There’s a response to my fitness activities that’s common but it makes me feel misunderstood. I hear it enough, and maybe you do too, that I thought I’d try to sort out what it’s all about.
The person says, as if this never occurred to me, “You’re just going to die anyway. Why work so hard? You can’t cheat death, you know? “
I know. I know.
I teach a philosophy course all about death. I think about mortality a lot. I know death is inevitable.
As Buddhists say, “Death is inevitable; it comes without warning. … This body will be a corpse.” A confession: Ever since watching the NFB documentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I hear that quote in Leonard Cohen’s lovely voice. He narrates the film and it’s very much worth watching. We view it in my class on death.
The thing is, I’m not trying to chase off death. I’m trying to age well. To keep mobile and active in midlife and beyond. There are many adventures ahead, I hope, and I want to be fit enough to pursue them. I love the physical activity I do now. It’s not bad tasting medicine.
So the criticism misses both my motivation regarding the future and the attitude I take towards physical activity now. Where does this misunderstanding come from? I think it’s in the language people use around aging. I have a friend who uses the phrase “fighting off decrepitude.” All that battle talk…
Ageing does not have to bring poor health and frailty, scientists have claimed, after discovering that the most active people in their 70s are as fit as those in their 50s.
A study of older cyclists found that there was little physical difference between people aged 79 and those aged 55 if they maintained similar levels of exercise
I know it’s not that the 79 year olds won’t die. We’ve all got to die. But I’m excited they’re still having fun riding their bikes. I don’t ride my bike just for instrumental benefits. It’s joyful in its own right and I hope to keep doing that for as long as possible.
I don’t expect to avoid aging. I do hope to age well.
I may be Canadian and I may run in all manner of weather, but I’m not about to get out on the road bike. This winter I’ve taken the cycling inside.
Last year when the snow and cold came I let my cycling drop completely. The result: weak performance on the cycling leg of my triathlon. Sam finally convinced me that if I want to get stronger on the bike, I need to spend time on the bike through the winter. I can’t just pick it up in March or April and expect to keep up.
Hence: the winter cycling tour of 2015. By the end of the season, I’ll have spent hours on my trainer in group classes in basements across the city, listening to music I wouldn’t otherwise be listening to, sometimes louder than if I was in the front row at a rock concert.
And the classes are tough. So far, I’ve had three different instructors in two different basements. Chris is Sam’s coach. He’s a serious cycling coach who works with high level athletes. It all began in his basement. Every Tuesday at 5 p.m. six of us haul our bikes and trainers around to the back of his house and let ourselves in. We set up in the basement. Chris teaches the class and each week is more difficult than the week before. We started with a one hour class back at the beginning of November. Then 1:15. And now we’ve leveled off at 1:30.
It’s heart rate zone training. Besides your bike you need your trainer, your heartrate monitor, and a cadence monitor. Also: a towel for the sweat, two water bottles to stay hydrated, and something to munch on so as not to pass out. I have worked so hard in that class that I felt ill.
Chris had me fill out a form when I first started going and one of the questions asked me to rate my ability to suffer (I think on a scale of 1-10). I can’t remember exactly what I said, but if I was doing it again I’d say I can now suffer more.
His classes challenge me, with climbs and sprints and lots of upper zone 3 work. But there are rest and recovery periods interspersed between the harder efforts. I’m getting very comfortable with the bike. Granted, we’re not going to anywhere, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt so confident about shifting.
And where I couldn’t get a smooth cadence when I was standing up on my pedals a couple of months ago, I’m getting there now and even made it to the end of some standing intervals on Tuesday for the first time without having to sit down early.
Cheryl, from Happy Is the New Healthy teaches the class sometimes and she has also taught for Jodie. Jodie is an Ironman triathlete who subbed in one time just before Christmas. Her class challenged me perhaps more than I’ve ever been challenged on a bike, and not even as tough as it could have been. She said Chris had asked her to dial it back.
