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On the avenue where I grew up, I liked to dam the water in the gutters. A neighboring photographer had a darkroom in his garage; the trickle from his hose was my riparian source. If I had a crew of other boys helping me, we could dam the entire street. When our fathers came home at sunset, our dams failed anticlimactically under their tires.

I did not become a civil engineer; I’m a lawyer, engineering solutions to disputes I often might have stoked. But I have always found dams interesting. When my law firm went remote and much of Dallas shut down, I vowed to ride my bicycles to, on, over, down, and around our dams.

The early lockdown rides were cold. Then, infernal. And now, a year into this daily habit, this monastic ritual, freezing once more. My attire has ranged from layers and beanies to just some shorts.

Audio and video calls continued, but with more diverse background noise or view, my mute listening skills increased, and, over time, I shrank. As any cyclist will, I fell a time or two, on crushed limestone and hopping a rushing grate. I learned to see things better, smell a little keener, and I stopped falling.

Living and working in Dallas since 1991, I have run or ridden around White Rock Lake hundreds of times, but besides whizzing over Lake Lewisville or Ray Hubbard on interstate highways or seeing Lake Grapevine as I descended into DFW Airport, the rest of our reservoirs were a mystery to me.

All three of my bikes are graded for mountains, which helps when ascending bumpy earth-layered dams and concrete spillways, navigating surprising horse trails, and evading dogs patrolling pastured fields. But I was around water. Vast. Blue. If not deep, at least wide. Here, in North Texas. Wind-swept by noon; weirdly still in the early morning. It was not always easy to find the lakes. Much of our lakeshore is privately owned. I learned to start with the dam, ride up and down and along it, reconnoiter the area, and then branch out, riding through pastures or trailer parks.

Dallas has a water problem. We always have. Perhaps we always will. We keep growing. Our ground and surface water does not. But here we are, thirsty as ever.

The Spanish explorer Alonso de Léon named this inauspicious river La Santísima Trinidad, or the Most Holy Trinity, in 1690. Perhaps it was. Not now. Most muddy and stinky, maybe.

Knotted up in a Cowtown mediation once, the mediator proposed the lawyers hit one golf ball each over their Trinity to break the impasse. It is a very easy half-wedge, if you care to know. But let’s be honest: in the Trinity’s 700-mile traverse from near the Red River to Galveston Bay, there may not be a less attractive stretch than the straight line of its diverted, fabricated run through Dallas. For years, I’ve run on and inside the levees, and the only thing I don’t look at is the lonely, silty river, flanked by weeds and detritus.

Still, we sit in a fertile flood plain. The four forks of the Trinity River—West, Clear, Elm, and East—have been dammed into lovely lakes, refuges of wildlife and fresh air; after each dam lies a stretch of riverine utopia, a relic of what might have been.

My rides took me to impounded waters like Eagle Mountain Lake, Lake Weatherford, Benbrook, the newish Ray Roberts Lake, the difficult Lake Lewisville, and the strange Lake Ray Hubbard, which is surprisingly (to me) owned by Dallas Water Utilities, providing water to millions.

My quest took me to pump stations, too. It turns out DWU has seven in the downtown Dallas area alone, animating the flow of precious water along almost 5,000 miles of water mains, with almost 20 pressure zones, keeping showers pleasantly hard-hitting. But I found it tricky to find or approach many of the pump stations, and my true holy grail: the pipelines tracking from places like Lake Tawakoni. The headwaters of the Sabine River were subsumed into Tawakoni in 1960. Here, the locals were inquisitive about my bike.

“Hey,” said a taciturn man who owned a store I visited one day.

“Hi.”

“You got disc brakes on your bicycle?”

“I do.”

“That’s pretty cool,” he said.

The bridge that cuts across Tawakoni is an absolute cyclist’s dream: wide shoulder, minimal roadkill, and low guardrails, affording a full lake view.

Riding the border forests around 1943 vintage Lake Texoma can be spectacular, dwarfing 926,000-acre-foot Tawakoni; triple the capacity. While the Red River does not carry a large volume of water at normal flow, it is clearly a real border.

On a bike, you can find quicksands near trails; you can see the changing channels and quick shifts from bank to bank: a great dividing line of history.

Strictly distant from humans, I formed friendships with animals: mules, stallions, bulls, lambs, and cows. I cannot be certain, but it seemed as if some remembered me and even ran to give greetings. The dogs upstream are real dogs; territorial and ready to race a man on a bike. There is a fine line between a playful chase and that moment when you are up on your pedals, finding that extra gear, and feeling a Rottweiler at your calves.

Crossing county lines and train tracks and deep creeks in between the northern lakes revealed the arbitrary nature of district lines and regulation. I even found spaces in between counties and states. The Trinity River forms the boundary lines of 13 counties, but they’re not clear boundaries.

I made a diversion to lakes Granbury and Possum Kingdom. Out west, it is easier to imagine what the early pioneers in their cumbersome wagons saw: water for oxen and horses and themselves. The settler simply could not deviate far from water in this tough, new country. Traveling at a rate of 3 or 4 mph all day, and camping at night near grass and water, these avatars had to cross fords or ferry the rivers. If you could find a safe place to cross, you had located gold, or chalkstone (Dallas) and limestone (Fort Worth) fords across a fickle prairie river.

Thus, we see the paradox. It was because the crossing was easier, in the dry summer or winter, in shallow water, with a compacted riverbed and less severe banks, that Dallas was chosen by the early settlers and the Native peoples before them.

The first settlement in Dallas was located by a spring. Then, from 1837 to 1914, water was pumped out of basins and boiled for purification. In 1914, a Turtle Creek filtration plant was built. We will continue to pump, and impound, and elevate, and draw, and pipe in our water. We are a great city on the plains, sited at the crossroads of land routes rather than waterways. The Caddo, Wichita, and Bidai tribes trod this watershed.

A trading post in a riparian corridor so wildly unpredictable that all the Army Corps’ horses and engineers are still puzzling over the pieces, trying to put us together again. The old Commerce Street ferry and the long viaduct foretold airports and distribution centers. Early Dallas was led by wild promoters, not pessimistic farmers, change artists who dreamed of a watery future. But by the late 19th century, mayors called the Trinity “our dead river.” And the flood of 1908 ended all dreams.

