I like to do yoga in bed or bedtime yoga (various YouTube videos), and chair yoga (also YouTube). I try to fit in lots of little physio exercises with a Theraband and blocks as well as calf stretches and heel raises.
Tracy
All the yoga, push-ups, air squats (with a jump if so inclined), kettlebell swings, burpees. And of course 90% of the ab work.
Laura
Push-ups. Active hangs. One-legged calf raises. Shrimp squats. Downward-facing dog.
Nicole
Stationary bike, Yoga with Adrienne (particularly her yoga for runners), push-ups, ottoman step-ups, 108 Sun Salutations.
Also, this is my old post about just this kind of thing:
Mostly because of the school year, fall always feels like an opportunity for new beginnings. It’s also a great time to check in on progress and do some course correction on earlier goals, if you want.
Back in January my 26 in 2026 looked like this. How’s it going and what do I want to change?
I didn’t camp much more at the cottage: between work and driving restrictions following surgery there just wasn’t time. However, I did get proper furniture installed and have actual cupboards and shelves to store the essentials, so it’s getting really easy to stay overnight when I want to. The electricity project is moving forward nicely so I should have power soon.
The canoe is still sitting up onto its blocks, but I have permanent stairs, a new lifejacket and a boating emergency kit so it will happen next year for sure. In the meantime, I have purchased an inflatable kayak so I can go out even if my friend isn’t around to canoe with me.
I’m way behind on my 1,000 km cycling goal but my e-bike finally has a new battery after two years of trying to figure out what was wrong, so I’m starting to get back into the cycling habit. I’ll be happy if I hit 500 km and I’m pretty sure I can do that. I didn’t get my bike set up for winter cycling, but winter is coming so I’ll try to sneak that in before the end of the year.
I have already hit my goal on books read, but only at half my goal on magazines. I’m determined to get there!
Cooking goals have been a mix. I’m cooking more vintage recipes, but making very little use of my medieval cookbooks.
I am debating giving up one of my gardens. It felt like too much this year, though my garlic harvest was the best ever.
I was at 61,173 M as of Tuesday, so I’m pretty happy with that. I still have three months to go and I’m getting into the habit of having a short swim at work in addition to longer weekly swim practices, so I might just hit 100 km. Not bad considering I wasn’t allowed to swim for over a month.
Crafting, sewing, decluttering Mom’s without adding to my own clutter, something artistic, meeting up with friends, vacation, relax: fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, mostly fail, fail. Some things got done, but not nearly enough.
I am being more conscientious about monitoring my health, eating more fruit, trying to spend more time with Mom, volunteering less, and doing more stretch and strength exercises. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, but I’m going to count all of these as successes.
Summary: between now and the end of December, do more biking, reading , swimming, relaxing, and a bit more cooking.
Oh, and keep saying hello to all the good dogs I meet, even if I don’t actually pat most of them.
This happy dog may not be real, but at least she stood still for a photo (unlike a half dozen others I saw that day). I like how she’s ready for the changing of the seasons, dressed as a ghost, holding a pumpkin bucket in her mouth.
How many posts? Forty-seven posts this month. The back-to-school rush turned into a back-to-the-blog rush.
Who blogged? Sam, Christine, Diane, Catherine, Nat, Nicole, Tracy, Cate, Martha, Mina, and guest blogger Winnie, who wrote for us twice.
September is the real new year. Christine opened the month with her September Circles, a tiny experiment: five minutes of circle-based mobility before bed. She closed it with an update reporting less twitchiness, less morning stiffness, and a plan to keep going in circles. Sam mapped out her fall fitness routine, which got off to a start when a fire alarm interrupted cocoon shavasana. Catherine wrote about fall transitions after a quiet summer and was surprised to find she loves the louder days of September. Christine was ready to head back to TKD and then reported that she was right about muscle memory. Mina came home from five weeks of hiking and retreats and found two words that changed her meditation practice, in I Begin. Again. Yet Again. Christine’s Go Team post told everyone they could forge ahead, pivot, or restart, whatever the date on the calendar.
