Fall is here. It’s grey, it’s windy, it’s rainy, and it’s cold. But still I love riding my bike. Here are some reasons why. 1. It’s hard to start but I always feel better after. I sometimes have to remind myself but it’s true. Studies show that people who work out because of the way […]
Twelve reasons why Sam loves biking in the wind, the rain, and the cold
The case for cold, dark walks #November #reblog
So I am a resiliently cheerful person. I’ve often thought I could live almost anywhere for a period of time because I am good at finding things to love about even the most unlovable of places. I’ve also in the past thought the same thing about seasons and weather. Yes, the summer months are best–because […]
The case for cold, dark walks #November
Nap or workout?
What I read: Nap or quick workout? A doctor explains the cognitive benefits after sleep deprivation
“Thirty minutes of evening cycling helped protect memory after a short night of sleep.
In this trial, 88 healthy young adults either cycled moderately for 30 minutes at 7 p.m. or remained seated. They later learned 80 face-name pairs before receiving either an 8.5-hour or 4.5-hour sleep opportunity.
After the shortened night, participants who had cycled recalled more than those who had rested. Their performance was comparable to the groups given 8.5 hours in bed.”
My two cents: I’ve often wondered whether to work out on the days that follow nights with less sleep. I like the idea that short workouts, say 30 minutes, actually help us in terms of memory when we get less sleep. I’ve been thinking lately about the ways that sleep and exercise are connected. Going to bed earlier helps you move more, for example. But also moving helps you get a better night’s rest.
Pumpkins, Plunges, and Picking Up Heavy Things: October 2026 on the Blog
How many posts? Fifty-two posts this month, counting yesterday’s Top Ten.
Who did the writing? Sam, Catherine, Diane, Nat, Christine, Nicole, Martha, Mina, Tracy, and Elan, with Laura joining in on a group post.
Taking stock. October is when the year’s goals start looking back at you. Diane opened the month checking in on her 26 Things in 2026, and Sam followed with her own #26in2026 check-up: some plans cancelled, some workouts counted, a few outings still possible. Sam also did some math and adjusted her cycling distance goals, trading 3,000 km for a more realistic 2,000. There were milestones too. Martha is leaping into her 60s with her hands full of joy, with twenty lessons on friendship, balance, and staying open to change. Nat celebrated her Birthday-Thanksgiving-Anniversary extravaganza (52 years old, 30 years married) and reported that she’s still married after the 30th anniversary hike, locked gate, missed trail markers and all. Later in the month she wrote honestly about weight changes since retiring (no goal weight, thanks) and confessed she’s been avoiding stretching for all the wrong reasons.
Older and stronger. The media discovered the Superfit Sixties and Sam, who knows a thing or two about fittest-by-fifty projects, had thoughts. She also responded to a headline about cycling after 60, made the case for why you need to lift and ride (road cycling alone isn’t great for bone density), sang the praises of farmer’s carries and big strength, and noted creatine is in the news again, this time for adults 45 to 65. Her favourite new label? Leisure athlete: all of the identity, none of the competing. Our group post asked what five simple exercises you can do at home, and Sam reminded us to never stop being a beginner. Curling, anyone?
Making fun on purpose. Christine announced she was determined to have more fun in October, and by mid-month she could report a clear increase in October fun. Planning for joy works! She also celebrated Train Your Brain Day (which is also International Day for Failure) and rounded up a few Halloween workouts to try. Sam, meanwhile, continues to say no thanks to the Halloween candy workout. Catherine made a case for pumpkin boat racing and for the return of night garden walking season. Nat showed off her new boots on her rainy walks, and Nicole looked ahead to the dark months with her Winter Well-being Toolkit.
Rest, sleep, and winding down. Sam asked readers about their favourite de-stressing exercises and, after her Garmin kept nagging her, about demanding days and winding down. Then she shared research suggesting that if you want to move more, you should go to bed earlier, and night owl Catherine responded to lark Samantha in defence of the evening swim. Nicole says let sleeping dogs lie (next to me), and there’s research on her side. Mina wrote movingly about straining toward ease and her frustration with advice that treats well-being as a matter of mindset. Catherine warned us to avoid the grey zone in training and in life, and Sam declared that October is not locking it in, not even a little bit.
The internet should not be your nutritionist (or your coach, or your mirror). Catherine went looking for the study behind a viral claim and found that, in chicken and rice vs. a DQ Oreo Blizzard, there’s no study at all. She also learned about looksmaxxing and was reminded of misogyny, and noticed that women’s-only gyms are back and the pink vs. not-pink debate continues. Sam looked at apps that make you do pushups before you can open social media in Workouts and Earning Your Access to Instagram. Diane turned the critical eye inward: sitting with uncomfortable biases in jazz class, taking her ballet teacher’s advice to do your best, and trying to let go of self-imposed patriarchal norms about housekeeping in retirement.