After the deluge, the river crested at more than 50 feet deep and almost 2 miles wide. Sheds, barns, outhouses, pigs, and cows floated by for days; Oak Cliff was reachable only by boat. Embarrassment is too mild a word for how Dallas felt.

After all debate was settled, the Houston Street Viaduct opened in 1912 to 58,000 spectators. Dallas went further, as we know, changing the course of the river, and putting up levees in 1932, which mostly did their job (with tests in 1935, 1941, 1990, and recently). The old riverbed became known as the Trinity Industrial District (later renamed the Design District, rebuilt by aptly named developers PegasusAblon).

Fortunes were made from the Trinity bottoms. John Stemmons developed the land made usable by the levees, and Trammell Crow built the largest real estate company in the country on the bluffs. But all of it depended on dams stopping the floods and gathering drinking water. This was the more modest dream we settled for. The turn-of-the-century plan to link Dallas to the Gulf of Mexico with locks and hundreds of miles of canals was reincarnated in 1963 by the Army Corps of Engineers and in 1965 by a Texan in the White House (LBJ’s billion-dollar Trinity River Project, which is less famous than the loop freeway bearing his name). But no barges ever made the Trinity trip.

In 1973, the citizens of Dallas finally put a nail in the canal coffin: 56 percent voted against a Trinity shipping corridor. Dallas would go forward without a beloved or usable or important river, joining an odd list of major cities: Tehran, Milan, Jerusalem, Indianapolis, Orlando, and Bangalore.

The Trinity is pretty before it arrives in Dallas, but it is easily distracted, diverted, and even drained. Part of the problem is how fecund the Trinity is. Ride alongside it and you will see thick hardwood forests of burl walnuts and live oaks, elms, sycamores, willows, junipers, and mesquites. They drop trunks and brush into tributaries and the clogged wetlands along swales and rivulets. It is a subtle, uneasy landscape, this swath of Texas.

Every mile north of LBJ, the water grows a bit clearer.

We all know that bonds have evaporated like the mists of Texoma, the Trinity River Corridor Plan was reborn as the Balanced Vision Plan, and horse parks and toll roads and wildlife refuges and whitewater kayak parks have been tossed around like a political football by philanthropists and the best urban planners in the world, to no avail. The river is still too straight to be a river, but rebending it would be very expensive, because the scale is massive. The Trinity watershed is gargantuan. Only a ride or hike up and down the earthen dams reveals it.

Have we grabbed the tail of a tiger? Do we know when to stop? In 1961, the Texas Board of Water Engineers delivered a wonky report named “A Plan for Meeting the 1980 Water Requirements of Texas.” It concluded Texas had adequate water to meet 1980’s needs but would require far more than the 14 reservoirs under construction at that time. The board called for 45 new reservoirs. Reading the old report, I realized we could change the dates, multiply by three, and it would all still be true.

We can keep building ridges, eddies, wetlands, and ponds; a toy kingdom of topography. For us to believe in the latest, greatest plan for our silty, sultry river, we are required to engage in what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the suspension of disbelief. The Trinity Park Conservancy has my donations, because I have taken their “semblance of truth” about the 200-acre Harold Simmons Park, and I have dived into Michael Van Valkenburgh’s fantastic tale, just as I dammed the wet roads of Cape Town where I grew up. I have suspended judgment on the implausibility of the narrative of a playful and egalitarian gathering place in our vast flood plain.

For a year or more, I have explored this trickling, flooding, ambivalent watershed, and if we decide we want to add cafes and performance spaces, I will enjoy the spectacle, but I will carry in my mind the dammed reservoirs upstream and wonder about the scale of what we can do, and ought to do.

First and foremost, we need to get outside and move along our waterways and understand where we live and what was done for us to be here.

A Riparian To-Do List

We will never have our blue Danube or tranquil Thames, but if the Trinity is aptly named, we can have three rivers in one: a cleaner stretch in the shadow of downtown, a better-visited series of dams upstream, and a wilder southern stream in a byzantine wood wonderland. Intricate investment schemas are needed, but so are connections to the actual physical place we live.

1. We need a cleaner Trinity with less bacteria. When I was in Copenhagen and Stockholm, I learned you could drink the water as you swam in the harbor. Before scoffing, why not?
2. We’ve got to keep pumping. The water that we see does not predominantly flow within the banks of the Trinity. Our creeks and channels and groundwater arrive all at the same time, and we would be underwater without our massive pumping systems. Three new pump stations, at a cost of about $400 million, are being added to a system lagging since the ’60s.

   

3. We need to shore up our dams. As I rode down a dozen embankments, I was mindful that clay and sand shrink and swell with our volatile weather. Living a daily bike life, I was struck by the extremes of our climate. Even as a boy, damming our avenue, I realized when the top gets heavier than the bottom, gravity wins. And these mounds of earth hold back over 2 billion tons of water. Seepage and uplift are the risks; a rapid rise in the reservoir can exploit the risk of erosion and structural distress. A cavity will form. A sand boil, or whirlpool in boggy weeds, is the first clue. If it forms a “pipe,” we are in high-danger situation. Just as I did as a boy, we would have to build a cofferdam, a dam to save the dam.
4. We need to expand the state parks in the watershed: Piney forest hikes, shoreline trails, beaches and paddleboard stands, and, yes, bicycle paths. Commerce has never had a problem thriving in our crossroads city. But we need green spaces to connect us. On a non-lake day, I rode down Lamar, turned left on Al Lipscomb Way, across Cesar Chavez, left again on Malcolm X Boulevard, and north to Deep Ellum. On a bicycle, the distance from the casual abundance of Uptown to the south side is huge: a million miles in one.
5. We should preserve the ribbons of trees along the river and rivulets, shore up the tributaries, and add access for cyclists. We pedalers tend to stop at some point and buy tacos and a cold drink, easily distanced from each other and tied to fresh air. A bicycle fosters connection a car or mere feet cannot; traveling 20 miles is feasible without being in marathon shape, but you don’t miss details when cruising at 20 mph.

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This story originally ran in the April issue of D Magazine with the title “Finding Another Gear.” Harry Jones is a senior shareholder in the Dallas office of the international labor law firm of Littler Mendelson. Write to [email protected].

