It’s a vivoactive 5 and does things my previous watch, the 4, didn’t. I’m finding the sleep reports useful, but there are other measures I’m not so sure what to make of.
One of those is heart rate variability, or HRV.
What the heck is heart rate variability? Heart rate variability, according to Garmin, is the tiny, constantly shifting gap between one heartbeat and the next. Counterintuitively, more variability is generally the healthy sign: it means your autonomic nervous system is flexible, shifting easily between “go” mode and “rest and digest” mode. Less variability — a heart ticking along too metronomically — tends to show up when you’re fatigued, stressed, sick, or under-recovered.
Mostly mine is balanced which means that my recent average is within my normal range — and my body’s handling its mix of training stress and recovery well. Occasionally, it comes out as unbalanced. Garmin says that means my average has drifted just outside my usual range, which can mean anything from a hard training block to poor sleep, a stressful week, or the start of getting sick. It could also read “low,” but mine hasn’t done that yet. And that’s supposed to be worse than unbalanced.
Balanced is the boring-but-good outcome: it means my body is absorbing whatever training and life stress I’m putting on it and bouncing back. Yay! What factors send it into the unbalanced range? Not enough sleep, working out too hard without enough recovery, too much stress, and for others, but not me, too much alcohol.
I guess it’s useful as a tool for managing sleep, stress, and workout recovery. I’m also guessing I will largely ignore it! You?
I read Sam’s post this morning, the one about gradual loss of fitness due to aging. Or perhaps not exactly driven by aging. What is the reality?
I guess I get to speak as one who is definitely older (soon to be 75). My own experience strongly suggests that you don’t have to lose much.
As I may have mentioned before, I enjoy reading bicycle tour journals on the website, crazyguyonabike.com. At the moment, I am following a woman in her 70s who, with a group of friends, is riding the famous Land’s End to John O’Groats route. They have, so far, ridden 865 miles and climbed a total of 59,101 feet. Four days to go. Yes, I typed that correctly. There are four who joined this organized tour together; three of them brought their e-bikes, and one is riding a road bike with no assist. The e-bikes are limited by the restrictions airlines put on the batteries: apparently you can bring a spare battery, which has a much smaller range, but cannot bring the main battery (fire risk). So they are confining the pedal assist to climbs, some of which are close to 20% grade. Are these women professional athletes? Well, I don’t see anything like that in the journal. Looks to me like they are just women close to my age doing a seriously challenging tour.
In my own case, so far my only real restriction is bone-on-bone arthritis in one knee. It was diagnosed 13 years ago, and with good PT, it is only recently that I have had to adapt anything. I can’t do anything that requires me to bend that knee much. It has recently pretty much ruled out running. But in terms of strength & effort, things haven’t changed much. My heart rate seems to be about what it has always been. I can climb the hills on my bike – can let that go for a while & get it back. My activity schedule – I don’t think of it as a workout schedule, although there are plenty of workout elements – is my idea of fun now that I am retired. So, last week I rode my bike 100 miles, am working back to having at least one 60-mile day most weeks; walking with friends several hours most weeks; bird watching; some yoga; some specific strength training; a couple of replacements for running, including some rowing machine time and some fast walking up steep slopes; and dance classes, 4 1/2 hours in a typical week.
I think back to my parents and grandparents. Fitness as we now consider it was nothing anyone talked about. Especially for women. One change that’s almost hard to believe now: my father felt he had to give up tennis (never played much anyway) after one of his friends had a terrible heart attack. No doctor told him vigorous exercise was a good idea. They were in their late 40s. But he was always a brisk and enthusiastic walker until he suddenly was unable to keep his balance (after he died, we learned that he had several minor strokes; they must have hit the spot that controlled his balance). My grandparents on one side travelled a lot, must have walked a lot, but never did anything like the gym time we now do, and running had not yet become a common activity. My other grandparents, well, my grandfather was never active, but my grandmother was always busy, always scooting back & forth between our house and theirs. Again, nothing we would recognize as fitness-related, but definitely more activity than most her age and era. She lived longer than the others and was active until within a couple of months of her death.
