It’s hard to believe that I’ve been a road bicyclist for five years now. In that time, I have accomplished a lot of things that I never thought I would do. I have successfully buzzed around cities and towns, country roads and quaint paths, all with my feet latched securely to my pedals. I have gone up and down the Niagara Escarpment more times than I care to count. I have eaten a lot of bananas, drank a lot of coffee and known the agony of the “bonk” (a sudden drop in blood sugar due to insufficient calorie intake on a longer ride).

There are a few things I have not done. I have not become immersed in hard core cyclist culture. I was tempted. There is a lot of nobility in that crowd but there is also a lot of toxicity that my middle aged feminist self was not interested in. “The Rules” epitomize the complexity of it. I’m not knocking the folks who really get off on that sort of thing. It just is not me and never will be.

Still, the thing I enjoy most about road biking is the social component and without it, I doubt I would have carried on as long as I have or upgraded my bike to my delightful new one (Trek Domane 5, for those who care). In order for the social component to work, the cyclists have to be like minded in some way and I am so grateful that I found a little tribe of people who find the same things important that I do. Whether they are more experienced, stronger or faster what counts is the experience of the whole ride. We try hard and wait at the top of the hill. If someone is really full of beans, they buzz ahead and loop back. We drink coffee and eat butter tarts to fuel the adventure and as we speed along, we tell each other all the stories of bike rides past and those yet to come.

We look out for each other while we pee in the woods. We share water and tell each other how good we look on the bike. We praise strength. I have never felt so strong as I do riding my bicycle, amazed at my capacity to endure another 10km or to haul myself another 50m up that wicked hill on Limberlost Road. There is something about the rhythm of biking, especially in hilly Muskoka Ontario. It’s natural interval training amongst the call of the crow and the loon. It’s getting chased by the black flies and watching them fall away as you pass 11km/h. I can’t wait for the heat of summer when I can come back into the drive of my family cottage, lean the bike on the pink granite rock, take off my shoes and walk straight into the lake, bike clothes and all. That is pure joy, I tell you.

The older I get the more I realize that the benefits of exercise that we all read about are a synergistic package of things. It isn’t just the movement or the heart rate or the metabolism or the blood flow to the brain. It’s the feeling of competence, the possibilities of connection, the agency and the joy. They all work together whether it is a mountainous cycling trip or a social walking group.

You know, I didn’t know where this post was going to end up when I started it, but I think I’m starting to see my own point. Road cycling is the hardest, most extreme exercise I have ever done, and enjoyed at the same time. The reasons for this are the fullness of the experience as described here. What it is most decidedly not, is solely a mechanism to change my body or allow me to eat more ice cream. It is not the thing I punish myself with or do out of duty. It does not purify my moral short comings and neither does my skill or lack thereof speak to my worthiness as a human. I’m not doing it because my doctor threatened me. It’s just firkin’ joyful.

I hope you find that movement that is that thing for you.

Last year, I ran a fun little 10k race with some colleagues that I blogged about. In a surprise turn of events, I ran it again this year! I hadn’t been a very regular runner since the end of March: first I got sick. Then we went on holiday, where lots of waling but no running got done. Then I was really busy at work. I managed to get in a few short distance runs, but come last week I hadn’t clocked more than 5k in quite a while, and so my first reaction when a colleague asked if anyone wanted to join the race last minute was “naaaw”. But then on Thursday, I went for a 7k lunchtime run and thought “hell, if I can do 7k without dying today, I can do 10 on Sunday!”. Since the race was exactly the same course as last year, I thought it would be a fun comparison. And it was!

Last year it was hot and dry. This year we had a forecast of less heat but possible thunderstorms, but the weather decided otherwise and just as we set off, the sun came out. It was quite humid, and I quickly broke a sweat. I’m really not sure whether I preferred last year’s heat or this year’s humidity. I regretted not taking my sunglasses along though!

Last year, my goal had been to do it in under 60 minutes and I managed, and I wrote in my race report that my goal for this year was to do it in under 55. Given my recent training history though, on race day I settled for “I’ll be happy if I can do it as fast as last year”. Checking my watch early into the race, I was doing 5:35 mins/km, which was not super fast, but on track. The “hill” I’d struggled on last year was much easier this year, so I was happy! Generally, the going was good and I was feeling fine.

Feeling fine wasn’t a given as my period had staged an entrance that morning and I had some cramps. Could it have picked a worse day?! (It turns out that yes, it could have – had the race been the following day it would not have been good. At all.) A little bit into the race, the cramps dissipated and I didn’t hear from them again until kilometre 8, when they made a strong comeback.

Speed-wise, I didn’t check again until just before the halfway point because I started getting the feeling that I was perhaps going a bit fast. At that point, I was doing 5:13 mins/km! So I gave myself a stern talking-to – I didn’t think I could sustain this and needed to pace myself. I found myself a personal “pace bunny”: a guy in a bright red shirt who was running right in front of me and seemed to be going at a reasonable pace. This race is a combined 10k and half marathon, with the half marathon route splitting off from the 10k at about 8.5k. From the colour of his bib, I could tell he was doing the half, and figured that if I could stay with him until the turn-off I was set for a decent time.

My strategy worked out beautifully! So beautifully in fact that my last 1.5k, once I’d lost my “bunny”, were tough. I couldn’t find another person to anchor myself to, so for the home stretch, it was just me, my cramps, and determination.

