I was a creepy Internet stalker, I get down on my knees and thank the great magical order of the Universe. She's ENDURE's Associate Producer, Chief Do-er and a wicked writer and storyteller. And that's just in her spare time.

Song: 'Dead Hearts' by Stars.

Mile #5: Anonymous Contributor #4
This time, I thought about you. And me. And how we are each of us the biggest contributors to our dreams. In the middle of the Dark & Lonelies, when no one knows what you're working towards and how hard you're working for it, you are the most important, most anonymous contributor there is. This mile was in honour of you. Your effort, your belief, your silent, unseen trials.

This mile was dedicated to the point in the process where you have yet to see results. Where you have no tangible, outward reason to believe this thing will fly or that you can actually pull it off. The point at which it's all still impossible, but you are driven by that thing that kept telling you to do this, whispering to you, tugging at you until you took that first step that led to another step and another until now, here you are in the thick and the mess and the unknown of it with no idea how you got this far in or how you'll ever get yourself out. 

I ran this mile for you. That you will wake up tomorrow and do one thing to move forward. One thing. Not a million things, not everything. Just one. And doing that one thing will give you the strength to do the next thing and keep holding this vision of yourself and your life that is magical. Wonderful. Impossible. 

Song: 'Weighty Ghost' by Wintersleep. A repeat, I know, but a good working song.

Mile #1: John P. McEneny
John P. is one of the most generous, heart-forward people I have ever met. He is the Artistic Director of Piper Theatre Productions and a middle school drama teacher and the guy who cast me following my one and only NYC audition in the summer of 2010. Piper presented ENDURE's world freaking premiere and helped fund my travel to Sweden to work with the luminously, crazily talented Christine Owman. So, as far as I'm concerned, we all owe that beautiful music to John P.

John, your mile was magical. The song playing on my iPod was dreamy and watery like the ocean. I passed a stoop sale that looked like a street-side rainbow. Kids played with water guns. A woman rode by on a bike wearing a shirt that trailed behind her and looked like butterfly wings. I passed in front of two warrior-like horses coming from Kensington Stables. They were HUGE and majestic. I was wearing pink lenses in my Smiths (literally rose-coloured glasses) which made the trees and grass appear to be an otherworldly shade of green. I felt, John P., like I was inside a Midsummer Night's Dream...or maybe Xanadu?

Song: 'Porcelain' by Moby. 

Mile #2: Lynn Hickernell
Lynn is a runner and a former/future actor (as she describes herself) and all I know is we share a mutual friend in Jessica Ammirati (another runner-theatre-chick). The fact that Lynn doesn't know me personally, hasn't seen the show and STILL dropped some bucks just warms my heart to no end! 

Lynn's mile occurred as I waded through everybody and their dog (literally) in Prospect Park. There were a zillion bodies. I welcomed it, though, because it made me feel like I was part of something. It also led to a revelation about the community of artist-athletes this show has collected. Time was I felt like a freak in both camps. I was the weirdo artsy type among my sports friends and the weirdo athletic type among my art friends. No longer! I AM NOT ALONE! I am surrounded by people like Lynn who embrace BOTH weirdo parts of themselves! (And I mean that in the best way possible.)

Song: Speaking of revelations, I give you Florence + The Machine. This song needs to be enjoyed at top volume. If you're gonna go deaf, might as well go deaf to Florence Welch.

Mile #3: Emily Faherty
Em wrote this utterly bad ass review of ENDURE in the Huffington Post last year. She is a bona fide ray of light with the best smile in the Western Hemisphere. When I met her she was training for her first marathon and she sewed her ENDURE pearl into her jersey for her race. The pearl image is central to the show and becomes a symbol of both loss and hope, the small things that keep us going even when we think we can't. 

Em? I rilly needed a pearl for your mile. The heat smacked me in the face and I might have overdone it a teeeeeny bit when the revelation song was blasting in my earholes because I TANKED.

You know the saying 'never let them see you sweat?' Jones women have no choice. We do not sweat. This is not a dainty aren't-we-so-ladylike thing. This is a heat-cannot-escape-the-nuclear-reactor-that-is-my-body thing. My mother, fierce woman that she is, not only ran her first marathon at the age of 50...she did it carrying a plant sprayer. 

Happily, a moment of magic took my mind off the sensation that my head was going to explode. I came upon the starting place of the Prospect Park shows and then, as though I had dropped into the dream world of ENDURE, Christine's beautiful music filled my ears.

Song: The Agreement by Christine Owman, ENDURE's miracle of a composer.