Use your voice, take up space. Gloria Steinem’s death on September 2 hit us hard. Cate wrote about her gratitude and sadness and what discovering Steinem and Ms. meant to her as a teenager. Martha drew two lessons for fit feminists in Use your voice, take up space. That spirit ran through the rest of the month:
Nicole insisted that fitness is not sexy, because it’s so much more than that. She came back late in the month with Exercise of One’s Own, about protecting the workout that’s just yours.
Diane traced swimming’s history of exclusion, and the more inclusive pools she sees today, in Shifting Currents.
Sam took down a post after learning that an “expert” she had quoted was an AI-generated hoax. It’s a good reminder to check our sources.
What kept us writing? Partly it was the fresh-start energy of September, the academic January. It gave us new routines, restarts, returns to class, and a lot of beginning again. Partly it was Gloria Steinem’s death, which reminded us why this blog exists: women’s bodies, movement, and space matter, and saying so out loud still counts. Mostly, though, it was each other. Winnie wrote in response to Sam’s post on physical withdrawal. Sam’s knee anniversary prompted Diane’s heart-health check-in. Sam sent Tracy an old quote that became a post about changing goals. And Diane was at the finish line cheering Tracy home. It was a month of small things done consistently: five minutes of circles a night, two years of logged activities, and a year of training for one 5K.
See you in October!
Month-in-review posts are assembled by Claude with prompts from Sam and edited by Sam. If you spot any errors, let us know.
Comment from this time in 2024, when I (Tracy) said speed work seemed unnecessary!
Last week Samantha sent me the above reminder of something I said two years ago. The gist of it was a challenge to the idea of being speedy. Indeed, I said “I used to care about going faster but now I just care about continuing to get out the door.”
Fast forward to the present, where in my preparations for my recent 5K I included speed drills. And after completing the 5K to my satisfaction, I set a new goal that would shave a minute and 40 seconds off of my time.
“What changed?” Samantha wanted to know.
Back in September 2024 I was still trying to regain my running rhythm after an Achilles injury that had plagued me since 2019. It took me out long enough that I lost all the gains I’d made over the years. And so that fall of 2024 I was in the mindset where I just wanted to run again and I didn’t want to be injured again.
It was the right frame of mind for the time. But why have different goals now? It’s not as if I am ever going to be speedy. So why bother with speed work and speed goals at all.
As some readers may know, I have been back to the beginning again with Couch to 5K starting in April. I got behind but stuck with it and I liked having structure and a goal. The structure came from the program itself. The goal was simple: complete the program. After I managed to get through week 7 of the 9-week program I switched to the FIRST program outlined in Rin Less, Rin Faster.
For this you do three purposeful runs a week plus two cross-training sessions. The three runs are speed intervals, a tempo run, and a long run. I found myself enjoying switching it up rather than just pounding the pavement in the same way each time I went out. It made things fun. I discovered that I enjoy speed work. All the while I keep my perspective. I am not and never will be a speedster.
As the date of my 5K event approached, I found myself excited to go out with a time in mind. My goal of 37:00 was not a time that would break any records. Not even personal records. But it helped keep me on pace and I finished in 36:40. That felt like an accomplishment.
And so I set a new goal. To hit a 35:00 5K. It is giving me something to train for and we’ll see where it takes me. I said to Samantha back in 2024 that I just wanted to get out the door.
Today, it’s the variety in the training that is actually getting me out the door. One thing I’ve learned over the past 14 years since we’ve been blogging about fitness is that things change. I change. And I need different plans for different times.
Right now I’m enjoying the purposeful running 3x a week. I’m struggling with the swim workouts because of ear aches. I am experimenting with different ear plugs but I’m nervous now whenever I do freestyle, which is my main training stroke for a good workout. It is the only stroke that gives me these ear issues, no doubt because of the head turning for breathing.
So that’s what I’m working on now, as well as sticking with the running through the winter and incorporating resistance training a couple of times a week. I’ve been sporadic with that but it’s important.
All in all, I like being able to set new goals, change my mind, push myself in different ways, and evolve in my priorities. I don’t need to be locked into one track just because I was there before. That is the stuff of boredom and burnout. When I shift and change, it stays fresh and motivating.
But here’s the story people were likely looking for!
‘I had to shave my legs’: Slovakia’s team masseur becomes an unlikely cycling hero. With no nominated rider able to start, the former cyclist got back on his bike at the world championships in Montreal.