Jodie teaches another class, Saturday mornings from 7-9 a.m. in the basement of a chiropractor’s office in north London. It was the perfect thing to carry me through the holidays. For her Saturday class, she doesn’t have to run it by Chris. I think everyone in that class is an Ironman triathlete. Jodie pushed us so hard that I spent a good portion of that class in Zone 4. Some people had to refill their water bottles partway through. There was no way I was making it through that class without eating a Clif Bar, some nuts, and some coconut covered dates.
When the two hour session on the bike ended that morning and I started packing up, someone said, “Aren’t you coming running?” Saturday is not just a killer session on the trainer. It’s a brick workout. But no, I’m not doing that right now. I’ve got my long runs on Sundays with my marathon training group and there’s only so much my body can handle in one weekend.
I did another Saturday with Jodie, and then she went to Mexico and Cheryl filled in. I don’t know if they’re all competing to see who can teach the toughest class, but honestly. After Cheryl’s class last weekend, it was the first time in a long time I needed a nap a couple of hours later. I crawled into bed and bam, I was out cold.
These classes are all using a regular trainer. I like my the trainer I bought. It’s got an adjustable resistance so if it gets too easy at the setting it’s on now I can make it a bit tougher.
Starting Saturday, I’m doing something a bit different, in a different basement. Gabbi, my swim coach, runs the Balance Point Triathlon club. In the winter, she does watts training on computrainers. Gabbi swears that this is the very best way to gain power on the bike. So I’m adding Gabbi’s basement to my winter tour.
I have to say, I’m grateful for these basements. I just moved into a condo and strictly speaking I’m not supposed to use my trainer in my unit (no exercise equipment). I can sort of see why. It does vibrate a bit on the floor despite a few layers of padding and it might bother the people who live below me.
Don’t tell anyone, but I’m going to try it on the carpeted section and see if that’s any better because Coach Chris gave me an extra workout a week to round out my training. It would be great to offset the basement tour with a view from the 23rd floor once a week!
That’s Sam and I at the back — cycling in Coach Chris’s basement. Photo credit: Chris Helwig.
Ragen Chastain: “Warn a Friend They’re Fat Day” is a Real Thing
I was going to try to get January 7th declared “Warn your friends they are a size-prejudiced, body shaming, sheeple who need to start exercising some common sense” day, but Rivkie Baum, the editor of Slink magazine, had a much more productive idea. She launched a counter campaign called called “Tell A Friend They’re Fab” and encouraging people to use #youarefab on social media.
They have their different reasons. Sam’s reasons are about two things: performance and awareness of the realities of bias against people who are perceived as overweight. Performance-wise, she wants to fly up hills on her bike even faster than she does now (she says she’s not super fast now, but so far she’s smoked me on every challenging hill I’ve ridden up with her). She says:
And finally, there’s hills. And it’s harder to run fast when you’re larger. And pull ups. I’d love to be able to do an unassisted pull up.
So yes, I want to lose weight.
Cheryl’s poignant post comes clean about her continuing struggles with body image. She says:
I know that there’s a lot of talk about the way that CrossFit, for instance, can help us to really appreciate our bodies and what they can do. This usually comes with a point about how it doesn’t matter what the number on the scale or the size in our jeans reads any more—but what if it does? Where does that leave the girl who doesn’t want the quads that won’t fit in normal jeans or the shoulders that make wearing a blazer next to impossible? Where does that leave the girl who doesn’t want to go to the beach because she just can’t get used to the body she has?
That girl is me. One of my the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves is, how’s that working for you? When I ask myself that in relation to trying to love my body/eating and training the way I am, I have to be honest: I’m frustrated and I’m looking for change this year.
Their motto for measurements is “get ’em then forget ’em.” And that’s pretty much what I did every Saturday. I got ’em and forgot ’em. I can now weigh myself without feeling hugely preoccupied with the result. It’s just information.
I’ve done weekly weigh-ins before, back in the day when I attended Weight Watchers, and again when I was in personal training. But at both someone else did the weighing. With PN, it was just me and my scale. I entered the numbers into a form that for the most part, unless my coach took a boo, was for my eyes only.