I look at their various activity levels when I think about my own. They make me realize how much difference our activities can make in our ongoing ability to maintain and improve our health and energy levels. When I launched my major fitness endeavour, over 25 years ago, my doctor asked how I found the time & energy for all I was doing. “Using energy creates more energy,” I told him. “May I quote you on that?” he asked.
Does aging even exist? Well, yes. There are definitely some changes I don’t love. For me, it is drier, more sun-sensitive skin, and a pickier digestive system (not bad, just don’t get along with a couple of things, mostly garlic). And flexibility has never been good for me & it is a bit worse, but workouts can really help that. My current assumption is that, as long as I am feeling well, keeping it up is the best choice. I feel stronger than I did 30 years ago.
Bio
I am a lifelong Californian. My mother and father were not born here but moved to the state as small children. I have two grown daughters and five wonderful grandchildren. I spent my working life working at, and eventually running, the family insurance business. My father had introduced many employee benefits – sabbatical starting in 1970, optional four-day work week in 1972, elimination of all official work time rules in 1974. Adults like to be treated as adults, and people tended to stay a long time, so it was a very pleasant working environment with key elements of trust and respect. I also served on a couple of independent school boards, one a strong academic school serving grades 6-12, one a school designed to start helping city kids who had suffered the ongoing effects of racism & poverty to find opportunities they might not as easily discover without support. I live at a Lifetime Care Community where I serve on the finance committee and chair the sustainability committee. I also plan to join the newly formed fitness committee. And for fun, I have ridden my bicycle across North America. Twice.
It’s cheering each other on – even when you are not at a personal best.
It’s not posing.
It’s not a certain outfit.
It’s not a certain size.
It’s not certain results.
Fitness is moving.
Fitness is lifting what you can – whether your own body (full or torso only) or a barbell.
It’s not a certain age.
It’s not an insurance plan for 20 years from now.
It’s an understanding of what is possible in the moment. Not necessarily that afternoon or the next day.
Sometimes it’s a community and sometimes i:s a solo practice.
Fitness can be many things – cardio or strength or stretching.
Fitness does not have to be optimal. It does not have to be what’s “best” for you.
Fitness can be what you like, whether walking the dog, going to the gym, the pool or a studio or a forest. It can be your living room with the kids playing in the next room.
Fitness does not need AI to tell you what you would look like a certain way.
Fitness doesn’t try to make you what you were in the 90s or what you were last summer. It works with what you have that day.
Fitness doesn’t have to be selfish. Even when working out on your own, it doesn’t have to slight what others are doing or be disrespectful of others’ space.
Fitness is not a punishment for a good meal or an allowance for the next one.
Fitness can make you feel sexy, for a moment, but its goal is not to create a “sexy” moment.
Fitness provides your body with sustenance to be where you are at the time. Celebrating or grieving. Energetic or tired. Calm or anxious. Big or mall. Young or old. Sad or joyful
I am not sure about many things in life but one thing I feel most certain about is that if the messages about fitness changed, people would reap its benefits in a more sustainable way.
Just as we often learn in our later years that true love is so many more things than fleeting, sexy moments, fitness should be enjoyed for its deep, lasting, impact more than it’s brief endorphin-powered goals. With the current intoxication with moments of sexiness, I am just putting it out there that fitness is not sexy. It is so much more than that.
Nicole P. Taking a moment to do impromptu side-step-ups in Quebec City in August, to counteract all the uphill walking.
CW: Fat-shaming/Fat-phobic image shown and fat-phobic messaging discussed with attempts at biting sarcasm.
It’s September 2026. Who knew that The Weather Channel was going to 1) pile on with the fat-shaming; and 2) eschew the traditional headless fatty image, replacing it with the new and not-improved faceless fatty? Not me. But here we are, in September 2026, a time when everyone should know better and act better. But no– the Weather Channel, in the course of offering bland advice for maintaining health during cold weather, blasts us with a picture of a faceless fat person, apparently to convey seasonal fat-despair.
A fat person in a white T shirt, sitting at a table, their hand over their face. I am confused and displeased. Maybe they are, too, about having been used as weather warning message.
