Name: Jessica Lemire-Nicolich or just Jess
Age: 29 (I’m turning the big 3-0 on Thursday!)
Home Town: Yaphank
Current Town: Selden
Marital Status: Married to the coolest guy ever
Occupation: Work in Public Affairs at Mather Hospital
Hobbies: Running, eating, trying new group fitness classes, gardening, dancing, cooking, eating, reading, binge watching Netflix shows, eating, singing along to songs on the radio in the car at FULL volume, and eating. Did I forget to say eating? 🤷♀️
Hmmm… where to begin? I guess the beginning is a good place to start (hope you all enjoy these amazingly embarrassing vintage pics of me 🤣). My mother tells me that even as a baby, I always had to be in perpetual motion. I needed to be rocked, in one of those baby swing contraptions, or on a rocking horse moving back and forth to the beat of whatever song was playing on MTV at that moment, usually something by Milli Vanilli (I know… scandalous!). I used to stand at the front door and push my face up against the glass and say “Go out? Go out? Go out?” (my first phrase – not even joking) over and over again.
I was never really a runner. I always did running sports like tennis and lacrosse, but I hated the running drills we had to do. If fact, I dreaded running so much that I often contemplated laying down in the middle of the court or field and staying there until someone just dragged me away. What I really loved was dancing. I started dancing at the age of three. By five I was taking classes several days a week. I danced all the way through high school. Tap, jazz, ballet, lyrical, pointe – you name it, I took it (except for hip hop. I’m not cool enough to drop it like it’s hot). Even now I still love to do a few pirouette’s in the kitchen while I’m waiting for dinner to come out of the oven just to make sure I still can. Now I take the occasional Zumba class to keep my love of dance alive. You’ll usually find me in the first row of the class going FULL HAM because I have zero chill and am having so much fun that I forget how crazy I look.
Fast forward to after college (Fordham Rams for life!!), I met my now husband, we dated for a few years, bought a house in Selden, and got married. I call this the period of the “happy weight gain.” We were happy in our house and our relationship, so we got a little lazy when it came to taking care of ourselves. We didn’t eat as healthfully as we should have and stopped exercising while our lives were consumed with house work and wedding planning. Finally, when the dust settled, we both took a good hard look in the mirror and realized that we needed to overhaul our diets and get back to the gym. That’s when I started running. I started out with short distances and slow paces. I thought I was superwoman the first time I ran a 5k without stopping. That’s when I fell in love with running and the feeling of pushing myself to reach longer distances. Forty-five pounds and five half marathons later, I’m finally ready to conquer my first full marathon this year in NYC for Team for Kids. I am so happy that I found love for running and extremely grateful to have found this community of wonderful humans that have embraced, encouraged and pushed me to become a better runner and a better person. So thank you everyone! Even if I haven’t met you in person yet, your kindness and support mean more than you know.