Maybe it was just the right time or something, but there is no denying that I don’t hold my breath and my stomach doesn’t go into knots anymore before I get on the scale (I confess that I still engage in the ritual of peeing first).
A few days ago I started reading the book, Racing Weightby Matt Fitzgerald. Sam was surprised. Why? Because apparently a couple of years ago she put it in my mailbox at the philosophy department where we work and I returned it within minutes of reading the introduction. At the time, it was too much like a diet book with its focus on weight. Back then I really didn’t have any performance goals to speak of.
But things are different now. Now I have base times for several distances in triathlon and running. I want to get faster. My performance as an athlete now matters to me.
As I reflect on this, two questions turn in my mind. First, does it matter enough to mess with a good thing? And second, does approaching weight loss with performance in mind have any impact on the facts?
What’s the good thing I’d be messing with? Well, I didn’t weigh myself through the holidays — no need to tempt fate with this newly discovered neutral attitude towards my weight. My workout schedule wasn’t consistent and I definitely enjoyed (thoroughly and without guilt) my share of holiday treats.
But I weighed myself this morning and I weighed the same as I did before the holidays. To me, a stable weight is one of the most elusive and precious things I’ve ever had in my adult life.
Considering I bailed on PN (not the habits, but the coaching aspect of the program) about six weeks ago, and didn’t really pay much attention to it through the holidays, I feel like the fact that I still weigh the same is a good sign that I’m doing something right. And it’s not just the past six weeks, I’ve weighed in the same three-pound range — sometimes a little up and sometimes a little down, but always within the same three pound range — since May.
So there’s that. And what about the facts? It’s no secret that I don’t believe diets work. I’ve talked about it lots and I continue to break the news to people. There is a ton of denial in our social world about just how rare long term weight loss is. But it is–see Sam and Tracy Respond to the Near Impossibility of Weight Loss: All Our Posts in One Place. And also:
This isn’t to say that no one has ever lost weight and kept it off. But the vast majority of people who try don’t succeed. That’s why Sam talks about weight loss unicorns.
Now, what about my racing weight? A couple of things. I actually don’t know exactly what my racing weight is, but based on my rough estimate using the formula in the book (which provides a weight that “may be too high or may be too low”), my racing weight is about 12 pounds lighter than I weigh right now. Even scarier, if I use the calculator on the racing weight website, I’d have to lose about 16 pounds to be my ideal racing weight (that’s checking off the box that says it’s relatively difficult for me to lose body fat).
Whether it be 12 or 16 pounds, that’s not going to happen unless I make some major changes. I mean seriously drastic of a kind I can’t quite even imagine.
What I was hoping was that I was already close to my racing weight but could just try for better body composition. But that was what I was supposedly working on through the PN LE program and I’m fairly confident that my body fat percentage hardly budged after the first six months.
And yet I want to perform better in my sports. I would love to become speedier as a swimmer, on the bike, and when I run. I’m training the way I need to for all that to happen. And I plan to stay consistent with my training. There are some minor tweaks I can make to my eating, but for the most part, as a vegan athlete who prefers whole foods, I’d have to totally deprive myself of any and all treats even to have a chance of losing 10, let alone 12 or 16 pounds.
I’ve not talked with either of my coaches about this issue yet. But it’s no secret that dropping body fat can aid athletic performance. And with my more neutral attitude about the scale, now might be a good time to dabble with it as part of my training plan.
But unlike Sam and Cheryl, I’m conflicted, not because it wouldn’t be nice to drop a few pounds and lower my body fat percentage — but because I don’t know if I’d be messing with a good thing or if there is any reason to think that a different motive can magically yield better results.
While it is common for businesses to define goals and values with mission statements, most people never take the time to identify their individual senses of purpose. Most focus on single acts of self-improvement — exercising more, eating more healthfully, spending more time with family — rather than examining the underlying reasons for the behavior, says Jack Groppel, co-founder of the Human Performance Institute, an Orlando-based coaching firm.