So, what is going on here? Why did the Weather Channel folks think this was an apt illustration for a content-lite article about what to do to maintain health as seasons change? By the way, the advice offered (from an ICU doctor, who, while no doubt well-meaning and skilled, is NOT a fitness expert for non-hospitalized people) includes 1) eat a bunch of protein (with a photo of dead animal parts– they’re not missing any opportunities here); 2) get enough sleep– oh right, thanks Weather Channel; and 3) walk outside, because “walking is magical”!
Yeah, it might be magical if you can walk here.
A magical golden-lit forest path. Good luck finding parking nearby. By Johannes P for Unsplash.
Back to the faceless fatty photo. I wonder, what message is intended by this image in this article? After extensive analysis, I came up with three possibilities:
Because they are fat AND the seasons are changing, they know they’re facing certain death;
They forgot to tell their friends and family that they’re fat, so want to remain unidentifiable in the picture– hence the hand over the face;
They’re really mad at their agent for sending them to such an absurd photo shoot, so they’re rebelling by shielding their face from view. Litigation is pending.
Here’s the thing: we know that images matter. They convey norms about what’s good, bad, healthy, unhealthy, cool, uncool, what we should aim for, and what we should avoid like the plague. Being fat doesn’t fall into any of these categories, any more than having brown hair or brown eyes. It’s just a feature of some people at some point in time. As a fat person, it’s a feature I have. Having brown hair is a feature I used to have, and now I have grey hair. Also a value-neutral thing.
So Weather Channel– enough with the underhanded attempts to connect being fat with current or impending refusal to follow your third-rate attempts at health and wellness advice! Do what you’re supposed to do– tell us if it’s going to rain tomorrow. That is messaging we would find eminently useful, at any size.
This person didn’t forget their umbrella for a nice, if non-magical, walk in the rain. By Habib I for Unsplash.
Since the hobbies I spend the most time doing are sedentary I assumed my daily step count would stay about the same.
I’m walking Michel and Lucy on average twice a day. No change there!
But my step count has jumped from 9,000 to 12,000 steps a day. Wow!
It turns out I take regular breaks knitting, gardening, reading etc. way more than when I was working.
Walking with friends
I get a text about once a week to walk with my neighbour and her baby. I love it! Sometimes Lucy joins us to work on her socializing. Other times I get to push the stroller or hold that baby. I love having the time to hang out and get a bit of movement in and this has definitely help bump up my step count.
Active minutes
My workouts averaged 60 minutes a day in April. Since then my workouts have steadily crept up to 100 minutes a day. That’s significantly more. Some of that is thanks to swimming but a lot of it is utility cycling and getting my strength training in. Yay!
Resting Heart Rate
While my watch assures me that my VO2max and other cardio indicators have improved my resting heart rate is still averaging in the low 60s. No big gains there. I am surprised! I thought more frequent and regular exercise would bring that down below 60.
Mediocre Sleep
I’m surprised I am not sleeping better. My stress and nighttime restlessness is less but I still wake up a lot in the night.
I’m often “up for the day” at 5:30 am. Yuck.
I go to bed around 10:30 pm and fall promptly asleep. But I thought not having an alarm or work would feel more peaceful.
A sense of calm
Some people report anxiety and sadness from leaving paid work behind. I have experienced a greater sense of calm and a lot more joy. My anxiety, previously a constant companion, only whimpers from time to time. What a wonderful surprise!
Net benefit
For me, retirement has been a net benefit for my physical and mental wellbeing. I think that is the best surprise of all.
A bespectacled senior is ready for all of life’s surprises
I am not long back from five weeks away. Hiking in the Lake District in the UK, also in the backcountry in Norway. Time with family and friends. A writing retreat. A meditation retreat.
Now. At home. I begin again. As if some part of my life was frozen in time, while I explored other dimensions. A part of me is frustrated with beginning again. When will I get to the middle? Which I imagine as more settled and secure, instead of mysterious and unsettling. The three years since the dissolution of my marriage have felt like an unending series of begin-agains. Picking myself up off the floor. An eternal loop of standing up one more time than I’ve fallen.
Another part of me is curious. Maybe beginning again is just right.
At the meditation retreat, I had one of those teeny-tiny felt insights, which can set off a chain of subtle shifts. Shifts so small they may be sub-perceptual. And yet. Over the course of time. Drop by drop.