Dallas Yoga Center has long been a favorite of ours. The 30-year-old Lemmon Avenue studio has been named a D Best several times. The studio temporarily closed its doors in March due to city mandates, and its founders quickly pivoted from a weekly schedule of more than 70 in-person classes to about 40 virtual classes.

Soon after the shelter-in-place order took effect, the studio saw a dire need for mental health resources in our community. Dallas Yoga Center’s founders decided to give back by helping essential workers decompress with yoga and meditation. On May 6, Dallas Yoga Studio launched its CARE4 Initiative to give these workers free access to its online class library. The initiative is directly funded by the studio’s loyal members, who kept their memberships even when the physical location was closed.

Driving south on the Dallas North Tollway, approaching Oak Lawn, a cluster of Jeffersonian-style redbrick buildings stands to the left. One of the northernmost buildings houses the international headquarters of Gold’s Gym, a global chain with 700 locations in 29 countries. The fitness giant was forced to permanently close both of its local gyms — in Uptown and Preston Center — on April 15.

“As our global community continues to navigate these difficult and uncertain times, we want to provide consistent updates regarding the impact of COVID-19 on our gyms,” wrote Adam Zeitsiff, president and CEO of Gold’s Gym, to its members across the globe. “Today this includes sharing the news that the COVID-19-related closures have caused us to reassess the viability of some company-owned Gold’s Gym locations and make the difficult decision to permanently close about 30 gyms across the United States.”

All Gold’s Gym locations, whether corporate-owned or franchised, have been temporarily closed in accordance with directions from local and state governments and public health officials. Gold’s Gym froze all membership dues at no cost to customers, which, no doubt, caused serious issues concerning financial solvency. (This presumably forced the closures.) 

Last weekend, before Dallas banned dining inside of restaurants and drinking at bars, it was business as usual at the Midnight Rambler. The subterranean craft cocktail salon at Tim Headington’s Joule Hotel downtown was open until it wasn’t, which left its staff wondering about next steps. Sources tell D Magazine that leadership left employees mostly in the dark with little communication.

It is one of more than 15 concepts owned and operated by Headington Cos. that will be permanently or temporarily closed as Dallas enacts public health measures aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus. According to multiple sources, as many as 400 employees have been laid off or furloughed. The news was first reported last week by Central Track.

Employees like Jose Gonzales, the lead bartender at Midnight Rambler, suspected something like this may have been on the horizon. “It would have helped a lot as far as having a little more clear view of what was going on,” he says. “Until somebody tells us anything we still act like everything’s normal and that was the case, they just didn’t budge…they acted like everything was normal which is definitely very ominous. … You kind of start kind of realizing it’s getting closer.”

It is all the more startling considering the years that Headington spent making downtown his own cultural playground, first by turning 1927’s Dallas National Bank Building into the Joule Hotel. From there came restaurants and upscale retail department stores, most notably Forty Five Ten, which Headington purchased in 2015. He extended his reach into the Design District, commissioning a sculpture from artist Daniel Arsham to link the Italian restaurant Sassetta and the upscale sports bar Wheelhouse. He demolished a century old building across from the Joule during a Cowboys game and replaced it with a giant eyeball designed by the Chicago artist Tony Tasset. Every year, the Dallas Art Fair is bookended by a highly programmed bash in the courtyard in front of that sculpture.

Headington was an early bettor on a post-Recession downtown Dallas that had not yet seen an influx of new residents, remodeled hotels, and pricy bars. You could love or hate it, but Headington had a vision for the city. That vision is now gone in a flash. 

On March 25, Crystal Lovell will leave her home in McKinney, Texas–where she’s been sleeping in a Box Altitude tent to simulate the rarefied air at 18,000 feet–to fly to Kathmandu and climb Mount Everest. Sitting across from her in Houndstooth Coffee on Henderson Avenue, it’s hard to believe that the F45 fitness trainer only hiked her first mountain three years ago. “I got into it kind of by accident,” she says, sipping a bottle of water while I eat a croissant. “I moved here from Florida for work and went through just total depression and gained 50 pounds. My whole life revolved around work.”

A friend invited her to go backpacking through Yosemite, and one night they camped on top of a mountain peak. “I fell in love with the struggle of it, and then getting to see the views,” she says.

She took a break from her job as a sales consultant with Lincoln Financial to attend a 6-day mountaineering school in Washington with Alpine Ascents International. Then she climbed Mount Rainier, the tallest peak in Washington.

About a half-hour into class, around the time my thigh muscles began to feel as if they were evacuating my legs, the spin instructor shouted something that made me unreasonably angry.

“There is a reason why your windshield is bigger than your rearview mirror!”

Group fitness classes are rife with these motivational platitudes. We are biking to nowhere, clipped into pedals, but urged to “leave what happened today outside.” We get reminded that “we’ve come too far to give up on ourselves” and that “we control what we get out of today.” They’re usually meant to lightly empower you, to gently nudge you to stay on beat or up the resistance. Sometimes they work, other times you roll your eyes. But this one broke the fourth wall.

I couldn’t escape the vision of sitting in the driver’s seat, squinting through a windshield. It was too specific and too dumb. And as my rage flared, I noticed the miasma of neon-drenched sweat, club-ready subwoofers, an EDM remix of a Migos track that sounded like someone dropping a dumbbell onto concrete over and over. Think acid flashback, but also with physical pain. And, remember, you paid for this experience.

And yet, cycling classes just like this one got me into an exercise routine for the first time since playing high school football.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper is the father of aerobics, the reason Brazilians refer to going for a jog as “doing their cooper.” The 87-year-old still has a daily workout routine that would put some 20-somethings to shame. The 2019 Lifetime Achievement winner in D CEO’s Excellence in Healthcare Awards has been interviewed by Barbara Walters and Ted Koppel and featured in just about every major publication. He has a Super Bowl ring. He has presidential friends and patients, past and present, all over the world. One time while on stage, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush nodded to him in the crowd and apologized that he wasn’t working out. Another time, he did a morning jog with a Brazilian president, and he says the papers next day read, “President Does Cooper With Cooper.” (They’ve loved him in Brazil ever since he lent his philosophies to the World Cup-winning 1970 national team, although Cooper credits this guy named Pelé.)