“Martin Svrček, Slovakia’s nominated rider, could not compete because of health problems. Matthias Schwarzbacher had ended his season through injury, while Lukáš Kubiš’s team had not released him. With the entry deadline past, the Slovak Cycling Federation registered Kováčik, a former rider who met the licence requirements.
National coach Jakub Vančo said Slovakia entered Kováčik to meet its obligation to field a rider. He said failing to do so would cost the country points and could affect its chances of qualifying riders for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Asked by Eurosport what it felt like to line up alongside cycling’s leading riders, Kováčik said: “It’s every cyclist’s dream. And I’m a masseur, so it’s crazy.” He had no ambitions in the race, he added.
“It was good. I’m so tired. I played soccer last night at 11pm.”
“11pm!”
“Yes! I started playing in this league in university and it’s the one time during the week that’s “mine”. My mother-in-law doesn’t really understand. We are always at their place for dinner Sunday nights with the kids and I know that I will be able to leave the kids with them and go play soccer. I need it.”
“You don’t have to sell me on why you deserve to go and have your soccer time! I fully support making time for exercise. It’s so important for mental health. I could go on, but I won’t. You know how I feel.”
This morning, while I was jogging, I got to thinking about the importance of “exercise of one’s own”. Of course, this is not a new concept. People needing time to go and move, blow off steam, have some quiet time, no speaking time, out-of-breath time, throwing balls time, splashing waves time.
Decades ago, my book club read A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, which was published in 1929. It’s main theme is that women needed money and a space of their own to them to write fiction. These commodities were not readily available to women at the time this book was published. More women may have access to money and space of their own these days, but the expectations and pressures put on women, either from external sources or our own learned experiences that drive our patterns, can still prevent women from freely prioritizing the time they need to (write fiction, daydream, learn a new skill).
I have long been an advocate of the importance of exercise for mind and body. It seems more important than ever to take advantage of some time for fitness, to keep one feeling strong, to provide an outlet for strong emotions, for a space where the goal is to build sustenance for life’s challenges.
Whether it’s the mom with three little kids and a full-time career who finds a couple hours a week for soccer or the new mom who finds a couple hours a week for Pilates or a strength class or a middle-aged woman looking for the small signs of joy on an urban jog, I think we all have to support the idea of time for “exercise of one’s own”.
Aside from the regular day-to-day stresses, the news out there is rough. Between wars and hate crimes and despicable college frat boy rape crimes and a woman murdered on a Zoom work video call, there is ample need to find places for refuge from the news and the continuous stories about how women often bear the brunt of unnecessary violence and men seemingly go unscathed.
Not only do women need “exercise of one’s own”, but they also need safe spaces and time for that exercise. They need safe spaces and time to write, learn, work, exercise, think, breathe, just be. So, whether you’re looking for these things as a brief reprieve from your daily routine, and/or a place to channel strong emotions, I bid you to go forth and find time and place for exercise time of your own.
Ok, so I am reporting back a little early but since I don’t think there will be a drastic change in my results over the next two days, we’re in the clear.
On September 1, I told you about my experiment for this month – 5 minutes of circle-based mobility exercises each night before bed.
And, despite the fact that I was ‘going in circles’ this whole time, I have definitely made some progress towards increasing my mobility and improving my sense of well-being.
Here are my discoveries:
1) As I suspected in my initial post, doing circles seems to reduce the restless, twitchy feeling I was often experiencing while sitting in bed reading before going to sleep.
2) I feel far less stiff and achy when I get up in the morning.
3) My body feels a bit more mobile and fluid overall.
4) I like having a small physical practice as part of my bedtime routine.
5) If I had trouble settling into sleep in the evening, doing a few more circles was soothing.
Obviously I am declaring this experiment a success!
And I am giving myself bonus points and a gold star ⭐️ for sticking with my experiment even though this month included some travel with friends and coordinating a 10 day arts festival.
Normally that kind of shift in routine would affect any kind of new practice I was trying to incorporate into my days but I guess that my plan to go in circles was just the right-sized practice for almost any circumstance.
And since it has worked out so well, I plan to keep this circular strategy going.