And I did it! I broke my personal best, and surpassed last year’s time by over two minutes – I did 54:05. In the end I met and even surpassed the goal I’d set myself last year! I’ll be honest, when I initially told myself the same time as last year would be fine, I was trying to not set myself up for failure. In the back of my mind, the “under 55 minutes” goal was still niggling, and once I got to the halfway point and realised how well I was doing for time I started thinking it just might be possible.

I’m really happy to see the improvements vis-à-vis last year’s race. Last year I was fairly well-trained, and still I struggled more than this year. Had I been in training this year, I could maybe have run even faster this year, or at least it would have been easier to run the pace I did. Continuity and perseverance, along with hill training, have paid off. I’m signed up for another 10k in July and am starting to plan for a half marathon in the autumn, so Sunday’s race gave me a big confidence boost (although I did wonder in the end how anyone manages to run twice the distance I did, and in much less time!). I’m really excited about my new goals now.

I also mentioned this last year, but I just have to say again how much I love this race. It’s local, small, and the volunteers from the organising club are super friendly. All the logistics are incredibly well organised. It’s family friendly too: one of my colleagues, who also did the 10k, brought her husband, who did the half marathon, and their kids. They could just drop them off at childcare, which they said was really well thought-out with fun activities – in fact, their kids didn’t want to leave at the end! Two other colleagues didn’t run themselves, but brought their children to participate in the kiddies’ fun run. And afterwards, we all went to the lake to picnic. Yay for spontaneous races!

P.S. Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures, but to get an impression of the race you can click here or here (both websites in German only, sorry).

Sam is right when she says I like good news stories. I’m a big fan of good news, especially for aging people who are thinking it might be too late to start getting active. After a certain age, we usually assume that we can’t make any physical gains (other than weight gain). But studies show otherwise.

A recent study published in JAMA reports similar lower mortality risk in life-long active people than in those who take up activity later in life. The study found as follows: ” This cohort study of 315 059 participants found that maintaining physical activity from adolescence into later adulthood was associated with 29% to 36% lower risk for all-cause mortality and that being inactive but increasing physical activity during midlife was associated with 32% to 35% lower risk for mortality.”

It translates this to mean: “Although long-term participation in physical activity may be important to lower mortality risk, the present study provides evidence that becoming physically active later in adulthood (40-61 years of age) may provide comparable health benefits.”

I consider myself anecdotal evidence for this study’s legitimacy. I’ve never been an athlete. I’ve had different times of my life that I’ve been active, but I was definitely not at all active as an adolescent or a young adult. And I’ve only really just come into my own in terms of consistent physical fitness since Sam and I started blogging about it in 2012, just before we turned 48.

We committed to being the fittest we’d ever been in our lives by the time we turned 50. You can read about that two year commitment in our book, Fit at Midlife: A Feminist Fitness Journey. (it’s also available as an audiobook, by the way!)

And guess what? Having trained for and completed two Olympic distance triathlons by my 50th birthday, I can attest that yes, I was the fittest I’d ever been in my life by the time I turned 50. And I can attest further that I have a higher level of fitness now than I did then.

So it’s kind of amazing to think that the probabilities are in my favour for lower risk of mortality comparable to what I’d have if I had been a lifelong athlete. That’s really good news.

Okay, I get that it’s just one study. And I get that we can’t really draw direct conclusions about our own lives from one study. But I like it anyway. It’s good news for all of us who started late or who may still be able to get more physically active but are still stuck in the view that physical decline as we age is inevitable so “why bother?”

I don’t want to go so far as to say that it’s never too late. Things happen. Not everything we might have liked to try remains available to us at all times in our life. But it’s almost never too late for a great many people who might be thinking of getting more active but might feel discouraged before they even start. And that’s a good news story.

By MarthaFitat55

I’m a big fan of the Marvel Comic franchise and I eagerly awaited the final installment End Game, particularly as I have a few favorite characters, including Thor, the God of Thunder.

I won’t go into any detail about the film itself in case there are still some readers out there who haven’t seen it. However it is safe to say the surviving heroes from Infinity Wars deal with grief in their own unique ways befitting their personalities and histories as we know them.

Hawkeye becomes a driven assassin; Captain America becomes a peer support leader; Black Widow is laser-focused on monitoring the world for potential threats; and Iron Man has retired to a peaceful rural life with Pepper Potts and their daughter.

Thor, on the other hand has retreated to beer, pizza, and a wastrel life of video games with his bros. The film offers grave tones suggesting a depressed, unhappy and sorrowful hero who cannot find his strength or motivation to lead.

Fair enough, many of us do use food or drink to manage our feelings, so no judgement from me on that. However, when we catch our first glimpse of Thor, he is seen as unkempt, schlumpy and fat.

In fact, there were lots of titters and guffaws at this unexpected manifestation of depression. I’ve read enough comments to see this was not an unusual response. While I appreciate Thor in the pantheon was funnier than the other heroes, it was hard to see him as a tool for mockery. And he is mocked by the people he calls his friends.

I suppose I should be grateful there was no miracle makeover, but the constant digs were unkind at best and cruel at their worst. That Thor himself feels he is a lost cause becomes apparent with his overwhelmingly relief when he learns he is still worthy enough to recall the Hammer.

I saw End Game just days before news broke that runners in the London marathon’s 7.5 hour pace group were mocked and called fat for their efforts. It was another reminder that if you don’t fit social expectations, you are not worthy. If you are interested in some other thoughts, here’s an interesting take at the Mary Sue.

What do you think? How might this story line be done more positively?