But inside his wood-paneled office at the Preston Hollow campus of Cooper Aerobics, surrounded by relics of a very full career, Cooper is talking about what’s next.

That would be the company’s expansion into China, where Cooper’s agent just inked a 10-year, “sizable figure” deal to allow a medical device-maker to use the Cooper name. There are Cooper complexes in Nanjing and Beijing. “The truth of the matter is it appears that my reputation in China—my name in China—is becoming better known than in the United States,” Cooper says. He aims to get youth there to take the Cooper Institute’s FitnessGram test. “I’m trying to get a comparative analysis so I can embarrass America,” Cooper says, adding that his preliminary testing in China tells him the country would put us to shame. “I need something to shock America back to reality.”

“We’ve got a problem,” he goes on. “We spend twice as much money as anybody else in the world on healthcare, yet we rank 43rd in longevity. Too much care, too late.”

That might not sound all that original to a business executive engaged in the healthcare ecosystem’s gradual move to a value-based system, which puts a greater emphasis on prevention. But it’s a message Cooper has been preaching long before anyone took it seriously.

And he hasn’t stopped. Cooper seems to still have something left to prove, even as he approaches the 50-year anniversary of Cooper Aerobics in 2020.

The career-changing moment for the ever-sharp and fast-talking Cooper occurred two years before that founding, in 1968, when he published Aerobics. The book brought the world that word, popularized jogging, and shed light on the positive effects of being fit. He wrote it while he was a physician in the U.S. Air Force, working with NASA on astronaut-appropriate conditioning programs. His books have sold 30 million copies and have been translated into 41 different languages.

In the spring of 2014, I lost my job. After nearly a decade of my predictions that “They could shut this thing down any day,” they shut the thing down. The thing being a website called DailyCandy, where I was an editor. I was out of work and heartbroken, but the severance was generous, and if it had to end, it ended in the best possible way. My gravy train had pulled into the station. I would be OK, but eventually I would have to look for a new ride. One afternoon, though, when I was panicky about my unemployment, a trusted adviser suggested I meet him at a bar. I ordered a glass of wine and implored across the table: “Just tell me what to do!” This smart man told me to enjoy the rare good fortune of having a paycheck but not a job. He told me to go home and relax. I liked that plan. Lush morning naps and long afternoon walks consumed the next couple of months. In between, I made lists of what I liked and what was trending, aiming for the intersection of love and money. That’s how I decided to become a Pilates instructor. I’d been introduced to the strengthening and toning regimen created by a man but perfect for a woman through DailyCandy, and though I initially hated every moment, there was no denying that it worked. In a matter of months, Pilates did for me what a year with a personal trainer had not: I was slimmer and stronger. At Bodybar Fitness, a Pilates knockoff in Travis Walk, I became a convert and a regular, preaching the Pilates gospel to anyone who would listen.

I’d been told to get my energy up, so I sucked down triple-shot caramel macchiatos with extra whip before class. Despite my earnest efforts, though, the feedback remained dismal.

As luck would have it, Bodybar had a teacher training class coming up. I plopped down $500 to register and also enrolled in two certification programs at Classic Pilates. Those cost $550 each. Without an exercise background beyond my year as a student, I felt I needed not only credentials but also a foundation in human movement. This wasn’t just a dalliance for me; I was serious about changing careers and wanted to be legit. I devoted the summer to my endeavors. The Bodybar training took place on Saturdays and Sundays for two months. During that time I learned the ins and outs of a draconian-looking device called a reformer, which has a movable bed, adjustable springs, ropes and pullies, and a metal tower with a trapeze. It is a formidable opponent invented to train professional boxers, and it always appears ready for a fight. Attending and observing classes ate up another half dozen hours each week. On afternoons when the studio was empty, I dropped in to practice my moves on the reformer and tell imaginary students through a tiny microphone attached to my head to “pull your belly button in and up.” At home, I pored over a thick binder filled with anatomy illustrations and sequences of exercises designed to fatigue different muscle groups, memorizing the locations and functions of the iliopsoas, transverse abdominis, and serratus posterior. I filled notebooks with alignment notes and breathing cues. I taught a free class to the public before teaching one that served as my final exam. When I’d finished all that, I spent two three-day weekends at Classic Pilates, where I learned to perform and direct set sequences of floor exercises, fake-taught my fellow students, and passed both practical and written tests. I felt pretty good about all of it. But once I was released to teach, the uppity Uptowners showed no mercy. Prepared but nervous, I led my first Bodybar class of a dozen Lululemon-clad women through 50 minutes of lunge-and-lift, hug-a-tree, feet-in-straps, and plank-to-pike on a Monday evening. It was late summer, but that wasn’t why I was sweating. It was harder than I thought it would be to call spring changes, move around the room, and remind people to breathe. When class ended, I knew I hadn’t impressed anyone, but I felt I’d done fine. I taught a couple more classes—including one in which a woman stopped in the middle of a glute-firming regimen, looked at me, rolled her eyes, and walked out—before getting a call from the chirpy young manager and SMU grad student in charge of the Bodybar teachers. She wanted to talk to me about my “low energy.” My technical knowledge was on point, she said, but students had complained that my emotional intensity was lacking. She banished me to early morning classes in Plano, where, I was told, “students are less advanced” and “people are nicer.” I was not even a little bit discouraged by this. I was coming at my new career with zero experience and willing to work my way up from the burbs. If I needed to wake at 4:30 am to shower and dress and drive up Central Expressway in the dark to earn $30 per class, I was committed. I know what it means to pay your dues.

Morning after morning, I attempted to channel the actual Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader who was a fellow instructor.

