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HomeMetroBusinessHitting Your Stryde With North End Running Studio
Hitting Your Stryde With North End Running Studio
February 15, 2017 Sherry Hsiao Business, City, Metro
As a three-sport varsity athlete at Union College, Rebecca Skudder always remained on the run. Even when she entered the workforce in the Boston area, she kept up her active lifestyle. But when she began to train for a half marathon four years ago, she discovered the city had no workout studios that offered classes on a treadmill. Sure, every other block had a SoulCycle, but runners had nowhere to go, especially in winter months, to train.
For a few years, she toyed with the idea of starting a running studio. She created a business plan and even came up with an eclectic, eye-catching name. But the idea of actually opening one remained a fantasy in her mind, something she might do in the future. She would tell herself, "No, this is dumb. Focus on the job. You just got out of school."
When a studio with a similar concept opened up in New York City, Skudder received emails from friends and family encouraging her to turn her plans into action. And so she made the leap, and decided to pursue her dream.
She left her corporate job downtown, and today, Skudder is the owner of MyStryde, a running studio in the North End on 456 Hanover St. On a sky-blue wall in the studio, Skudder defines a "Stryder" as "One who seeks sweat, finds happiness in hard work, finds strength in their squad, and energy from their tribe, finds glory in the grand and power in the pain, goes the distance, stops at nothing, and always believes."
MyStryde is equipped with 12 Woodway treadmills, and offers a range of beginner to advanced classes. The workouts take place in a dark room, and are synced with music to set the pace. All of MyStryde's instructors are certified by the USA Track & Field organization.
Skudder's hiring philosophy reflects her passion for running and her dedication toward revolutionizing the workout experience for runners. She wants her instructors to be approachable and have a good vibe, something she says is rare in most studios. But Skudder's teachers still must have an influential presence and be confident in their abilities.
"You can't walk in there and be kind of timid and shy," Skudder said. "You need to own the room."
Sarah Ashiqueali, MCAS '17, ran the Boston Marathon last year, and will be running it again this year. When asked her opinion on a running studio like MyStryde, she expressed an interest in a business that could build a running community within Boston. Ashiqueali also noted that MyStryde's classes might be ideal for beginning runners, as they would provide guidance and a training schedule.
"It also builds discipline for those who have trouble forcing themselves to get out there and train," Ashiqueali said.
In addition to running classes, MyStryde also sells running gear and apparel. They sell shoes from Sketchers Performance and On—a Swiss brand. Looking around at the shelves in her studio, Skudder emphasized the careful selection she makes when picking the materials she sells.
"I only bring in things that I really do believe in as a runner," Skudder said, pointing specifically to one rack in the corner with socks on it. "Like these running socks are my favorite socks. If you look through my drawer, I'm always going to pick out these socks if I'm going for a run, because they're good socks."
MyStryde also supports the community by collecting old sneakers. The large, transparent box that they call the "kick wall" is already filled with dozens of donations, and serves as a bright decoration for the space. Once the "kick wall" is full, they will give the old sneakers to Soles4Souls, a Nashville-based charity that collects and redistributes new and used shoes and clothing around the world. They also support the fundraising efforts of runners, and have partnered with CharityTeams, an organization that assists small charities with athletic fundraising opportunities.
Looking back on the past year, Skudder said the two biggest challenges she has encountered are managing a team of people with different personalities, and making decisions about the cash flow of the company. Despite its success in its first year as a business, she has had to be patient with attracting customers without using excessive marketing strategies.
"They're going to come in slower than you ever imagine," Skudder said "You're always going to think, 'Ah, it's gonna be the next big thing. It's gonna be huge.'"
As Skudder reflected on her path to MyStryde, thinking about how many college students must go through the same choice she did—abandon your dream or risk it all?—her phone rang. She laughed as she let it go to voicemail.
"This is my life," Skudder said. "You own a business? This is your life. It's crazy."
Featured Image by Sherry Hsiao
mystryde
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Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata assassinated in Mexico
Emiliano Zapata, a leader of peasants and indigenous people during the Mexican Revolution, is ambushed and shot to death in Morelos by government forces.
