by Christine Hennebury

I was never planning to have a dog – I’m allergic- but Khalee came along just as my son was in need of a pet.

The funny thing is, she has decided that I’m her alpha and she takes every opportunity to protect me and keep me company.

So, I have found myself with company while I work, company while I sleep, and company while I do yoga. Downward dog takes on a whole new meaning when I have an actual dog sniffing my face.

I love the little extra impetus to get out for a walk and it’s fun to watch her sniff her way along all kinds of familiar trails.

And it’s hilarious when she tries to protect me from bugs and birds.

I know lots of people for whom being a ‘dog person’ is part of their identity but that hasn’t happened to me.

I’m just a person who loves this particular dog. 

And now I have an excuse for all the time I spend talking to myself. Ha!

Thanks for protecting me so well, Khalee Pup!

And a shoutout to Reactine for keeping me from sneezing my head off.

This is the final installment in a three part series on staying/being active while travelling with kids. While my kids are a bit older (11 and 14), we have been canoeing or kayaking and hiking together since they could walk or hold a paddle. Parts 1 and 2 of this installment are two tales of our travels this summer, the “There” part of “There and Back Again”, about biking the Via Appia Antica in Rome and kayaking a caldera in the hills above Rome. In the “Back Again” part of “There and Back Again”, we return to the states and visit the old family stomping grounds in “Up North”, e.g. the northern part of the lower peninsula of Michigan AKA the top of the mitten.

Back into my childhood, since I was a baby in a stroller, and before that when my mother was a young woman and then a teen and then a child, herself, our family has gone to the community of Elk Rapids, Michigan every summer almost without fail. It goes back to the late 1940’s, our relationship with this area. The town of Elk Rapids is on a bit of land between Elk Lake and Lake Michigan. From Elk Lake, you can take a boat along a “Chain of Lakes”, traveling from one community to another, past folks’ houses that bump up on the water, past restaurants and convenience stores that have boat docs as well as car parks. Maybe someday we will try that with a kayak, and get picked up on the other end.

Some years, we make sure to bike the easy beautiful 9 mile circumference of Mackinac Island, which allows no motorized vehicles but only horses and bicycles. But this summer, we did what has become a new guaranteed activity: a bike trip on local trails with Son 2 who is a budding cyclist with a kit of his own at 11 years old. We even brought his own road bike from home, since it fits in the back of our family vehicle nicely with the wheels off.

The thing I failed to adequately predict was exactly how much faster than me he would be with me on a rented bike and him on his very own, me with my adult body pushing against a sometimes fierce headwind and him cutting through it like a knife. It didn’t bum me out much, but it sure did slow him down. He loves to cover 17 miles in an hour, wind cutting through the slats in his helmet to dry the sweat. We did it in two and a half hours, including breaks to chat with people along the way, such as a kid who plaintively asked if they could be best friends with Son 2.

Since some of you might want to use the same trail we took this year in the future, I will tell you a bit about the trail and the amenities as well as the experience. The trail is the Leelenau Trail north of Traverse City. The Leelenau Peninsula is famous for its wineries and agriculture, as well as its cute vacation towns which have drawn tourists since the mid-20th century.

It connects TC and Suttons Bay over 17 miles of only occassional road crossing and virtually no sharing a road with cars. Suttons Bay is a town filled with boutiques and cottages and a good public library and some truly superb ice cream. It also pairs nicely with the Bike-and-Ride bus routes which have room for as many as 11 bikes: 3 on the front and 8 in the back half of a converted school bus. This makes it easy to ride the trail one way (either way) and just bike one way. Both towns are on the lake, so there’s no elevation difference in how the ride goes for either direction. I didn’t think to ask the driver, but it occurs to me now that, looking at the racks, I am not sure whether the buses can transport full-size trikes or recumbent bikes, both of which are sometimes used by folks with balance issues or with seating requirements that preclude using a typical bicycle.

We parked our car near the bus station in downtown Traverse City just a few blocks from the lake; this is one of several places where the buses for the Leelenau trail route depart from and return to. It’s also the only place where you get a good mile or so ride alongside the lake on a TART trail before you connect to the Leelenau peninsula.