I’d been told by the manager to praise and empathize with my students, and so I repeated phrases I’d heard other teachers use, like “Great work! Hang in there!” and “I know it burns! Stay with it!” I’d been told to get my energy up, so I sucked down triple-shot caramel macchiatos with extra whip before class. Despite my earnest efforts, though, the feedback remained dismal. Students reported that I didn’t move fast enough, didn’t speak loudly enough, and that my ’80s playlist didn’t suit their mood. One morning, a “nice” middle-aged lady walked in, looked me right in the eye, and said in a tone usually reserved for dog poo on a shoe: “Not you!” Though it may have been true that Plano women didn’t have the strength and stamina of their Uptown counterparts, they were not nicer. A week or so later, Chirpy Manager had a suggestion. As we sat knee to knee in the studio’s juice bar, she leaned forward and said, “I will help you find your inner cheerleader.” I swallowed a laugh and replied, “I doubt it.” Nevertheless, morning after morning, I attempted to channel the actual Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader who was a fellow instructor. I did my best to bounce around the mirrored space, demonstrate the proper form for a squat, and shout, “Nice job, ladies!” But clients kept right on complaining, and I was unceremoniously demoted in December via a short email informing me that I would be removed from the schedule while remaining on the substitute list. “We can discuss again during performance reviews,” the email read. But I’d had all the performance reviews I could stand. I quit and got a job in marketing. A year later, I enrolled in yoga teacher training. I’d been a devoted yogi for well over a decade but had rejected the idea of teaching yoga because studios around the country churn out instructors faster than you can say “down dog.” That didn’t seem very leading edge to me, but as we now know, my energy isn’t leading edge. It’s better suited for teaching the elderly. After completing a 200-hour program at Dallas Yoga Center, which cost $3,000 and included a five-hour (!) written exam, I sat one morning facing nearly two dozen octogenarians at an assisted living facility in East Dallas. I was making the most of my low energy leading a chair yoga class, directing hearing-impaired students over a public address system to “inhale as you float your arms up.” A spry pair in the front row smiled sweetly at me. I smiled back. A man fell asleep in the back row. I took note and kept going. Then a lady in a wheelchair cried out, “Where am I!? What the hell am I doing here?!” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. In that moment, I would later realize, the old woman in the wheelchair gave voice to something I’d felt since losing my job two years earlier. We all get a little lost sometimes. And then we find our way home.

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Allison Hatfield does not teach exercise for a living. She is a freelance writer and editor.

When Gold’s Gym CEO Brandon Bean began searching for a new executive team to help him run the iconic, Dallas-based fitness brand two years ago, he handed each interviewee a blank sheet of paper. After more than half a century in business, Bean realized, the venerable brand had grown a bit stale. So, he challenged each interviewee to write down their ideas on how they’d transform the fitness pioneer for the 21st century. Today, the six-member team Bean assembled has re-energized the brand with new clubs, new products and services, a revamped pricing structure that does away with annual contracts, a corporate wellness program, and a smart-phone exercise app. Gold’s Gym International now boasts 700 locations worldwide. That compares to 689 sites for Irvine, California-based LA Fitness, the nation’s top-grossing U.S. health club, according to trade publication Club Industry, and 425 locations for No. 3-ranked 24 Hour Fitness USA, based in San Ramon, California. (Gold’s, which is privately held, declines to provide its data to Club Industry and is not ranked on the publication’s annual Top 100 Health Clubs list.) “Strength and results are part of our ethos as a company, and always will be,” Bean says of the company’s revitalized approach. “It just takes a different form than it used to.”

In The Beginning

Gold’s Gym got its start in the 1960s in Southern California, just a stone’s throw from the Venice Beach pier, where muscle men would gather to work out. One of them, bodybuilder Joe Gold, opened the first Gold’s Gym in 1965—long before the term “fitness club” was part of the national lexicon. His small gym soon earned a reputation as a bodybuilding mecca. Joe Gold sold the gym just five years later, and the club would change ownership multiple times in the ensuing years. In 1977, the docudrama “Pumping Iron” featured a young Arnold Schwarzenegger—a Gold’s regular—and helped propel a cult following for the gym and its bodybuilding culture. Private equity firm Brockway Moran & Partners became the Gold’s majority shareholder in 1999, after it was approached by one of the gym’s biggest and most profitable franchisees to support a bid to buy Gold’s. “We were immediately attracted to the brand, favorable industry dynamics, and the company’s worldwide growth potential,” Brockway Moran says on the Gold’s Gym website. “However, it was clear that the company was undercapitalized and did not have a deep enough management team to realize its full potential.” During a five-year window, the PE firm bulked up the Southern California gym’s corporate-owned footprint from its single location in Venice by adding 37 corporate sites and 100 new franchised sites, eventually bringing the total number of gyms to 500. It also focused heavily on branded products, licensing the Gold’s name on 600 products ranging from equipment and clothing to nutritional supplements.

TRT Buys Gold’s

In 2004, Brockway sold Gold’s for $158 million to a group led by Dallas-based TRT Holdings Inc., the family-owned investment and holding company founded by Reese Rowling and his son, Dallas billionaire Robert Rowling. TRT, which also owns Dallas-based Omni Hotels & Resorts, got its start in the energy industry, eventually selling a portion of its holdings to Texaco (now Chevron). It still owns Tana Exploration and last year bought Origins Behavioral HealthCare, a provider of substance abuse treatment programs. Bean and his wife, Amy, whom he met at The University of Texas at Austin, spent time in Dallas after graduating from college. But then they decided to “go explore” and headed to Boston, where he attended graduate school at MIT and she went to Harvard. They bought a brownstone and were enjoying the urban life when Amy got pregnant with twins. In 2007, the couple decided to return to Texas to be closer to family. Bean got connected to TRT while looking for job opportunities with UTIMCO, the external investment corporation that oversees investments for The University of Texas and A&M University systems. Bean’s brother was a friend of Robert Rowling, who was UTIMCO’s chairman of the board at the time. Through that connection, Bean learned that TRT Holdings had an opening and eventually was hired to manage TRT’s investments. He took the title of CFO not longer after and, in 2013, added chairman of Gold’s Gym to his responsibilities. Involvement in a customer-facing brand was something new for Bean, and the chairmanship offered an opportunity to take a more active role with management. By January 2016, he’d been named the company’s CEO. “This was a big step for me, moving out of the finance role, which I’d done most of my life, into a CEO role,” he says. “I love that it combines the analytical, which I love, with being creative, which I also love.”