Born a peasant in 1879, Zapata was forced into the Mexican army in 1908 following his attempt to recover village lands taken over by a rancher. After the revolution began in 1910, he raised an army of peasants in the southern state of Morelos under the slogan "Land and Liberty." Demanding simple agrarian reforms, Zapata and his guerrilla farmers opposed the central Mexican government under Francisco Madero, later under Victoriano Huerta, and finally under Venustiano Carranza. Zapata and his followers never gained control of the central Mexican government, but they redistributed land and aided poor farmers within the territory under their control.
Zapata's influence has endured long after his death, and his agrarian reform movement, known as zapatismo, remains important to many Mexicans today. In 1994, a guerrilla group calling themselves the Zapata Army of National Liberation launched a peasant uprising in the southern state of Chiapas.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/zapata-assassinated-in-mexico
AssassinationsMexico
Bataan Death March begins
The day after the surrender of the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese, the 75,000 Filipino and American troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula begin a forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. During this infamous trek, known as the "Bataan Death March," the ...read more
ASPCA is founded
On April 10, 1866, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by philanthropist and diplomat Henry Bergh, 54. In 1863, Bergh had been appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to a diplomatic post at the Russian court of Czar ...read more
O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" is published
O. Henry's second short story collection, The Four Million, is published. The collection includes one of his most beloved stories, "The Gift of the Magi," about a poor but devoted couple who each sacrifice their most valuable possession to buy a ...read more
Paul McCartney announces the breakup of the Beatles
The legendary rock band the Beatles spent the better part of three years breaking up in the late 1960s, and even longer than that hashing out who did what and why. And by the spring of 1970, there was little more than a tangled set of business relationships keeping the group ...read more
First color 3-D film opens
On April 10, 1953, the horror film The House of Wax, starring Vincent Price, opens at New York's Paramount Theater. Released by Warner Brothers, it was the first movie from a major motion-picture studio to be shot using the three-dimensional, or stereoscopic, film process and one ...read more
Natural Disasters & Environment
Atomic submarine USS Thresher sinks in the Atlantic, killing all on board
On April 10, 1963, the USS Thresher, an atomic submarine, sinks in the Atlantic Ocean, killing the entire crew. One hundred and twenty-nine sailors and civilians were lost when the sub unexpectedly plunged to the sea floor roughly 300 miles off the coast of New England. The ...read more
A torture chamber is uncovered by arson
On April 10, 1834, a fire at the LaLaurie mansion in New Orleans, Louisiana, leads to the discovery of a torture chamber where enslaved workers are routinely brutalized by Delphine LaLaurie. Rescuers found a 70-year-old black woman trapped in the kitchen during the fire because ...read more
U.S. table tennis team visits communist China
The U.S. table tennis team begins a weeklong visit to the People's Republic of China (PRC) at the invitation of China's communist government. The well-publicized trip was part of the PRC's attempt to build closer diplomatic relations with the United States, and was the beginning ...read more
After surrendering to Union, General Lee gives final address to troops
One day after surrendering to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addresses his army for the last time. "After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to ...read more
Revolutionary War Commander John Paul Jones sets out to raid British ships
On April 10, 1778, Commander John Paul Jones and his crew of 140 men aboard the USS Ranger set sail from the naval port at Brest, France, and head toward the Irish Sea to begin raids on British warships. This was the first mission of its kind during the Revolutionary War. ...read more
Croatia declares independence
On April 10, 1941, the German and Italian invaders of Yugoslavia set up the Independent State of Croatia (also including Bosnia and Herzegovina) and place nationalist leader Ante Pavelic's Ustase, pro-fascist insurgents, in control of what is no more than a puppet Axis regime. ...read more

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The oldest from southest Asia?
This fossil braincase of a young (2-4 year old) individual was found in a layer about 20 meters above a 1.8-million-year-old volcanic layer. The genus Homo arrived in island Indonesia by at least 1.6 million years ago, when Java was connected to Asia by a land bridge.


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Home / Retirement / P. J. O'Rourke on the Boomers
P. J. O'Rourke on the Boomers
Written by Gary North on February 11, 2014
This man is funny. He is also a very astute observer.
We are the generation that changed everything. Of all the eras and epochs of Americans, ours is the one that made the biggest impression—on ourselves. That's an important accomplishment, because we're the generation that created the self, made the firmament of the self, divided the light of the self from the darkness of the self, and said, "Let there be self." If you were born between 1946 and 1964, you may have noticed this yourself.