“A resolution is a well-intended action plan, but because a person hasn’t really connected to the ‘why’ behind it, the old way of life, the chaos, comes back into play and they can’t really sustain it,” says Dr. Groppel, who created the “Corporate Athlete,” program that uses the training concepts of elite athletes to improve personal and business performance.
If I were adding to it now I think I’d say something about environmental values, “living lightly on the earth,” and a few words about friends, family, love, moving with others, and dancing, especially dancing.
I like the idea of a new year mission statement rather than a list of restrictive resolutions.
What would your fitness mission statement look like?
I’m asked that question a lot these days. It’s that time of year, I guess.
I’m also spending time with a bunch of performance oriented athletes with race related reasons to want to weigh less.
I’m never sure what to answer.
The easy answer is this: Yes, yes I do.
On the one hand, I’ve been reassured by an endocrinologist that I have no health related reasons to lose weight. For whatever reason–healthy eating, lots of activity, or just plain genetic good luck–I’m in great shape healthwise by the usual standard measures.
And finally, there’s hills. And it’s harder to run fast when you’re larger. And pull ups. I’d love to be able to do an unassisted pull up.
So yes, I want to lose weight.
But wanting something doesn’t make it so.
I’d also like a million dollars, world peace, an end to global warming, and a second job in a warmer climate for the winter months. Oh, and nice boots that fit over my thighs.
And unicorns, and rainbows, and puppies…you get the idea.
If you’ve been reading the blog awhile you’ve heard lots about my weight loss journey:
So there’s things I’d love to have, better eyesight!, and things I can actually control to some extent, like my training and my nutrition.
I can control what I do. I can’t control the results.
It’s January and the group I cycle with is holding a “healthy weight loss challenge.” They’re ruling out extreme dieting. The goal is to get to racing weight by the time of our March training camp. Will I take part? Maybe.
But for me becoming thin, forget racing weight, isn’t likely on the agenda. I’ve never been thin. Even at my lightest (I wore a size 10) I was overweight by the standard measures.
Health at Every Size is based on the simple premise that the best way to improve health is to honor your body. It supports people in adopting health habits for the sake of health and well-being (rather than weight control). Health at Every Size encourages:
Accepting and respecting the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes.
Eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite.
Finding the joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital.
So yes, I eat well, I track what I eat, and I try to make better choices. I follow the main precision nutrition habits. I’ll likely spend more time with my Lean Eating buddies on Facebook. (Our group from our 2013 class is still very active. Go Team Switch! We archived all the PN materials and we continue to reuse them.) If that results in weight loss, then fantastic. I’ll be thrilled. If it doesn’t, I’ll keep on moving. Because that’s what I love best. It’s a good thing. It would be sad thing to have my sights set on being a weight loss unicorn.
I was going to call this post “A love note to Dave” as Randonneur Dave’s support has been key in understanding my self-imposed limits.
I’ve written about my evolving challenges this year and some pretty awesome things, like my first 70 km bicycle ride. I recently returned to running and swimming and had a good, long, hard look at my running data from 2010 and 2011. I saw that I’d always done the minimum for my running training. There’s a lot of reasons for this. Some of it is baggage from being in the military where running laps was often used as punishment. There was a particularly awful group run, during recruit term, when I had an asthma attack. My senior class-men made a member of my squadron, who also had asthma, carry me to prove that asthma was not an excuse for keeping up. Not great memories. This also makes group running very challenging for me as I easily get triggered and fear paired with exertion usually cause an asthma attack..
So I was reflecting on all of that and some recent advice to dialogue with my fear. That is a different approach for me, actually messing around in fear instead of having a hostile or ignoring approach to fear. It occurred to me that I did a lot of minimum effort with running because I was afraid to give it a proper try. I thought about how I went from a 20 km ride in September to a 70 km ride in November. I thought about Tracy’s excellent post on the seemingly impossible . I realised I hadn’t run more than 3 km very often and had few 5 km runs under my belt.