Here’s what happened. We were doing a breath count meditation. Following the teacher’s instructions, the count went like this in my head: I breathe in. I breathe out. One. I breathe in. I breathe out. Two. I breathe in. I breathe out. Three. Up to six and begin again. This is a variation on a Thich Nhat Hanh meditation: Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.
All those words in my head felt like a jumble sale. I dropped I breathe out, saying (in my mind) just the number on the out breath. I breathe in. One. I breathe in. Two. Still, the words were awkward, jangly. I was managing the count, but stumbling over the words. Then, out of nowhere, instead of saying to myself, I breathe in. I heard myself say, I begin. My whole body relaxed. I begin. The words felt exact. Spacious. Right. Not about falling and standing back up.
I have a charm on my key fob with the words I begin. It was given to me by a close friend who I met when I was a participant in a weeklong theatre workshop she was teaching on Tectonic Theatre Project’s Moment Work devising technique. Devising is a way of creating theatre from the ground up, from small theatrical moments, instead of starting with a fully formed script. During devising sessions, micro-scenes are created in a framework that starts with the presenter speaking the words, I begin. They then show a moment they’ve created and close with, I end. Slowly, these micro-bits accumulate, coalesce and evolve together, until a full piece emerges. We became friends and ended up devising a play for 10 women. Hence the gift of the charm.
As I thought about the words, I begin, arising in the meditation, I recognized that, for me, they are a symbol of co-creation, of blank slate, of experimentation, of not-knowing and still trying. Of finding what works and letting what doesn’t drop away.
During the retreat meditation, I felt how that instant, sitting there on that cushion, experiencing that spontaneous arising of the words, I begin, was both its own moment and part of an accumulation of moments, a greater story, which was already partially written, yes, but which still had room for creativity and experimentation. I felt my whole body settle. As if the words were saying, it’s okay, you can stop struggling, just take the next step.
View down to Totnes from an outdoor meditation spot at Sharpham Retreat.
The settled feeling passed. Of course. Yet, its residue has stayed with me. In my daily meditations now, I use the words, I begin, when I’m counting breaths. When I remember. Because I don’t remember every time. Of course. Each time I do, it offers me a scintilla of extra ease, like a hand giving my shoulder a quick squeeze.
So that when I get a message from my ex that threatens a rabbit hole of complicated distress, I can breathe, step back from reacting, and allow myself time to feel into the right and compassionate response. I can allow the moment my heart seizes to be what it is, let it fall away and allow the next I begin.
Oh, I know I will continue to struggle and push and try. I’m not changed into a forever relaxed and worry-free person by the incantation of two simple words. And I do feel like I have a little more access to those qualities than before. That’s the power of the right words. For me. I am, if you’ve read other of my musings, a word person. The right ones can offer me an anchor in the storms of life. That’s why I gravitate toward practices like having a Word of the Year.
An image many meditation teachers use is of silt settling to the bottom of a glass of water. How we cannot see the clear water, which is always there, when it is obstructed by the silt of our thoughts. Once we have glimpsed the clear water though and we can begin (that word again) to understand that it is always there, we can cultivate the ability to return to that state we’ve experienced. I notice this principle applies to running (and other sports). In the inevitable cycles of lower and higher engagement, injury and recovery, I feel how my body understands this rhythm and helps me return to equilibrium. My body remembers how to use the tempo of my steps, my arms, my knee lift, to accelerate and lay off, exploring where those boundaries and possibilities are each day.
Coming home from a long time away and finding myself facing the same personal and work challenges, I feel how I want to retract into worry, push, push, push toward solutions. My hope with the words I begin, is to cultivate my ability to return to the experience of the retreat, to the feeling of settling and expanding. Of trusting. I want to struggle less. Adjust my focal length to the micro-moments, as in the theatre practice. How can I make this little slice of now more … more supportive, more beautiful, more easeful, more impactful? As I begin.
Does it count? I have been wondering this, lately, while reaching to shave my legs and feeling a little stretch in my hamstrings or reached down to pick up my senior dog, Miggy, and making sure I’m bending down safely – am I in the middle of an impromptu deadlift/squat variation? It feels like a stretch. I try not to lead from my trunk to aggrevate my lower back. I always squat first to pick up Miggy. Minimal online searching, says, no, not in a fitness sense.
