Note from Tracy: There has been an awesome response! Thank you! Sadly, this means we need to set a deadline. If you’d like to be considered for the group starting on Labour Day please contact me by Friday, August 17 at 9 am Eastern Time with your expression of interest. Contact info etc below. 🙂
Hey everyone. Cate, Christine and I have an exciting new thing to offer to a group of willing volunteers! It’s our Fit Feminist challenge group (name still to be determined).
Here’s the basic idea: the group will be an online support and challenge group accessed through a secret Facebook page that only members of the group have access to. There will be a maximum of 20 members plus Cate, Christine and I in the first iteration of the group. Members will be encouraged to develop their own challenge and goals, based on the feminist fitness principles we promote on this website. So we won’t be supporting weight loss and dieting as goals.
The loose model is Sam’s and my “fittest by 50 challenge” that started the blog and that we document in Fit at Mid-Life: A Feminist Fitness Journey. We spent a bit of time trying to decide what mattered to us, and then we each picked a thing that we were training for. My thing was an Olympic distance triathlon by my 50th birthday. Hers was the Ride for Life from Toronto to Montreal. In between we did lots of other things, but having those big goals helped to focus our training.
Members of the Fit Feminist group can pick something like that, but there are other possibilities, such as a goal of doing something every day (as Cate did in her recent post about her July challenge), or the goal of training 3 times a week, or running a faster 10K (or running at 10K at all!), making it to the pool twice a week, or even of developing a new set of values around your fitness pursuits (athletic over aesthetic!).
In addition to helping everyone develop a goal (or at least providing a space where people can state their goals and have a gentle circle of accountability), the group will be there for mutual support and encouragement.
Cate, Christine and I will offer weekly focal points (possibly more frequent than that, we’re not sure yet). Some of these will be based on the “Try This” suggestions in Fit at Mid-Life: A Feminist Fitness Journey (by me and Samantha, published by Greystone Books, 2018). We’ll post some materials closer to the start date that articulate our approach, rules of engagement, and some other things.
The first group is a bit of an experiment, so we’ll be looking to members to help shape the process, format, and even the purpose. We’ll want suggestions and will be trying out a bunch of different things, some of which might work and others of which may not.
All three of us also plan to be members as well as facilitators.
We’ll start on Labour Day.
It’s an experiment. If it sounds vague and speculative, it sort of is. But we think it will be fun, and could be the start of something. The first group will probably be carry us through to December, so if you do volunteer you’ll want to be available for a 3-4 month commitment (I think…).
If you are interested, please email me (Tracy) fitfeminist50@gmail.com with the subject heading Fit Feminist Group and a brief sentence or two explaining that you’re interested (and if you wish to indulge me further, why you’re interested /what you would hope for from the group). We’re capping at 20, so if you are interested, please get in touch sooner rather than later.
Tracy
I am so excited about supporting this and being part of it! Thanks for the inspiration, Tracy! — Cate