Amanda Kabak

Training for Love Amanda Kabak

Charlie is a life-long jock who's butchy enough to cause plenty of raised eyebrows in gym locker rooms. She's physically strong and vital, but her life has been on hold for the last decade, ever since she flamed out of college on a wave of drugs, alcohol, and undiagnosed bipolar depression. For years she's been working the same low-stress job at RRiotWear, a women's fitness clothing startup in Chicago, still hasn't earned her degree, and takes the future maybe a little too day-by-day.

Just a mile away from RRiotWear, Elizabeth McIntyre runs a boutique tech consultancy. Since graduating from MIT, she's made herself into the face of women in technology, grinning and bearing the heavy expectations that come with the role. She has been going a thousand miles an hour for years, until now she has a beautiful apartment she never sees, a string of ex-girlfriends, and a propensity for panic attacks that lands her in the hospital one spring evening. That night, her doctor confirms what her best friend, Carmen, has been saying for years: she's got to slow down and make some radical changes.

May in Chicago means the start of marathon training for the fall race, and Charlie's boss ropes her into leading a beginning group in the program RRiotWear facilitates. Carmen convinces Elizabeth to abandon her laptop and join her for some heart-healthy exercise. Though Elizabeth has a thing for femmes and Charlie is trying to claw her way out of a lingering depression, their attraction grows week after week and mile after mile--until their secrets threaten to keep them apart.