Mile #4: Clare Nolan
I met Clare in 2006. I had started work at an ad agency and we bonded over Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes (or "Pumpkin spooooooooooce!" as Clare prefers to say). That was the year I trained for Ironman Canada, where a good lot of the source material for ENDURE came from and where, on my monster 6-hour bike rides, the nascent idea for the show began to take shape. She was also there when one of the single most embarrassing moments of my life went down. She was nice about it. And she's seen BOTH my solo shows and I love her to bits.

I knew Clare at an interesting time in her life. I bore witness to a heinous breakup and I was one of the first to twig that those long lunches she took with Steve, the other project manager, weren't all business. Clare and Steve are now married and when I think of them I think about how everything's unfolding perfectly. How even the most painful, horrible losses are just stops on the way to gifts beyond your imagination.

But this mile? Still painful and horrible.

Song: The White Stripes, Seven Nation Army. Which has NOTHING to do with Sweet Claresie and everything to do with the pounding in my skull.

Mile #5: Another Jon P....Jon Parker
So I'm passing the entrance for The Great Googa Mooga (what the hell is that?!) and there are fifty kerjillion people including some hipster wearing a 'One Less Car' tshirt by the bike valet and people wearing jean shorts and floppy hats looking at me sideways because they are carrying thermoses of cold pinot grigio and I have an alarmingly red face.

I felt like a bit of a freak, hammering away out there. 

A rarity.

As uncommon, you might say, as a Calgarian in Brooklyn.

Which is what Jon Parker is. He is one the rare breed of Brooklynarians. Calgynites. Calgooklyners. Whatever. Our tribe doesn't need a snappy name. We know who we are.

The Calgookynese have the best of BOTH our hometowns. The salt-of-the-earth friendliness of Calgary. The casual cosmopolitan cool of Brooklyn. I'm speaking mostly about Jon right now. He is way cooler than I am. I'm the weird sister of our Calgooklyn family. Jon is the smart, supportive, wildly successful older brother that everyone likes.

In my life, he is a fixture in the People Who Rock cateogry. And if you met Jon Parker, you'd think so, too.

Song: Crazy by Gnarls Barkley, one of my favourite 2006 Year of the Ironman anthem songs. I LOVE YOU CEE-LO!

I chose the hottest part of the day to run in, but it was fine. It was more than fine. New York in May is the best place to be on the planet. YES this is the endorphins talking and I DO NOT CARE. I was also wearing my iPod this time, so each of you gets a song associated with your mile! 

Mile #1: Amy Cooper
Okay, listen. Some people are just f*cking fantastic and Amy Cooper is one of them. She is teeny tiny and blonde and pretty but DO NOT LET THAT FOOL YOU. She has a mind like a surgical laser. And she will trash talk you into a steaming pile of goo. She had the excellent sense to marry a Canadian (and he had the excellent sense to marry her). She wrote this about ENDURE last fall. She lives waaaaay at the tippy-top of Manhattan and I wish I had a teleporter machine so we could hang out more.

The first thing I see is a big ole speed sensor thing. If Amy were running by it, it woulda said Mach 10. But that wasn't the theme of this stretch of road. Coop, you're not going to like this. Welcome to The Baby Mile. it was stroller central out there. I started out by almost crashing into a very pregnant woman hauling a stroller slantwise across the street. (Why one would haul something that is meant to be pushed, I don't know, but she looked on her last nerve so I didn't quibble.)

And then...nothing. Seriously. Just babies and mommies and nannies. EVERYWHERE. If this is prophetic Amy, you are having six hundred kids.

Or it might be time for a triathlon because this mile was also bike heavy. Lotsa roadies and one guy who was talking on his phone while riding (not advisable) and a woman who forgot she was riding in a public space and almost killed me (also not advisable).

Song: The White Stripes one about girl something something medicine

Mile #2: Traci Paris
Remember how I said some people are just fantastic? I'm two for two here. Traci Paris...wait. Let's stop right here and talk about what a great name that is. Traci Paris. It needs to be in lights. Or on a movie poster or a series of young adult novels. This name made me nervous, actually. Traci came to the show via the insanely great Julie Threlkeld. Julie told me what Traci did for work and I can't even remember what her job was except that it was fabulous and when I put that fabulous job with that fabulous name, I became totally intimidated by Traci Paris.

So when she came to the show, I was terrified.

Which, if you know Traci, is RIDICULOUS because she's, like, the sweetest, most genuine, open-hearted lady ever. She came to the very last performance of our Brooklyn run last fall and she let me clean up at her house after the show because they'd locked down the restrooms at the Picnic House (and I was covered in fake blood...as you do).