Brand Evolution

Bean began his new role by looking for great talent. He hired a whole new executive team, seeking skill sets from other industries that could be applied to the fitness industry. Ultimately, he only hired one executive who had any prior fitness-industry experience. “One of the first things we set out to do was to figure out who we are, who we serve, and how we serve them,” Bean says. “Part of that was creating a strategy around how we are going to compete.” The goal: A defensible fitness product differentiated by people, processes, and programming. From those strategy sessions, the team decided it could tap digital transformation to leverage its brand beyond the four gym walls. “Our true core competency is not building and operating gyms,” Bean says. “Our true core competency is fitness. How do we take fitness to everyone who knows this brand around the world?” They did it with a smartphone app introduced last October called Gold’s AMP—marketed as “Your Digital Personal Trainer.” The app provides Gold’s Gym-certified coaches and a custom music library to offer the Gold’s experience outside the gym’s walls. Alternatively, members, if they wish, can use the app while working out at the gym. It costs $9.99 per month after a seven-day free trial. Three of Gold’s four membership levels include the app in the membership. No Gold’s Gym membership is required to subscribe to the app. All the app’s workouts are currently cardio-based, but strength training will be added in the future. While Bean won’t disclose how many subscribers the app has, he says the company met and exceeded its initial six-month goal ahead of schedule. The fitness app genre is crowded and many can be found for free, but Gold’s believes its offering stands out. AMP is just one example of how Gold’s is figuring out where it fits into the highly fragmented industry. Over the past decade, the fitness industry has matured and evolved. No longer is everyone building the same-sized gym with nearly identical equipment, amenities, and pricing. The offerings today include inexpensive, volume-oriented options such as Planet Fitness, the super-store approach of LA Fitness, and the luxury fitness boutique segment.

Keeping The Legacy Alive

Gold’s legacy has been its reputation as a place to go for results, and the still-new team is working to build on that legacy. “People come to us for results. Our mission is to help people achieve their potential through fitness,” Bean says. “Help is a key word. It’s not, ‘We are going to open our doors and allow you to use our equipment.’ We are going to help you find your starting point. We are going to help show you the ropes.” While the gym still appeals to bodybuilders, its audience is far-reaching today and includes all generations. “The essence of who we are is still the same,” Bean says. “The strength culture—and strength comes in many forms. It’s not just muscle. It’s, ‘How do you get through the day? How do you get through the cold rain?’ It’s not just bodybuilding, but it’s mental and emotional strength as well.”

“We were the pioneers of the industry 53 years ago, and I think we are the pioneers again today.”

Brandon Bean, Gold’s Gym CEO

Waxahachie attorney Vance Hinds says he’s found Gold’s culture, especially the support of fellow gym members and coaches, extremely helpful in his weight-loss journey. Hinds tipped the scales at 475 pounds when he began working out regularly at Gold’s Waxahachie in November. He’s using social media (Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook) to chronicle his journey. By mid-March, he’d lost more than 75 pounds. He swims on Monday nights, does aqua aerobics on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and recently added a Saturday Body Pump class. “The whole group up there has such a positive attitude,” Hinds says. “My aqua aerobics coach, Carole Bradley-Helm, pushes me hard. We take a picture after every class [with the whole group] and post it on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They expect me to be there.” Recently, a young, buff guy was walking out of the gym and passed Hinds, 53, who was entering. “He gave me a fist bump and said, ‘I’m following you. Keep it up. Good job.’ I swear, I swam a little harder that day.” The chain is in the process of retrofitting its company-owned stores to include what it’s named Gold’s Studio. The Gold’s Studios typically offer two or three signature coach-led programs: Gold’s Burn (heart-rate variability training), Gold’s Fit (high-intensity interval training, or HIIT), and Gold’s Cycle (a competitive, music-enhanced cycling experience). It’s one way Gold’s is competing against the onslaught of specialty fitness boutiques. Franchise locations have expressed interest in retrofitting, but, because Gold’s Studio requires committed floor space, it’s unlikely they’ll be as aggressive in the rollout. All corporate locations are scheduled to be retrofitted within two years. Gold’s also decided to make joining easier. In January, the company did away with its membership contracts and introduced four levels of memberships to entice engagement. The levels start with a basic $40 per month membership, plus three others: $50, $80, and $100 a month levels offering additional services and programming. About 2 million people are members of a Gold’s Gym in the U.S., less than 5 percent of the fitness market. Close to 18 percent of the U.S. population holds a gym membership, up from between 10 percent and 12 percent 20 years ago, according to IHRSA, a fitness club industry trade group. Gold’s says it isn’t as focused on membership numbers as engagement. It believes its new membership tiers should help with engagement numbers, and says nearly half its members are joining above the basic rate. “We’re certainly excited, but it’s also early,” Bean notes. “At over 20 percent, our EBITDA margin is on the upper end in the franchise industry. “I’d personally rather haver fewer members who are more engaged,” Bean says. “We are not trying to serve everybody. We want to serve our niche and serve them really, really well.” While people of all ages join Gold’s, the company believes its niche is 25- to 35-year-old millennials, both men and women, and that’s where it’s focusing its marketing efforts. “That millennial group likes to spend money on experiences,” Bean says. “More of their disposable income is going toward experience, and we are trying to make Gold’s and its coaching and its community an experience for them.”

Attracting Corporate Interest

Another way Gold’s hopes to leverage its brand is through a new corporate wellness program. The program, called Gold’s Care, was beta-tested in Austin over the past six months and launched in a limited roll-out there in April. It’s expected to move into a portion of San Antonio by summer. By year’s end, all of Austin and San Antonio are expected to be offering Gold’s Care with the expectation of taking it nationwide in 2019. “We have a lot of exciting things going on, but this is one that is really exciting and aligns with our strategy of differentiating [ourselves] from other companies,” Bean says. Competing fitness clubs don’t have Gold’s combination of existing corporate relationships, footprint, and coaching to compete, he contends. Under the program, a member or nonmember comes into Gold’s and receives a health assessment, which includes a pin-prick blood draw and a 3D body scan that measures a person’s body mass index and body measurements. From there, the person is put into a green, yellow, or red bucket. Yellows and reds go through a 13-week nutrition and fitness program at Gold’s, paid for by their insurance company after a $99 entry fee paid by the individual. “Businesses and insurance companies are willing to pay for this to get their employees from a red to a yellow or a yellow to a green,” Bean says. “The programming that we’ve put together has shown it can do that.” It ultimately should save insurance companies, businesses, and the individuals money if participants exit the program more fit and with the tools to live a healthier life. Gold’s is hopeful that individuals who go through the program will see such great results, they’ll become Gold’s Gym members at one of the higher, engaged membership levels. Bean foresees the program connecting the dots in a disconnected healthcare system where individuals go to the doctor for lab tests and receive the results, but don’t obtain any follow-up care.