That's not to say we're a selfish generation. Selfish means "too concerned with the self," and we're not. Self isn't something we're just, you know, concerned with. We are self.
Before us, self was without form and void, like our parents in their dumpy clothes and vague ideas. Then we came along. Now the personal is the political. The personal is the socioeconomic. The personal is the religious and the secular, science and the arts. The personal is everything that creepeth upon the earth after his (and, let us hasten to add, her) kind. If the baby boom has done one thing, it's to beget a personal universe. (Our apologies for anyone who personally happens to be a jerk.)
Self is like fish, proverbially speaking. Give a man a fish and you've fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and, if he turns into a dry-fly catch-and-release angling fanatic up to his liver in icy water wearing ridiculous waders and an absurd hat, pestering trout with 3-pound test line on a $1,000 graphite rod, and going on endlessly about Royal Coachman lures that he tied himself using muskrat fur and partridge feathers…well, at least his life partner is glad to have him out of the house.
So here we are in the baby-boom cosmos, formed in our image, personally tailored to our individual needs, and predetermined to be eternally fresh and novel. And we saw that it was good. Or pretty good.
There is more. Click the link.
Continue Reading on online.wsj.com
3 thoughts on "P. J. O'Rourke on the Boomers"
WhiteFalcon says:
People like to pick on the baby boomers, but they don't want to admit that the standard of living that we have today, even though it has deminished under Ovomit, has been without any doubt the highest standard of living ever achieved in the world. When you think of what has been created by that generation, it is astounding. The majority of all the things that we enjoy today have been either created by the boomers or they have been greatly improved by the boomers. The field of medicine and health care in general for the most part didn't even exist when I was a young child. Something as common today as IVs in the hospital or even in surgery didn't exist before WWII. About the only medicines we had then were Quinine and Sulfa, and I was lucky to be allergic to both. It is time to quit bashing the boomers. They are getting old now and are on Social Security, and the morons that we have in our Government cry and whine that they are having to write SS checks to these people now. If it weren't for the boomers, we would be a third world country compared to where we are now. That, of course, is what Ovomit wants for us.
libra says:
with Obama in the oval office for 3 more years–his dictatorship will be fully entrenched and he can then deprive the boomers. Obama will be nudging the elderly into earlier graves as his author of obamacare–cass sunstein who has written a book called nudge, besides obamacare–he wants to nudge the elderly into oblivion. decent medical care– keep int. rates so low that retirees will have a very tough time just meeting their daily needs…..voila–Obama will have nudged the elderly into an early death….. each day that passes Obama becomes more and more bold as he usurps powers he was never given by the voters of the usa. he is now behaving as though he were royalty. he must be stopped. once he takes complete charge of the usa–he has already taken any power from the military and congress to become an imperial dictator
Danno says:
It was the first Boomer president, Clinton, and "Boom-Boom" Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who emptied the Social Security surplus that was going to cover the Boomers' retirement. It was actually our parents' generation that had the foresight to increase the SS withholdings to build up the surplus that was squandered in the "balanced budget" deal of 1996. So I don't blame the post-Boomer generations for feeling just a little bloody minded towards us.


Annexation is the process of bringing land from one jurisdiction to another by petition or resolution. Property owners interested in annexation to the city of Midland have 2 options.
The first option is as a result of the Urban Cooperation Agreement Act of the State of Michigan. This act has enabled the City of Midland and its adjacent townships to approve annexations through resolutions approved by the township and city legislative bodies.
Once approved by the township, the application is submitted to the Midland City Council for approval. Once Council approval has been received, the application is sent to the Office of the Great Seal for verification. Once the City receives a letter from the Office of the Great Seal confirming receipt of the petition, the annexation becomes official as of the date of the letter.
Each of the above steps has certain criteria, procedures and requirements which must be followed and met for an annexation petition to proceed smoothly.
If you have any questions or need annexation forms or information, contact the State Boundary Commission at 517-334-7364.


