I am standing in the stairwell trying to go down to my Tuesday afternoon exercise class. The world shifts to the right as I drift just left of my body. It’s disorienting and dizzying. My feet can’t seem to move and, from my slightly off to the side view, it’s very hard to tell how far down to step.
I step back on the landing, cross my arms and rub my triceps and biceps. I am back in my body. I am tired and stressed after a very difficult 7 days. I’m emotionally tapped out and the numbness of leaving my body doesn’t feel terribly bad.
I realize I’m dissociating, for brief moments, and it is coming on more frequently. I never knew it had a name, this mental holiday that is fraught with a peril therapists understand but I don’t. I’ve always felt numb during or after bad times. I thought everyone did.
So I am at the top of the stairs, dizzy, knowing this pause is making me late. I keep rubbing my arms and squeezing the muscles. I am here. I want to be here. The numbness passes and I shakily make it down, one step at a time.
By the time I walk through the gym studio door I’m at full brave face, laughing, hip thrusting and joking the core muscle class is secretly designed to up my power-bottoming game.
I know most of the folks in the class. Lovely, sparkly humans who are kind and encouraging to me always. The music starts and the worries fall away as I listen to the rapid-fire-flirty-funny instructor lead my body through a sweaty thirty minutes. I am in my body and it feels good. I feel strong. I feel capable.
The next day I run with Anthony. Neither of us is feeling 100% but we are there, exercising to keep our minds and bodies ok.
On Thursday I am stiff and sore. The discomfort keeps me in the moment and I am ok. I am present. I’m choosing to stay here and deal with my life.
I’m so thankful for movement keeping me in my body. I feel the hugs, fist bumps and pats on the back as my support network ramps up the love.
I used to think exercise was about running away from my problems. Now I’m exercising to deal with my life, to be present as healthily as I can be.
Months ago, Sam asked readers to give us an idea of what they’d like to read more about. Lots of you responded but I was struck in particular by the response of a woman around 50 who wanted to know more about our failures. In the comments to Catherine’s post about the Challenging Challenge of Challenges, I confessed to my non completion of the 39 day Runner’s World Mile a Day challenge. We may all do a group post about that at some point but I want this one to be an exploration of all the ways I am not what I may seem to be (fit, motivated, accomplished, persistent, responsible blah blah blah) and how I have made peace with that. The truth is, I often fail.
In order to more fully explain and understand these failures, it’s important to understand in what context they happen. In this space, I am often writing about interesting adventures that I have had and what they mean to me. Sometimes, I write about the things that impede me (my Rheumatoid Arthritis or Falling off Things). What I hardly ever write about is my day to day reality or the struggles I have to keep fitness going in my life. I have realized that I may come across as a person works out somehow every day without issue, diligently works toward their goals and then gallivants around the country on bike, horse or in a canoe. Well, no, I don’t.
The only thing I do nearly every day is walk my dog. That means I’m guaranteed to walk about 2 kilometers a day.However, on days where my children or partner have walked the dog enough and I’m tired and it’s late and cold. . .I do not do anything.
I am lucky if I do more than two significant fitness activities a week. I have my surge weeks where timing and weather or perhaps just obligations to friends mean I do more. But if I’m honest, I usually do one aerobic thing, one strength thing and maybe ride a horse for 40 minutes. There are weeks I do not do any running. There are weeks, like this week, where I choose sleep over Pilates.
Regarding my running, I started when I was 36. It took me until I was 42 to run 5k. That is not your expected “Couch to 5K” timeline. Immediately after achieving 5k, I wanted to get to 10k. I just did that for the first time yesterday so that was another 6 years. In the 6 years that I spent working my way up to whatever distance I would run, stop running, run again, get injured, recover and eventually try again. None of this was according to a plan. There is a half-marathon running schedule on my fridge right now, but I am not following it.
Last year, I had my bike on a trainer in my basement because I was scared about doing the Bike Rally again. I’m taking a break from the Rally this year and my bike is resting in a corner. The trainer tire is not on it.I’m waiting until spring.
Then there was the running challenge, 1 mile per day from American Thanksgiving until New Years Day. I lasted 2 weeks, sort of. My body and mind utterly rebelled. The obligation to find time in whatever weather and no matter what else was going on in my life to run a mile proved impossible to meet. At first I was ashamed of myself. It’s only a 20 minute overall thing from getting dressed to getting undressed. However, working full time and being the point person on everything else in my life means that a solid commitment of 20 mins per day when it may be in rain and wind and snow and dark and cold and blech is impossible.