Women’s sport and women’s health. Sam previewed Canada vs. England in women’s rugby with Same Rivalry, Smaller Ball and then reported back on a big crowd and a great win for Canada: 18,621 fans at BMO Field, a North American record for women’s rugby. Nat’s Financing Friday looked at Canadian Tire putting half its sports partnerships toward women’s sport. And Diane took the plunge for menopause health, raising money for research at Sinai Health, then told us We Did It!: a 400-metre cold-water swim on World Menopause Day.
Brave firsts and new trails. Elan shared her impressions of her first 5K race. Tracy, fresh off September’s 5K, is already decking the halls for the Holly Jolly 5K. Martha faced her fears of heights and small spaces on a canopy tour, running towards the danger in midlife. Sam and Sarah found a new favourite bike trail for fall riding in Algonquin, Sam reminded cyclists to do the wave, and she shared one of the things she looks forward to about retirement: weekday rides (if she can find people to ride with).
What kept us writing? Partly it was the season. Shorter days and colder mornings had us planning for fun, for rest, and for getting outside in the dark. But it was also a month of posts talking to each other: Sam’s early-bedtime post got a reply from a proud night owl, Diane announced her cold plunge and then came back to tell us she’d done it, Christine set out to have more fun and then reported that she had, and Nat’s anniversary got two posts of its own. Running through it all was the idea that you can be a beginner at any age, and that doing your best looks different every day.
Want to know what readers liked best? Here are the Top Ten October 2026 posts.
Month-in-review posts are assembled by Claude with prompts from Sam and edited by Sam.
November is Gratitude Month: What are you grateful for? #NationalGratitudeMonth
I hate November, generally speaking. We all know that around here. It’s old news. More recently, like last year. I decided to bring out the big guns in mood improvement. For me, that’s time outside, indoor bright lights, cozy things, staying connected to friends and family, and gratitude. November is Gratitude Month. I blogged about […]
November is Gratitude Month: What are you grateful for? #NationalGratitudeMonth
🎃Top Ten October 2026 Posts 🎃
🎃 Chicken and rice vs. DQ Oreo Blizzard shake: the internet should not be your nutritionist (Catherine)
🎃 From Fittest by Fifty to the Superfit Sixties? (Sam)
🎃 Nat’s Birthday-Thanksgiving-Anniversary extravaganza! Aka on being 52 and married for 30 years (Nat)
🎃 Women’s only gyms are back (did they ever leave?) and the PINK vs. NOT-PINK debate continues (Catherine)
🎃 Let Sleeping Dogs Lie (next to me) (Nicole)
🎃 Nat’s still married after the 30th Anniversary hike. (Nat)
🎃 Leaping into my 60s with my hands full of joy (Martha)
🎃 At the office, Catherine learns about looksmaxxing and thinks about misogyny (Catherine)
🎃 ‘Running towards the danger’ in midlife (Martha)
🎃 Straining Toward Ease (Mina)
🎃 Taking the Plunge for Menopause Health (Diane)
Nat talks about weight changes
Safety assurance, I’m not talking about calorie restriction, diets or weight loss as a goal. I am talking about my weight changing, up and down, over the past year.
A year ago I was in New Brunswick unexpectedly. My dad was ill. I was really stressed out. I was not exercising. I was driving a minimum of 4 hours a day. I was eating on the run. I rapidly gained 20 pounds over a few weeks. I was surprised how much the circumstances affected me and my weight stayed at that level until May of this year.
In May I retired and refocused on my strength training and walking. I’ve sustained 20% more daily steps, up from 9,500 to 12,000. Yay! I’ve been more consistent with my strength training and I’m feeling jacked. Yay!
I do track my weight, as well as my pulse and blood pressure, and I started noticing a slight downward trend since I retired. Interesting! I wondered what was going on as unexplained weight loss means I need to talk to my doctor.
Daytime activity
I’m surprised how much movement is in my day now that I’m not in meetings from 9-5. It’s small things but I’m almost always on the move. I suspect that I’m using more energy each day than I did before I retired.
Lunch
When I was in the office I had lunch at the cafeteria. I always picked from the grill. Now that I’m home, I’m making lunch. It could be a salad with protein, soup and a sandwich or a big bowl of pasta. It’s never fried foods though and I think even the same foods prepared at home are less calorically dense.
Clean hands for crafting
My daily activities, like knitting and writing, mean my hands are busy and need to stay clean. It’s meant less snacking. It feels good. I am also very likely to get into flow and not snack as the hours fly by as I do things.
Intuitive eating?