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-Award Winning Palestinian Author-
Ahmed Masoud
The Shroud Maker
Walaa (Loyalty)
Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea
"Vanished is an accomplished novel that, quietly and without didacticism, gets to the heart of the terrible sacrifices demanded of a people living in a state of permanent, unrelenting siege"
The New Internationalist
"Vanished is a recommended read and Masoud's is a sensitive and intelligent voice. It tells a story that could play out well on the screen".
Selma Dabbagh for The Electronic Intifada
"Not only is the plot really well developed, with the dramatic turns of events keeping a high level of attention at all times, but the historical context of the story, also, is very interesting. It gives a good picture of what living in the Gaza Strip means, with continuous uncertainty about the future, curfews, power cuts, shootings in the street and police inspections in the dead of night. Mixing a thriller story with the reality of life in the Palestinian occupied territories. Vanished is a novel which can be enjoyed by a wide public, not only by people interested in the Arab world" Banipal Magazine Review of Vanished
How does one investigate murder in the middle of a war zone? Does it matter if a person is killed by an airstrike or a knife?
When Zahra's husband, Ammar Bseiso, is killed in 2014 he is written off as one of the two thousand or so casualties of war. However, his thirty-five-year-old wife is convinced that her husband was murdered by a fellow Palestinian and not an Israeli airstrike. She spends two years looking for a detective who would agree to take on her case as people dismiss and ridicule her.
When Nouman El Taweel agrees to investigate the crime, Zahra begins to regret it almost immediately as the policeman uncovers the truth behind the murder, along with a network of deception, lies and corruption.
Come What May is a novel about love, betrayal and class issues in a conservative society which is very isolated from the rest of the world.
Vanished - The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda
ISBN-978-9963-715-13-8
What does it take to discover the truth? Betrayal? Deception? Risking one's own life? Omar Ouda did it all. Vanished is a fictional story set against the political unrest in Palestine, following a young boy trying to find his father. The deeper he delves into his father's mysterious disappearance, the more he finds himself forced to make terrible choices, testing his loyalty to his country and his family. The book is also about friendship born out of difficult circumstances, presented here through the character of Ahmed who risks his life to help his friend in the quest to find his father.
Omar's journey is fictional; however, it describes real life in Palestine's Gaza Strip between 1981 and 2011. This period witnessed three major events that have shaped the current situation – the first Intifada, the Oslo Accords and the second Intifada. While politics provide an important background to the story, the novel does not aim to put forth any political arguments. Instead, it sheds light on what it is like for two young boys to lead an ordinary life in an extraordinary place often described as 'hell on earth.'
ISBN -978-178-682-5292
Hajja Souad, an 80-year old Palestinian woman living on the besieged Gaza Strip, knows about business. She has survived decades of wars and oppression through making shrouds for the dead.
A compelling black comedy that delves deep into the intimate life of ordinary Palestinians to weave a highly distinctive path through Palestine's turbulent past and present, The Shroud Maker is a one-woman comedy that weaves comic fantasy and satire with true stories told first hand to the writer, and offers a vivid portrait of Palestinian life in Gaza underscored with gallows humour.
Palestine + 100
Ahmed wrote a short story entitled Application 39 for this unique anthology which will be published in July 2019.
Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 – a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event – which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes – reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians?
Britain and the Muslim World: Historical Perspectives (ed. by Gerald McLean)
ISBN-978-1443825900
Ahmed Masoud published a chapter entitled Race & Identity in Early Palestinian Literature of Resistance in this book. Based on papers presented at an international three-day conference, sponsored by the British Academy and held at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter in April 2009, this collection of essays provides a comprehensive and accessible synthesis of the most advanced specialist and scholarly knowledge to date concerning historical perspectives on relations between Britain and the Muslim World. Ranging from the early-modern period to the present day, the essays collected here represent work by leading writers and scholars from relevant fields history, international relations, economics, religion, law, art history and design, film studies, and sociology, as well as literary and cultural studies. These essays explore the historical impacts of cross-cultural encounters between Islam and Britain by variously addressing the question of how relations between Britain and the Muslim world in the past have brought us to our current situation and, in some cases, by proposing directions for necessary further consideration and research.
© 2023 by Samanta Jonse. Proudly created with Wix.com


Wall shelves that cleverly display what you're currently reading.
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A secondhand building gets a modest renovation to house living quarters and a gallery.