Left: Son 2 is pretty excited about this whole prospect. At this point, we’ve just crossed the street from the bus station to the lake-side park and its corresponding ped/bike trail. His bright red road bike and purple and black and white biking kit and huge grin mean he’s ready to go. Right top: A view of Lake Michigan with the TART Trail sign showing the direction to the Leelenau Trail and other destinations. Right middle: Bikes selfie! The author, with the trail behind her, the lake to one side, and the car road on the other. Right bottom: a view of Lake Michigan with sailboats in the distance, a narrow strip of sand beach in the foreground, and white fluffy clouds dotting a blue sky.

As we transferred from the TART trail to the Leelenau Trail, Son 2 decided that he’d grown quite a bit since his bike was last adjusted (it had been a month or so since he rode it, and it’s been a growth spurt kind of a summer for him). Fortunately, there was a bike repair station with a set of basic bike tools and air pump at the Cherry Lane trailhead which made short work of the adjustment (image below). I didn’t check to see if there was a chainbreaker as well as the basic toolset, but probably most people who could break and repair a chain would have those tools and parts on them, regardless. It does have struts on which you can hang the bike to work, and the tool set retracts into the metal shelter when you’re finished. It’s a nice touch to find on the trail about 2 miles in.

Once you hit the trail itself, there are mile markers every so often, not only every mile but also at points between miles so that you know how far you’ve come and how far you have yet to go. The trail moves through woods, through fields filled with cherry trees or other fruits, through vineyards–some well-established and some just getting started–, through corn fields, past homes. At one point, it passes a retirement home and in that area, the trail fills with older pedestrians, some helping wheel chair using neighbors get a bit of trail time in and others taking a bit of a wander down the trail. There are benches roughly every half mile, some in the shade and some with views of the peninsula’s rolling hills, some commercial and some a kid’s Girl Scout or Boy Scout badge project, some marked as paid for by trail management and some clearly put out by whomever owns the neighboring property. Some homeowners ignore the trail. Others decorate to welcome cyclists and runners and walkers. Some even put snacks or water out for trail users. One, memorably, had a cooler of ice cold water and a watertight transparent box containing a journal and a pen which functioned as a kind of guestbook of trail users who had stopped to refresh themselves.

Top left: decorations with multiple American flags strung over and planted next to the trail. Top right: a cooler containing ice cold water kindly left at a trailside table about halfway between TC and Suttons Bay. Bottom left: a guest book with pen inside a water-tight container, signed by trail users. Bottom center: a bike handle protrudes into a view of shallow rolling hills covered in crops. Bottom right: the author smiling, taking a selfie while riding through woods with the sundappled trail receding into the distance.

At the water cooler pitstop, a pair of older women cycling the route on good bikes in comfortable kits offered to take our picture. At first, Son 2 was shy, but he really does enjoy these outings we take together and he wanted something to remember us both by. By this point, my hair had been soaked with sweat under my helmet and dried again, a cycle that repeated many times before the ride was over. The same was true for Son 2. He referred to this stage of physical activity as the “crunchy hair” point. As we neared Suttons Bay, we began to see distant ridges behind flatter marsh and wetland. Widlflowers lined the trail and sumac groves reared up, red-tipped. These descriptions are as good a caption as any for the images, below.

At the end of the trail in Suttons Bay, everything becomes town shockingly fast. Antique candy stores, cafes, sandwich shops, restaurants, gimcrack stores, and yard ornament shops pepper the streets. We hopped off our bikes, locked them up, and took a walk. My butt insisted I not get on a rented bike again for quite some time, and bring my own bike and saddle next year. After a bit of a toddle, we headed towards the Suttons Bay Library from whence we would catch the bus back to TC. Along the way, we stopped for ice cream and I was amazed to see Lemon Poppyseed and Lavendar ice cream. We tried samples, and they were superb and unusual, but I reverted to my favorite and hard to find Black Cherry. Cold things with sugars and fats after a long bike ride pushing against a headwind in the sun on a hot day? Yes, please! The tip jar read “Tipping: Bad for cows! Good for us!” We finished our snack and walked the two blocks over to the library which sits on a small hill overlooking the Bay in question. Across the bay, the sun shone on the orderly rows of a vineyard, while people and pets played on the grass and sand, sailboats in the small marina raising their masts above the water. We had timed it perfectly: the bus pulled up just as we arrived at the library, and the driver helped load all the bikes. All of these can be seen in the images, below.