The morning smoothie has stayed the same over the past year. What has changed is when I feel hungry I grab a quick snack right away. A cliff bar, banana or sardines seem to be what I reach for. I don’t wait until I’m ravenous.
I continue to go out for nice dinners and regularly have pastries. I’m feeling good. It’s also been a month of birthday cakes and my favourite flavour of cake is cake!
Slowly trending
My weight has slowly trended downward at a steady rate. It’s not dramatic. I don’t look smaller and my clothes fit the same. That small change over 5 months means the “sad about my dad” uptick in my weight is gone.
Slow changes
This week during our strength training I pointed out to Michel I no longer use a chair to assist me getting up off the floor. I’m feeling more balanced and flexible. These are not instagramworthy moments but they are small victories in my flexibility, balance and mobility.
Homeostasis
I’m curious to see where my body settles out with my new routines. I’m grateful that leaving paid work behind is helping me be more active.I don’t have a goal weight, I’m working on how much I can lift and how far I can hike. Those are my meaningful goals as they help me in my life. I do trust that my body craves homeostasis.
Financing Friday: Canadian Tire funding women’s sports
The headlines rippled through Canada earlier this week with this bump up from The Female Quotient:
This didn’t happen by accident. It was a target set in 2023. Now that this sponsor has achieved the first goal they are now looking to boost access to watching women’s sports.
There persists a gender gap in funding and pay for professional athletes. Funders use excuses like women’s sports aren’t profitable or entertaining.
Canadian Tire points to how starved sports fans are to be able to watch women in sport with
“75% of Canadians say they are fans of women’s sport, however 62% of fans say they do not know where to find the sport they want to watch.”
This focus on broadcasting and promotion will create a flywheel effect. Greater viewership means more ad revenue for broadcasters and more value for league and team sponsors. This makes more funds available to recruit and train athletes and pay them well. This increases the competition and pace of games, which feeds the excitement about watching them. That makes getting the broadcasting rights more valuable. And on and on it goes, a positive feedback loop of awesomeness.
I’m excited to see where we are this time next year in being able to watch more professional women’s sports.
Halloween candy workout? Sam says, no thanks
Oh, Halloween. In addition to ghosts and ghouls at Halloween, there’s an awful lot of anxiety about candy, about having candy in our houses, about eating candy, and mostly about gaining weight. Scary. For me, given the number of fitness communities I run in, it means my social media newsfeed is full of a lot […]
Halloween candy workout? Sam says, no thanks
Trying to Let Go of Self-Imposed Patriarchal Norms
Retirement feels busier than when I worked full time. I have been putting in a lot of long hours at my part-time lifeguarding/swim instructor job and I have also been focusing on getting my fitness activities in. Plus there is elder care across town. Despite the huge portion of the burden my sister takes on, it somehow feels more demanding than single parenting ever did.
These are all responsibilities I mostly took on joyfully, just as I did full time work after university. I had been raised in the 1960s and 70s with the idea that women can do everything. But in the 1980s, that morphed into superwoman syndrome, where women worked outside the home and still took on the burden of all the unpaid work inside the home.
I think back to those early days in the 1980s and I am struck by how much I still feel bound to externally-imposed housekeeping norms, and therefore a failure.
My mother and my ex mother in-law were mostly stay-at-home parents. In Mom’s case, at least, it was largely because we moved often. By the time she found a job as a nurse, my dad got posted to a new location.
Both of them maintained perfectly tidy houses. Mom used to say she came to visit me, not my house, when things weren’t perfect. My mother-in-law was less kind. She obsessed about sweeping floors three times a day, and washed her kitchen floor daily. She was not shy about doing the same at my house when she came to visit, even though my house was clean.
In retirement, I am finally trying to let go of those expectations.
I live alone, shower at work and after swim practice, so my shower and tub rarely get used. Do I need to scrub them weekly when they may not have been used for weeks? No, I do not.
Could I hire a cleaning service? Probably, once I get over my obsession with cleaning before they get here.
Realistically, I don’t need to dust everywhere in my house at least weekly. I’m pretty observant and have a good sense of when there is actual dust to remove (and then I usually get it done fairly quickly).
Some rules are good: I do change the sheets and do my laundry weekly. I make a serious effort to clear kitchen counters before bedtime because I like to wake up to a clean kitchen. But I am letting go of Mom’s maxim that a clean sink is a sign of a clean house (desiring a gleaming sink does not make me any more inclined to reorganize the bicycle storage room).
I use an app to help me track the jobs I truly loathe, like cleaning bathrooms and washing floors regularly, and remind me to do certain seasonal things.
The biggest thing I need to let go of is the belief that I can be superwoman, decades after the concept was debunked.
“Superwomen only exist in comic books”. A woman in Wonder Woman costume is clearly racing to solve a crisis somewhere. Source: The Wandering Writer,