But what really counts for our overall health? I can’t help but observe seniors at my Dad’s assisted living home. People who live at this home appear to have a wide range of mobility. Many use walkers. Some use wheelchairs. Many don’t use either. My casual observations, coupled with a bit of listening in at my Dad’s doctor’s appointments about senior health, is that any movement is beneficial. If you can do it, moving in any way is good for your body AND your brain. If you can reach down to shave, reach up to get the shampoo bottle, go for a walk to the library, it’s all good for you.
Stretching is a theme that’s been ever present in my mind these days. As a runner, stretching has always been an important consideration, however, I haven’t always been diligent with it. I’ve been one of those, “if I have 60 min to run”, I’m going to run, consider how I should stretch afterwards, but then head right for my coffee or a shower and forget about it. It’s not because I don’t need to stretch. I’m not one of those hyper-bendy people. Even when I was in my 20s, I wasn’t able to get my hamstrings to stretch to 90 degrees in mat (pilates, yoga) classes. I’d notice 70 year old women with very straight angles and wonder what their secret was – hours of stretching? years of dancing and gymnastics? I grew to understand that 90 degree angles probably weren’t in the cards for me. Like most experiences with fitness, I’d need to discover the other benefits of stretching besides being lithe.
Of course, the more I ran, the more I took strength and movement classes, I learned the benefit of releasing tension in my muscles and joints.
After several days walking 30,000 steps a day on Quebec City’s steep sidewalks at the beginning of August, I came home and discovered an aching hip in the middle of the night. that aching hip moved around about to the area I think of as my “glute med(ius)”. It was more irritated sitting too long. It was aggravated walking on in kind of incline too fast. I started ensuring I was doing more stretches every morning for my hips and glutes. I focussed on active stretches that have formed part of exercise classes I’ve enjoyed for years – walking leg sweeps, walking hip “CARs“, seated, folding “90/90s”, bridges. One of my coaches suggested adding longer, more static stretches in the evening. I added longer pigeon holds (with my hip barely reaching the floor these days on the left side), couch stretches, longer hamstring stretches while watching TV. Before going out for my run, I make sure I stretch properly and often add more stretches while stopped at lights on my run. The post-vacation pain seems to be much better.
Since the pain in my butt has gotten better, my diligence with stretching has already started to slide. Or not. I need to make sure I stick to more stretching. Whether it’s for current maintenance, or, trying to keep my mobility as I age into my golden years, it seems it’s crucial component of my overall fitness plan. If I can add a few stretches while going through the motions of getting ready, that would be good too. Seems like I need to make sure that I am actually making it a stretch (holding it long enough, reaching far enough) and not relying on the ordinary movement naturally being one.
While reaching down to do daily tasks may not be an official stretch, these little feelings of movement are regular reminders to be grateful for every opportunity to move and not take that movement for granted.
Nicole is working on her stretching and mobility in-between strength training and running.
I have been interested in the history of swimming for a very long time. During the pandemic, I even recorded a series of videos demonstrating each of the strokes described in Everard Digby’s 1587 book “De Arte Natandi” (The Art of Swimming).
One of the best books around on swimming history is Karen Eva Carr’s “Shifting Currents”, a world history of swimming. It looks at evidence for swimming that dates back thousands of years. It also looks at why Europeans didn’t swim for centuries, and how important swimming was around much of the world.
Yet today, we often think of swimming as very European/North American, while African and Asian swimmers, in particular, seem rare.
When I lifeguarded as a teen, I remember there being exactly one Black man who came for lane swims. I never saw another non-white swimmer; not at lane swims, public swims, or taking lessons.
I have written about swimming as a transgressive activity in the context of women and larger-bodied swimmers. But there is an important history of excluding minorities as well. One of the most powerful moments in the American Civil Rights Movement came on June 18, 1964, when Black and White protesters went into a Whites-only pool in Florida together. A photograph of the owner pouring acid into the pool to force them out helped galvanize the Senate to pass the Civil Rights Act the next day, after an 83-day filibuster.