I started thinking about triathlon training and choosing races. My sister and I spoke on the phone about 2015 and race distances. She pointed out we both build muscle very quickly with training and that the sprint distance we did a few years ago was easily done again. We talked about Olympic distance in the fall. I couldn’t imagine running 10 km. I hadn’t done that distance since my college days. That would be circa 1995/6 and I ran 10 km in under an hour. While that’s a great time, I was in the bottom quintile, we were all mandated to be very fit and we were all around 20 years old.
So I decided on Christmas Day I would give myself a gift. I chose a 5 km run instead of the 20 minute run scheduled. I’d done just under 3 km the previous 2 runs of 20 minutes. I trotted off and the Nike app crashed somewhere before the halfway point, although I hadn’t noticed,. I got home feeing really good and guessed my time to be 45 minutes. It was a modest time but I’d done 5 km and felt strong at the end. That gift to myself was a good one and it planted the seed that maybe, just maybe, I could run 10 km.
I started seeing the possibilities. I realized I’d not thought I could bike more than 40 km ever. I’d done that, thanks to Randonneur Dave’s encouragement, going further than I ever thought possible in November on a bent 40 lb bike.
I stuck to my training plan over the holidays. As the next scheduled run came up I thought, fuck it, I’m going to try a 10 km run. I’ve got the whole day to do it. So on Tuesday Dec 30 I trotted out the door on a cobbled together route of two 5 km routes I’d used before. It was a cool, clear, glorious day and I had the oddest song stuck in my head. I think it was from one of my kids’ games, Band of Skulls “I know what I am”. The chorus “But it’s all-right, it’s OK, I got the time but the time don’t pay, it’s all-right, it’s OK.” kept looping through my head as well as the refrain “I know what I am, they know, but they also let me be”. I just kept going. I wasn’t afraid I could’t do it, I biked for 4 hours for crying out loud! I could surely do an hour and forty minutes of running.
I thought about writing this post, what I would say. I spoke to people as I ran by them, the environmental entrepreneur collecting empties in his bulging cart to the nice lady in her cooking apron who said she should be out running instead of cooking more food. At the 5 km point the app told me I was keeping a 9 minute per kilometer pace, exactly 45 minutes, awesome!
As I got closer to home the Nike app told me I had 2 km left. I was much closer to home then that so I had to zigzag up side streets to get my distance in. I didn’t know it at the time but this took me right in front of Anita’s house. You know Anita from Tracy’s half-marathon post, and she happened to be driving down the street! So I doubled back, hugged her as she asked “10 k? Weren’t you just posting about doing your first 5 k in 2 years?” Why yes I had! Off I went to do the last, and slowest, kilometer of my run. I got home, it took me just under 1 hour 35 minutes to do the route. I was cold but felt good. I used the Nike app to post my run on Facebook and Twitter, mentioning it was the furthest I had run since 1996. The folks @NikeRunning tweeted me back, encouraging me to keep up the good work. I felt internet famous for moment. I felt like a rock star.
I was a bit sore that night but was able to do my scheduled swim the next day. Fear can be useful, it tells me when situations are dangerous, so I need to listen to my fear, not ignore it. I also can’t be bounded by my fear. I can do a 10 km run so I can do an Olympic distance triathlon.
So thank you Dave, for your encouragement to go outside my comfort zone with supportive people by my side. You’ve really helped me shift my thinking about my fears. I’m even planning a GROUP RUN with friends 🙂
I know what I am, (capable/strong/fat/awesome), they know, but they also let me be.
Bicycling Magazine, writes “Zwift Launches Virtual Indoor Training Game”:
It’s officially October, which means the countdown to winter has begun. For many riders, the days of group rides and town sign sprints are limited.
However, there is a shred of light on the horizon. A start-up called Zwift has launched an online multiplayer cycling video game platform that creates virtual 3D courses for cyclists.
With Zwift, riders from all over the world can participate in races, fondos, and charity events with—or against—other riders from the comfort of their own basements. The program will display the course on your laptop or tablet and allow you to track your progress, as well as keep tabs on others on the same course.
The program will sync with your Strava profile to upload your ride information and share with friends.