Looking Ahead

The company has 75 locations in Texas—five in North Texas—including corporate and franchised stores. That’s the most of any state besides California. Texas, Bean believes, has the ability to eventually support three to four times that many. The company is eyeing several sites in Dallas-Fort Worth and expects to begin expanding here soon. Gold’s also is making connections with private equity firms to explore expansion options around the U.S. and abroad. Building each Gold’s Gym costs $4 million to $5 million, which makes it costly and often out of the reach of individual investors. Market demographics will dictate where the company expands. “Given the shifting winds of retail, there is a lot of great second-generation space that has opened up,” Bean notes. Fitness clubs, including Gold’s, have become sought-after anchor tenants for these retail spots, something that wasn’t occurring just a few years ago. Bean, who admires GE’s Jack Welch, says he’s been regularly sharing a Welch quote with the management team as they work to bring new life to the venerable chain through a transformation that’s now entering its third year. “If the world outside is moving faster than the organization is moving, then the end is near,” Bean says, quoting Welch. “I think that quote is very applicable to where a lot of people in this industry found themselves. There’s so much great innovation going on with the apps, wearables, and boutique space, and the HVLT [high-volume, low-price] business model. The core of the industry was doing what they’d always done, so this great innovation on the outside has been a great force for change within the whole industry.” Gold’s, Bean believes, has started to move faster than the world outside its gym doors. “We are doing things now that nobody else is doing, and that’s been a really big cultural shift for us,” he says. Gold’s, in his opinion, had gotten behind the curve but has since caught up and surpassed the industry. “We were the pioneers of the industry 53 years ago,” Bean says, “and I think we are the pioneers again today. We’re just scratching the surface of what is possible.”

Over the years, my wife has devised a trick for getting me to do things I’d prefer not to. She pretends that we’ve already discussed the matter and that I’ve forgotten I agreed to do the unpleasant thing. Taking advantage of my failing memory isn’t nice, but it’s effective. She would tell you that I’m making this up, that she doesn’t trick me, but I feel like she tricks me, and if couple’s therapy has taught me one thing it’s that feelings are just as important as facts.

She used the trick to get me to go to bunny yoga.

On a Friday evening, I asked, “We got anything this weekend?”

She said, “You’re taking Stella to bunny yoga tomorrow at the JCC.”

“What?! Bunny yoga? What the heck is bunny yoga? And why is it Jewish?”

“Tim. We already talked about this,” she said, almost certainly lying. “I have tennis tomorrow. You’re taking Stella to bunny yoga.”

Our 12-year-old daughter has a thing for rabbits. This is a fact that I remember. So while my wife was off doing something fun that she enjoys, I gathered up our yoga mat and our daughter and took them both to bunny yoga.

Four months after moving to Dallas, I stood at the reception desk at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital ER, struggling to articulate in a whisper, “I need to find the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center.”

“I will get you a doctor,” the receptionist said, picking up a phone.

“I don’t need a doctor. I escaped.”

“Are you alone?”

I was.

I’m Abi Grise, the hero of this story. I’ll spoil it for you: on nearly the three-year anniversary of escaping my rapist, I ran the BMW Dallas Marathon. But making peace with this city and reclaiming my body were more complicated than that.

I towed my Mustang from Kentucky to Old East Dallas on August 14, 2013, and moved into a century-old mansion that had been cut into studio apartments. The foundation visibly leaned, my bathroom door wouldn’t shut, and the landlord’s five dogs did their business in a bed of plastic flowers on the balding front lawn. Rent was $500, including utilities. I knew no one.

I was enrolled as a graduate student at SMU, but I quit on my first day of class after being offered my dream job as a copywriter for an advertising agency in Richardson. Things looked good, until they didn’t.

After the attack, friends suggested I cut my losses and retreat home to Kentucky. This wasn’t outrageous—I’d never had a positive relationship with my body, and forging through the freshman year of my career with post-traumatic stress disorder apart from a support system seemed unfathomable.

Some background: I started running in college for all the wrong reasons. I ran as a way to lose weight, even though I barely had any weight to lose. I ran for someone else, foolishly hoping to capture the attention of a friend I liked who dated skinny girls. I ran as punishment after a handful of Cheez-Its or a couple of cheap beers. I hated running.

After the attack, I didn’t run again for a year. Well-meaning people told me I was lucky to escape. The 911 operator, police officers, detective, nurse, DARCC therapist, my friends, my family. I said it, too. But I didn’t feel lucky. I woke at odd hours of the night, gasping from recurring nightmares of being choked to death. I backed myself into corners on the DART train during my commute, side-eyeing male passengers. Every time I shook hands with a man I’d never met, I’d wonder, Would he?

Along with a normal case of impostor syndrome at my first job, I quietly battled panic attacks in the bathroom. I confided in the wrong people. I made noncommittal friendships. I wondered if it would be possible to ever be inherently trusting again or feel at home in Texas.

After a year, I met a casual runner at Trees during an Ishi concert. We began dating and ran together along the Katy Trail. A boyfriend still wasn’t a great reason to run. It wasn’t until he quit the sport, the relationship fizzled out, and I continued running on my own that I accidentally fell in love with running.

Life is complicated. The strengthening of our muscles—including our hearts—occurs so slowly that we barely notice. Growth is nonlinear. Healing from PTSD, falling in love with running, and making Dallas my home were things I felt before I understood them. I was drinking water before I realized I was thirsty.

One mile at a time, the sharpness of PTSD softened. I attended free therapy sessions from DARCC in the offices of an old church. I walked to Deep Ellum and Lowest Greenville from my apartment, determined not to let one man scare me into becoming a shut-in. I explored the city, perusing the stacks of The Wild Detectives, going to concerts at The Kessler Theater, marveling at the taxidermic animals at Double Wide. I read Strange Peaches, Dallas Noir, and Love Me Back to study the nuances of my adopted city through other writers. I put in the effort to befriend co-workers. I doubled down to secure a promotion from junior copywriter to copywriter. I adopted a cat.