What does this all mean? The truth is, I do the minimum necessary for some sort of result (result defined loosely as strength, endurance, health, the dog’s comfort). I often fall out of schedules. Sometimes it’s because there is a legit interruption and often because I like sleeping better than exercise. I have streaks of success that are amazing. Finally running 10k yesterday was a heady achievement. But I am not under an illusion that I will be ready for a half-marathon next month. I will be lucky if I run 10k again any time in the next month. I will be grateful if nothing wonks out in my body as I continue to try to push speed and distance. However, even though I am inconsistent and haphazard, I get somewhere. I am more fit and stronger now than I have ever been. The thing I have changed since my first struggles with fitness in my early 30’s, is my attitude toward restarting a thing I’ve stopped. I don’t spend much time caring that I haven’t run in 3 weeks. I just go run a few kilometers, slowly. If nothing hurts too much, the next time I may run more faster. Then that’s it, I’m running again (or on my bike, or core work, whatever it is). There is no shame in stopping. You stopped. Then you start. Except dog walks, they are never ending and that’s a darn good thing.
This image is a delightful yellow Labrador Retriever dog sitting on the blanketed back seat of my car. She is waiting for a walk, or perhaps a Timbit.
Me skiing after a rather long hiatus of any activity at all over the winter break.
I thought about competition again today because I had a great workout, spurred on by the competitive spirit. When I got to my personal training session, I felt tired and uninspired for my workout. But when my trainer Paul said that he’d given almost the same workout to Kim earlier in the day and she did it amazingly, I felt a little kick. I wanted to do at least as well as Kim!
As a result of that little nudge, I managed to crank out four sets of fifteen chest dips (at body weight, not on the gravitron) coupled with some pretty heavy barbell shoulder presses for my first round of exercises. If not for the spectre of Kim’s amazing workout (which, for all I know, Paul wasn’t even being wholly truthful about but I doubt it because she is a machine), I would have maxed out earlier on those dips I’m sure.
So this got me thinking about whether competition is a good thing, a bad thing, or what. If you look around the internet, there are at least three prevalent ways of thinking about competition.
Number one: you should compete only against yourself
There’s a lot of this type of thing out there, about running your own race, improving only against your own self, and not being in competition with anyone else. But this misses out on a key idea that is also quite prevalent…
Number two: competition motivates.
This is what got me going today. A sense of competition, not sure if it was “valid,” made me give it that extra push. In the end I have no idea whether my workout was in any sense “better” than Kim’s. It didn’t even matter. Just knowing that I was trying to do as well or better made me do better than I otherwise would have. Is that healthy? Is that valid? I don’t know. But it worked for me today.
Number three: there is something wrong with competition.
What could be wrong with competition? A related idea out there is that it brings out the worst in people, makes them want to crush other people, and is just basically not nice. Why do we need to be better than others to feel good about ourselves?
Another way of putting it is something like the quote (not sure who said it): “A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.”
The basic idea: be like that flower. Just do your thing.
I’ve asked this before and I’ll ask it again. What do you think about competition and how does it work in your life? Is it something you feel positive about or does it bring you down? Do you compete against yourself, others, or not at all?
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a blue-clad tribe** to uplift its new members.
This year my soccer team put together a group entry to the fun run, Polar Rush 2017. Now its third year, the Polar Rush takes place at Horseshoe Resort north of Barrie, Ontario. The event fundraises for Sick Kids, and this year raised $17,000. Individuals and teams complete a 5km run or walk, facing 12 obstacles, on the resort’s hilly terrain.
Dressed in blue running gear, and with “best before” freezer tags pasted to our chests, our 15-person Team Freezer Burn jogged, slogged, sledded, and climbed the obstacle course. Then, later that night, we potlucked, played games, and recounted our day out together.
I’ve written about the limitations and benefits of fun runs. However, for me the day was notable not because of the event’s athletic focus or charity fundraising. It was notable because it turned a group of individuals into a community. In our overnight adventure I saw many, many acts of caring—women helping each other by navigating the run’s obstacles, sure, but also by driving and navigating, booking rooms, bringing food, welcoming new friends and partners, teaching games, and sharing stuff. No matter who or what was needed, someone was there to support, arrange, organize, and help out.
In this group I’ve gone from a person who was terrified of joining team sports for fear of letting anyone down to feeling emboldened to try new activities. On one hand, it’s a small thing to run a 5K race, in the snow, with bright blue hair with 14 other people on a day in February. On the other hand, in our busy, isolating, and stressful 21st century life, this group of women will still take time to encourage and strengthen one another. We build community through camaraderie, or, as one team member put it, “Start together and finish together.”
For those of you who want to be more physically active, or even if you just need to be taken care of for a little while, then I encourage you to find or reconnect with your tribe. And if you are the tribe, then make the time to welcome new members in. You can lift the blue by bringing it to another person’s life.
**Note: I am aware of the colonial implications of the word “tribe.” I use the term “tribe” not to refer to a particular ethnic group or nation, but as defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a social group comprising numerous families, clans, or generations […]having a common character, occupation, or interest.”
Elan Paulson is less fit than feminist but plays recreational team sports, tries any new form of exercise, and chases after her two cats when they jump the fence. She works at her stand-up desk as Director of the EdD Program at Western University’s Faculty of Education.