A black and white photo shows then 17-year old Mimi Jones and two other protesters screaming as James Brock pours acid into the pool. Photo: Bettmann/Corbis
More recently, women wearing modest swimsuits have been targeted. Tracy wrote about it here.
I have really noticed how the currents have shifted in recent years. Most of the people during public swims at my pool are from visible minority communities, and Burkini-clad hijabi women sometimes make up 10% of the patrons. Some pools also offer girls/women-only lessons and swim times.
My swim classes are made up mostly of students who are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants. My social media is filled with stories of excited adults (most of whom are Black) who are finally learning to swim.
We’re not where we need to be yet. But I like to think that we may be better n the way to truly inclusive spaces at our swimming pools.
I rode about 14 km total in Toronto last week, most on bike lanes. The total distance was less than 10 km, since I rode much of the same route going to and from my destination. A good chunk was on Bloor, which was busy, with many more bikes parked at bike racks alongside the road. Bikes are efficient, so lots of people got where they were going, then parked to go shopping or work.
I love this image because it shows several ordinary commuter bikes parked at bike racks, plus people on bikes at the intersection ahead, and a person in an electric wheelchair using the bike lane. The lane itself is wide enough that people can pass safely, and it is physically separated from the road.
On that stretch of Bloor, I saw two ghost bikes, plus one on Dundas. For those who don’t know, a ghost bike is a memorial for a person killed by a person in a car or truck, while riding their bicycle. Three in the short distance I rode is a shockingly high number.
The ghost bike on Dundas Street
But the Ontario government is starting to rip out the bike lanes following a court case. They are knowingly putting the lives of citizens at greater risk. And yes, it is “knowingly”.
According to the CBC “Internal documents from the Transportation Ministry that were made public as part of a court challenge to Bill 212 — the legislation that gave the province sweeping control over municipal bike lanes — …include a report prepared by engineering and urban planning firm CIMA+, which said collisions for all road users could increase upwards of 54 per cent if bike lanes are removed, based on existing research.”
The irony of ripping out an excellent climate change mitigation measure and then being hit by a major storm last week is also not lost on me.
Protected bike lanes and safe sidewalks are essential public safety infrastructure, not luxury amenities.
Downtown Toronto multi-unit housing (whether condos or apartments) are being built with less and less parking, and more people are relying on transit, biking and walking. Removing bike lanes without looking at how people actually get around the city doesn’t make sense.
The proposed alternative of moving some bike lanes to side streets will add significant distance compared to the current route, with lots of turns and street crossings that don’t have signals. Why not move the cars to the side streets instead? They can navigate that extra distance more easily than a person taking a couple of kids to school or the library on a cargo bike. Or someone with panniers full of groceries.
Nine years ago, Premier Ford said felt safer in a bike lane. Now, people who aren’t brave enough to take on Toronto traffic will be forced to abandon cycling as a transportation option. I don’t live in Toronto, but I visit often and love riding around the city to explore or do errands. I have even blogged about it.
I’ll leave you with one last image from this report on the court decision. It was taken by Patrick Morrell of the CBC. Assuming each car has the average 1.5 people, compare the space for those 5 cars vs the fourteen cyclists.
Five vehicles take up two lanes of traffic. A third lane is dedicated to parked cars. To the right, fourteen people on bicycles are in less space than a single car lane.
I’m looking forward to heading back to class on Thursday night.
I’ve missed my TKD friends, I’ve missed my instructors, and I’ve missed being part of a group activity.
But mostly I have missed moving in those specific ways, those specific patterns (literally – we do a lot of patterns), and enjoying the process of remembering and executing the movements I have been learning and practicing for so long.
I know I’ll feel kind of rusty and off-kilter on Thursday night, and we’ll all be a little out of sync with each other.
But I also know that it won’t take long for each person’s muscle memory to kick in and that will lead to the group finding a comfortable groove, and we’ll all feel that ‘click’ as we get in sync.
I have all kinds of goals for myself at TKD this year but for right now I am just focusing on the fun of getting back to my routine and sinking into the familiar challenge of coordinating my movements with the people around me as we move through our patterns.