That’s the distance between Montreal and Guelph. Sarah and I have driven there and back twice this month.
We’re both good at weekend roadtrips. We listen to audiobooks and we call friends and talk on speaker phone. We talk to one another and catch up on our long work weeks. Mostly we enjoy the time on the road.
But one of the things I haven’t liked about road trips has been the lack of activity, combined with lots of unhealthy snacking. Bring on the twizzlers and the peanut butter M&Ms! Let’s eat all the drive thru burgers and fries.
I sometimes arrive places with a sore back and upset stomach.
What’s new this year though is Sarah’s electric car. It’s a used Subaru Solterra. It charges to about 300 km and I’ve got to say that stopping to charge has really improved the quality of our road trips.
A charging station
Note: I know this won’t last long. Charging is getting faster and the storage capacity of car batteries keeps increasing. Pretty soon stopping to charge won’t be much different than refueling a gas car. These longer breaks will be a story we tell grandchildren. But for now, I’m enjoying the mandatory breaks.
I used to break my step goal streak each time we drove somewhere. Not now. I’m writing this in the car on the way home from Montreal and on our way there and on the way home, I kept my step goal streak.
Friday we drove to Montreal and Sunday we drove home.
What’s different?
🚗 Charging stations are usually at the far end of parking lots. More walking! (I have wondered and worried about disabled drivers and electric cars for this reason though.)
🚗 There’s also more time to stop and stretch. I’ve enjoyed seeing families with camp chairs and tables playing games at the charging stations.
🚗 The time it takes to charge means we can have real sit down dinners in actual restaurants rather than fast food. Sometimes we even walk to them. Other times restaurants and hotels have charging stations for customers only. Check out #chargeanddine.
🚗 This time we stopped and met a friend at a charging station and caught up at a nearby picnic table.
🚗 There is also some shopping involved. In recent weeks, though not on this trip, we’ve stopped at Ikea, Jysk, and Winners. They all have charging stations on this route.
🚗 Oh and napping while charging. We’re both ‘sleep anywhere’ types so sometimes there are charging naps.
Here’s a song from out roadtrio playlist:
How are you with road trips? Love them or hate them?
(And yes, of course, you can take breaks driving a gas powered car. I know, I know. But we don’t. We’d rather just get to our destination sooner. It’s the enforced breaks that are the good thing.)
My courses are settling into what they’re going to be, which is a smooth-ish and pretty amiable set of class meetings on topics I’m into and the students are enjoying/tolerating (so far).
I’m organized enough to vary my going-to-work footwear more than usual, color coordinating it (yes, I have shoes in many colors– sue me) with my more-colorful-than-the-average-person’s clothing. And jewelry, too. Ain’t I fancy…
I acquired three baby spider plants from my FB Buy Nothing group. They are joining my indoor aspiring jungle and appear to be getting along well with everyone.
On Wednesday morning, I went to yin yoga with my friend Kathy, joining Norah, who goes (almost) every week. I usually sign up for the zoom recording, leaving it for later (or not), but I thought to myself, I can make time for this. So I did.
Afterwards, eating sandwiches with Kathy, I got a preview of what it might be like to be a lady who lunches (well, I am a lady who has lunch but you know what I mean). It’s pretty damn good.
On Saturday I went swimming with Rachel and her 3-year-old Teagan. We (Rachel and I) traded off hanging out with Teagan in the kids’ pool so the other could do some laps in the lane pool. It worked out well, each of us doing 4 laps (8 pool lengths). Rachel said afterwards that it would be nice to work up to 50 laps. I corrected her, saying 20 laps was a more pleasant-sounding goal. She agreed (for now).
The swimming was at a local indoor pool and it cost the three of us $10 total. A bargain.
I’d really like to a) re-establish a weekly in-person yoga class; and b) go swimming once a week. Both feel really good. Can I do this? Yes, I think so. Okay, let me rephrase that:
Yes We Can.
Bob says “yes we can!”
By “we”, I mean me plus my friends, who support me in most/all of my social and physical activities. It’s much more fun and happens more often when I enlist the company of others. Of course you all know this. But it doesn’t hurt to remind oneself from time to time.
Who are you heading out the door with this week for physical activity, fun, or frolic?