For years, I had assessed my body’s worth on sexual appeal. The attack was the breaking point. It took someone else reducing me to an object to understand that, unless something changed, I would never be happy. I had a choice: I could accept this man’s appraisal that my body was worthless and let him win. Or, I could treat my body as an extension of my spirit and feed it with kindness and patience.

Running made me health-conscious. I no longer cared about being skinny or pretty. I wanted to be strong. So I ran without makeup in old sweatshirts, with my hair in a lopsided braid. When it was cold, I blew my nose on my sleeve.

Running taught me patience. I forgave myself for walking. I bandaged my blisters. I sang to soothe myself as my toes turned pink during ice baths. I learned to listen to my body—cramping meant dehydration, sluggishness meant poor sleep, aches meant busted shoes. I noted the light of sunrise reflecting off street signs and car hoods, and the dew I kicked off blades of grass. I counted ducks, rabbits, squirrels. I felt my heart beat.

During the most difficult hours of running, I mouthed mantras. You’ve come so far already. You were born for this. Thank you. I gave thanks for my bad runs and my good runs.

Nearly every weekend last year, I hit the pavement for my long runs along White Rock Lake. Seven miles into the 9.3-mile loop, there is a part of the trail open only to pedestrians. As a ritual, I stop at a bench at the top of a small hill. In summer, sailboats glide across the skyline. In spring, Indian paintbrushes sway, and bikers whir on the path below. This is where I pause my music and my GPS app. I listen to my labored breath and feel my calves tingle. Then I list aloud, to my city skyline, at least three things I’m grateful for that day. It lightens my step for the last 2 miles. It is never a waste of time to reflect on the gift of your health and life.

After completing the Big D Half Marathon on April 10, 2016, I sobbed. For the first time in my life, I had done something with my body I was proud of, for no one else but me. I proved my attacker wrong, that this body was strong, beautiful, something to be revered. And I decided I wanted to run the full BMW Dallas Marathon on December 11.

Like many first-time marathoners, my goal was to finish. But I had other goals, too, such as being levelheaded, compassionate, and not assuming the worst in people. On the surface, it looks like these goals are not about a marathon. But, for me, running was therapy.

Hours early to the starting gun, I watched thousands of runners arrive. Some paced, jittery with nerves. Others stretched in custom t-shirts along the barriers. Running is a sport dominated by introverts, and I was surprised by the sheer mass of competitors drawn together after most likely training solo for months. By that point, I’d run 1,005 miles by myself.

I was placed in the first corral. Hundreds of toned, competitive athletes surrounded me. But instead of jealousy, I felt camaraderie. I knew the battles they’d fought to get here. Sprinkled throughout the marathon spectators were adults and children, arms outstretched, holding Tupperware containers of lemon slices. I had never heard of runners sucking on lemons, so at first I thought it was a joke. You know, “When life gives you lemons …” Turns out, runners suck on lemons for sugar, hydration, and to jolt themselves into a state of heightened awareness. If this isn’t a perfect metaphor for this story, I don’t know what is.

I have a secret to running fast. You ready? High-five the children holding out their hands along the course. Wave to spectators ringing cowbells and shouting encouragement. Thank every person offering Gatorade or Goldfish crackers from a folding table on their driveway. Gratitude gives you strength. Saying thank you is never a waste of time on your journey.

I finished my first marathon in 3 hours, 44 minutes. I ranked in the top 6 percent of women running the BMW Dallas Marathon in 2016, and top 14 percent of women and men combined. The numbers defied my expectations, but my real victories occurred while running at ordinary speeds, on weekdays I barely remember, in my ratty sweatshirt, around my apartment complex.

“If your legs are tired, run with your heart.” This was a sign I passed at mile 22. It’s true. The strength of your spirit carries you across the finish line. After all, the first marathon runner in Greece hadn’t trained for weeks on end. He ran for a cause.

At the end of the BMW Dallas Marathon, elite and Olympian runners—Meb Keflezighi, Desiree Linden, and Deena Kastor among them—stood at the finish line to present medals to the runners behind them. That’s when I realized I had a job to do. When we win battles, it is our duty to help others still fighting.

I didn’t choose to be assaulted. But I choose to share my story, to bring awareness to sexual assault, to show that PTSD is not a death sentence for happiness or success. Running a marathon hasn’t cured the lingering, possibly lifelong psychological and physiological effects of being assaulted. I’m jumpy. Catcalls terrify me. I can’t sleep in unfamiliar places. I close my eyes during violent movies. Nevertheless, I live a full life.

My story is bigger than my assault, just as the marathon was a fraction of the miles I ran last year. The highlights and shadows of our lives do not define us. This is how I honor those still fighting behind me.

My story is not extraordinary. One out of every six women in Dallas has been sexually assaulted. You ride next to us on DART, you pass us on the Katy Trail, stand behind us in line for lunch at Serj. We are your relatives, co-workers, friends. This is the tale of 1,183,799 women and 215,236 men in North Texas.

I moved to Dallas with the intent to earn my master’s degree at SMU and promptly leave. Three years was all I planned to give Texas. My story could have ended under a white flag after four months. But I stayed and made peace with this city instead.

As a result, my story includes drinking Blood and Honeys with friends at The Foundry, countless concerts at Granada Theater, hiking at Cedar Ridge Preserve, boogieing at Reunion Lawn Parties, wakeboarding at Grapevine Lake, Late Nights at the DMA, evenings at Bowlounge and Truck Yard, movies at The Texas Theatre, countless sunrises at White Rock Lake, throwing popcorn at Pocket Sandwich Theatre, eating foot-long hot dogs at Rangers games, writing fiction at the Creative Arts Center of Dallas, laughing to tears at the Dallas Comedy House, discovering mindfulness at We Yogis, eating deep-fried shrimp boil at the State Fair of Texas. And, now, running through the finish line at the BMW Dallas Marathon, with my hands in the air and my face lifted to the sky, saying thank you, thank you, thank you.

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You can donate to the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center at dallasrapecrisis.org. Abi Grise is the copywriter for D Magazine Partners, the parent company of D Magazine.