I love the idea of Zwift. I find the trainer deadly dull on my own. We’ve got long winters. I’m pretty competitive by nature, if not ability. Online multiplayer gaming plus bikes! What’s not to like?
One quibble. There’s not much room in the world of cycling for women. Zwift could do better in its promotional material with its imagery of women than “super mom” in the video above. Some women don’t have kids. Even some of us who do don’t identify as “super mom.” And hey, some women are even professional cyclists!
Advertising aside, I think this is exciting. Fun times ahead. Looking forward to trying out Zwift.
I was asked by Sam to contribute my thoughts on rediscovering running at 43 years old. I’m 5’2 and 180 lbs. (Five foot two and eyes of blue, as the old song goes…)
The short part of my story goes something like this: It’s hard. It’s hard to be at the heaviest I’ve ever been, and try to move my body against its own weight after two years of an extremely sedentary job. However, competing only against myself, I have a few simple rules; 1) If it hurts, it’s time to stop and walk 2) If it’s a bit easier each consecutive time, then I deserve to be proud of myself.
Contrast this to the prevailing idea of fitness in the 80’s- the period in which I flailed through adolescence trying to re-create myself as an attractive, heterosexual girl from the chubby, often teased tomboy which existed in the 70’s. Jane Fonda was big. And it wasn’t a “fitness class” or “boot camp” or “personal training session”, it was Aerobics. Aerobics with flimsy, leather shoes called the “Reebok Princess” pounding on hardwood/concrete gym floors. It was a time of “no pain, no gain”, spandex and headbands. To me then, fitness equalled thin. The kind of thin that means your inner thighs don’t touch each other and cellulite is non-existent.
I wanted to be Bess Motta of the “20 minute workout” kind of gorgeous. I needed the attention of every male gym buff at the YMCA to validate my existence. I had to find a boyfriend and look perfect in the eyes of Much Music and Friday Night Videos in order to feel worthy.
So, not only did I run 4-5 times a week in my adolescence and early twenties, I taught aerobics classes from the tender age of 14 to about the time I was twenty, lifted weights, and ate next to nothing. A bowl of cereal weighing 3/4 oz according to my sister’s weight watchers scale and the recommended portion according to her book, with 1/2 cup of skim milk in the morning. Diet Coke or Tab at lunch, and half a head of lettuce with vinegar, salt and no oil at dinner. Occasionally, 1 cup of pasta, and 2 oz of meat. Three servings of fruit. That’s all I ate for several years.
Of-course, after a couple years of starving myself, I started to eat more, and correspondingly, began to exceed my perceived ideal weight of more than 100 lbs. When I ate more than I thought appropriate or actually felt that my stomach was full, I’d take the odd laxative to purge it all out. Fortunately, it never went beyond that.
But the disordered thinking about my body, food and exercise were all present. And now I find myself at the opposite end of the spectrum. I am much more accepting of me, my body and “imperfection” as deigned by popular media. That’s a good thing! I’ve grown up, thank the goddess. However as Janeen Roth says in her book “Women, Food and God”: “It’s not about the weight, but it’s not NOT about the weight.” There are more compelling reasons for getting fit at my age, and number one on my list is having the energy and strength to do the things that I love already, or am interested in trying. I want to build a gorgeous garden, hike through field and stream, go to work and feel inspired. I want less anxiety, better sleep and lower blood pressure.
In short, I want a life in which I have choice. By the grace of the universe and my own self-determination, I’ll have that.
Today, I ran for 5 two minute segments on the treadmill as part of a varied intensity 30 minute walk/run. I have little to no knee/back pain, and have added at least ten minutes of strengthening on most run days. It’s working.
I’ve also discovered that headbands, serve a practical purpose!
My inner eighties child!
I’m a slightly neurotic, battle-scarred 43 year old woman who wonders why can’t we all just get along? A generally pessimistic queer who wouldn’t hurt a fly, but still manages to wring a few drops of joy out of this wet blanket we call life. Possessing little humour, I enjoy a good Victorian novel and my dog.