Another successful outing, seeing parts of the world it would not have been so easy (or pleasant, or invigorating) to see by car. If you’re ever up in this area, I recommend checking out the TART trails. In fact, for these trails, and the kayaking in Rome, and the riding in Rome, we wouldn’t have found them if we hadn’t been actively looking for something active and exercise-y to do that would also help us get to know these areas a little differently.

I am reminded of an annual event in Lansing, Michigan, where I used to live, called Be A Tourist In Your Own Town. And while we did these activities in places that were There and Back Again, we have increasingly begun to look for these kinds of things in our own area near St. Louis Missouri, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. There is a wonderful rails-to-trails system, there are many festivals, and there are loads of cultural events related to physical activity that welcome various skill levels from cycling to acro-yoga to dancing. The trail system on the Missouri side even offers Juneteenth history tours and other black history tours by cycle. Integrating activity with my kids–and, when he is able to join us or we are able to join him, my spouse–into travel and into our lives at home has become a critically important part of how we experience the world.

I am sure this is the case for many of you. And we had to build these habits over the years, until the thing we ask when we travel to a place is “So…. bikes?” or “So… hikes?” or “So… kayaks?” Someday, we will have to amend them. But I hope we hang onto them. Because they are delightful, whether we do it there, or back again.

Last weekend, I participated in The Triadventure: The Finale, which is the primary fundraising event for the Nikibasika project in Uganda (the blog’s very own Cate Creede is the director of this profoundly meaningful endeavour). The idea of this event is similar to the Friends for Life Bike Rally that lots of us have done. . .promise to do something physically hard and impossible to contemplate for some people and then ask them to donate. It has the effect of creating a dual path to convincing people to part with their money. One is the project itself (which has literally raised, as in parented, nurtured and guided, 52 kids from very adverse circumstances into community leaders and beautiful humans), the other is people being impressed with how hard the participants are willing to work in order to draw attention to the project. To that end, the full event is a 3k swim, a 14k run, a 13k canoe and a 122k bike ride.

One of the other impacts of events like this is the community they build around a mutual goal. I came to the Triadventure late. This is the last one as the project is now fully funded to its conclusion, which will be graduation from post secondary education the last 13 kids (the youngest is 15 right now). I feel both sad that I didn’t get in on it sooner and also that the experience of being there this last time was enough to make me profoundly grateful that I got to participate even once. I feel very strongly that community building is actually the single most important impact of this event and others like it.

The money is important for sure but the lasting impact on people’s hearts moves forward through time with ripples that generate profoundly important structural cohesion in this very non cohesive world. It’s an antidote to despair. It’s hope for people across the Atlantic but also for the people immediately around us. Smith, a graduate of the project whose profession is somewhere between doctor and nurse practitioner, and who was able to come to Canada for a couple of weeks to see our medical system and participate in the event, wisely noticed the love. He talked about the love that his brothers and sisters felt in the care they received and the idea that people cared for them and worked for them. He also noticed the love of the group for each other. He was struck with love and he said it so beautifully and vulnerably over and over.

While riding the first leg of the bike ride on Sunday, I was chatting with one of the participants about the world and doom and all of that. She asked me if I thought political climate impacted the psychological health of society and how quickly I thought it was passed through to impact. She was actually asking this question in contemplation of another project she is working on that is a support umbrella for social innovation. So, this wasn’t just another bunch of left wing pinko cyclists complaining about the government and the hetero-capitalist-colonialist-patriarchy (although that was there, no doubt).

My answer, in case you wonder, is “YES” and “nearly immediately in my experience”. Leadership sends messages and the messages about disregarding the vulnerable land most acutely in the laps of the vulnerable. By definition, they are VULNERABLE and so do not have means that others have to weather the whims of cost cutters and people who think boot strapping is physically possible (as in physics people, you can’t lift your own self off the ground. Either there is a ladder, a crane, stairs or a person carries you). They are attuned to being left behind and react immediately. They are attuned to the messages that are implicitly sent (it’s their fault, they aren’t trying hard enough, their problems aren’t real, they aren’t real) and this results in further despair, trauma, immobilization and giving up. If no one cares about you, why should you care about yourself? Why would you know you could care about yourself?