That's how not intimidating Traci Paris is. She'll let you use her bathroom!

Trace, m'dear, your mile was uphill and hot and tough and bad ass. I saw a lady jogging with a purse and I said to myself, "No. That's wrong. I'll tolerate the rookie key-jangling people, but this pushes me too far." And then, right at the end of your mile, there was a positively GLORIOUS tree that looked like magnolia but could have been ginormously gorgeous dogwood. Either way: I dedicate that outrageous beauty to you.

Song: This Beck thing about a devil's haircut

Mile #3: Roberta McDonald
Robs has been my friend and part of my creative tribe since something like 2004 or 2005. She interviewed me for an article she was writing on online dating. I made some crack about my 'inbox' and she described someone as 'snatchy' and 'crispy' and that was it: friends for life. She was there when ENDURE was just a twinkle in my eye in 2008. She is just making the delicious transition to filmmaker (yesssss) and I couldn't be more delighted.

Oh Robs, this was SO your mile. It was the perfect Brooklyn mile. First, I stepped in someone's popsicle goo. It was pink. And then I realized that everything was happening. It was a stretch of delicious presence when I understood that there is SO MUCH GOING ON: baseball games and picnics and horses and farmers markets. Hot Asian chicks on longboards. Microscopic pug dogs. Ladies wearing those plastic "weight loss" suits. The whole world living and breathing and doing stuff and I'm part of it. Yeah, it was one of those.

They were setting up the bandshell for Celebrate Brooklyn and the sign said: Music. Dance. Word. Film. So take that and run with it, lady.

Song: The only one I actually knew the title to...Weighty Ghost by Wintersleep

Mile #4: Matt Palmer
You know the kind of people you have in your life who like you and support you massively and selflessly and say nice things about you pretty much all the time and you can't help but think: what's the freakin' catch?! That's Matt Palmer. Matt rocks. Period.

While I'm making weirdo indie art, he's raising a kerjillion dollars for his next documentary project, working to get Richard Branson in on the thing and being so ferociously supportive of my work it blows my mind. He's a f*cking monster (which, here at Team ENDURE, is the highest compliment there is, trust me).

Matt, break out the tiny socks. It's Baby Mile, The Sequel. It was also Curvacious Bootay Mile. So things are looking great for you my friend. Lotta mamas, lotta babies. There was also a video shoot getting set up, so if this mile is a prophecy, you're about to have your hands full.

There was also a shirtless dude. He was much more ripped than Papa Ahab from last time. And I was treated to a sighting of the Barefoot Running Guy. There are quite a few minimalist runners in Prospect Park on a regular basis, but there is only one Barefoot Running Guy. He's like an icon. He has a strange ageless quality about him (he's probably 80) and he's about five feet tall. It's like watching a skinny Yoda scuttle through the park.

Song: That one by Duffy. Could be 'Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.' Could be 'Release Me.' I don't know, but it's cool.

Mile #5: Brenda Nault
There are a handful of people in the world who I feel are watching me verrrrry closely. Not in a bad or creepy way. Just the opposte actually. In the kind of way that makes me feel like what I do matters and how I show up in the world matters. That I can have bad days and even bad weeks, but eventually I have to chin up and get on with this dream-chasing business because, golldarnit, Bren's rooting for me.

Brenda, my dear, today I took the road less traveled. Literally. I've noticed this pair of trails veering off the main road a hundred times and every time I pass them I think, 'Tomorrow. I'll see where they lead tomorrow.' But my friend Brenda – single mom, breast cancer survivor and brand-new realtor – knows that you don't get to count on tomorrows. So I went for it and went off road. 

I'm so, so glad I did. I was completely surrounded in green and it was hot enough and dry enough that I could smell the earth and the plants. It smelled like the forests of Canmore in the summer. Thanks Bren.

Song: 'Pictures of You' by The Cure. (RIGHT?!)

My run finished with these images flashing by as I blazed home like a mofo listening to the Metric song about guns and girls and gold:
– A gaggle of little girls that looked like cute Muslim ducklings
– A gaggle of little Hasidic ducklings about 10 feet further down the path
– What could have been the Hasidic ducklings' great-great-grandfather with the biggest beard I have ever seen
– A rainbow explosion of sidewalk chalk
– Another shirtless guy who looked like he's been injecting something into his pectorals...or he got breast implants 

As I write we are $38 measly ducats away from the half way point of our campaign. Please spread the word and help us keep this crazy momentum going! XOXO