Grit and Glimmer (formerly known as the Everyday Athlete Blog) is a labor of love produced by Heidi Swift, a newspaper columnist, freelance writer and photographer (and sometimes bike racer) with a penchant for adventure.

The content here is sometimes informational, sometimes inspirational, but always, always straight from the gut.

The Grit

Broken fingers, frost-bitten toes, bourbon adventures, off-road cycling mayhem, road racing agony, thunderstorm training runs, and a healthy dose of sailor speak.

The grit is stuck in your teeth after the first muddy cyclocross of the year. It’s the thing in your gut that gets you through six back-to-back softball games in triple digit temperatures. It’s the way your teeth smash together when you’re fighting not to get dropped up a climb. It’s the raw edge, the hard side, the fighting spirit.

The Glimmer

Glimmer is a word I borrowed from Pam Houston after seeing her speak at a conference a few years back. It’s what she calls the notes she takes when she captures a little life vignette to use later in her work. It’s about moments and details and a way of communicating them. It’s about honoring small things, poignant things, language and life.

About Swift

I’m Heidi Swift. I was raised by wolves in Seattle, Washington before I moved to San Francisco to work with bigger, richer wolves in the advertising industry. That was fun – ad people are out of their minds. I moved to Portland, Oregon after about 7 years of that carnival.

I have a boyfriend named Sal whom I sometimes call “my partner”. I am daily reminded by the English language’s excruciatingly glaring lack of word for life-partner-but-relationship-not-sanctioned-by-law-or-god (how lame is “life partner”). Sal is rad. He makes me laugh.

I’m a recovering perfectionist and a relentless detail-person. It can be really annoying (especially for Sal) but I like to consider it one of my super-powers. I’m also a culinary daredevil with an especially fond place in my heart for seafood of all kinds. I wear boots with dresses and big scarves with almost everything. I like hats.

I also like bicycles, old cameras, hoppy beer, good design, sad music, well-made cocktails, and rain. But not necessarily in that order.

A reluctant cyclist at first,  I was lured into the painful sport by the siren song of cyclocross. I ride for the locally fabulous, Portland-based Veloforma Cycling team and am known for my inability to descend at speed, triathlete-grade bike handling skills, and willingness to suffer.

Background

Born to a feisty newspaper reporter, Heidi spent her youth chasing ambulances, sleeping under chairs at political events, and vowing never to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

Unfortunately, Heidi could not escape her fate and now writes a twice-monthly cycling column for the Oregonian called The Everyday Cyclist and an online column for Wend Magazine: The Cycling Diaries. Her work has appeared in Cyclocross Magazine, Bicycling Magazine, Wend Magazine, VeloNews (print and online), and CyclingNews.com.

If all this stuff makes you yawn and you’re looking for the real dirt then you might want to check out this post.