Then I started to make the analogy to cycling. Sweeping to be precise. The role of a sweep on a long ride, especially a community/charity ride, is to stay at the back and make sure everyone gets home safely. This means they are likely going at a pace that is not very fast and sometimes not even very fun. It’s work to sweep. You have to keep an eye out for the most vulnerable and help them. Further, you have an obligation to look around and make sure you didn’t miss anyone because sometimes there are people you can’t see (sorry Alan, I’m glad you caught up but I felt bad).

Sweeping requires compassion for people who make dumb choices (about gear or bikes or not enough water or not enough training). Sometimes sweeping requires extra help, like a car and a lift. Those resources are given to those who need them so they can all meet us at the end of the ride and be part of our community together. If we acted like some leaders, people who make mistakes, have gear issues, get sick the day of the ride or get lost, would all be left on the side of the road, in some cases to die. We would say, “that’s their problem, heat stroke should be mind over matter”. But that is disgusting of course and we wouldn’t. We don’t.

I want the whole world to run like the Triadventure, or the Bike Rally, or even the Ride to Conquer Cancer. I want safety and community and sacrifice and love to be the primary motivators and goals of what we aspire to create and be. I want hope, damn it. I know how to sweep, the principles are easy. I want every politician to behave like a sweep. I want the focus to be on service and selflessness, the kind that lifts everyone up and feeds everyone, including those who serve.

Fundamentally, I think this is the kind of wisdom to be found in sport and specifically non-competitive sport. We were all just helping each other do a hard thing with love. I mean, that’s just the secret of life right there isn’t it? Do the hard thing, with love.

So do it.

As I said on Tuesday, I’m taking a step back from the blog. I am saying “good-bye for now” but in all honesty, the chances of me coming back to regular blogging here are minimal. As noted on Tuesday, I’m out of ideas on blog-appropriate topics. Not that I have no thoughts on these things, but I have grown weary of writing about them myself. And we now have a team of amazing authors with all kinds of energy for blogging well into the future. So I have no worries at all about the blog’s ability to thrive without my unenthusiastic participation.

This is not at all to say I don’t love and adore the blog, the community that has grown around it, the team of authors who have become friends (many of whom I can turn to when I need comfort, support, a listening ear, the right question to help me work through a thing…). I have deep gratitude and respect for what goes on here at Fit Is a Feminist Issue. Sometimes I can hardly believe I’ve had the good fortune to be a part of it.

For today’s post, I’d originally considered doing a top ten. But my goodness, after seven years of blogging, daily for the majority of those years, it’s just about impossible to nail it down to ten posts that have had staying power with me. I could more easily list ten for each year. But that would be excessive. So instead, I’m just going to talk about an indeterminate number of posts that got my attention, and why.

I have to start with Sam. When we started this blog together, we had been talking about feminist fitness for years and years already. We had a solid foundation of shared ideas that made the blog possible. And we both wanted to add the “aging” angle, as we were approaching our 50th birthdays. In fact, the original title of the blog was “Fit, Feminist, and (almost) Fifty.” I don’t even remember how we came up with that title. But two identical perspectives would have resulted in a big yawn. Bonus points: Sam and I had enough different experiences, interests, and perspectives on some issues to make it interesting. For examples: she LOVES tracking and data, I find tracking oppressive. In 2012, she was into CrossFit and rowing and cycling (of course!) and Aikido. I was into yoga, walking, running, and weight training. I have learned a lot from Sam’s blog posts.

Probably my two favourites of hers from the early days are “Fit, Fat, and What’s Wrong with BMI?” where she interrrogates the way BMI is used as an individual measure of health and fitness, and “Is Aging a Lifestyle Choice?” where she considers whether we slow down because we age or we age because we slow down. I liked the BMI post because, just two weeks into the blog’s existence, it helped to shape the tone and content of what we evolved into. That post sent the message that we were not just going to co-sign the “received view” about things. Nope. If you want that, then check out the rest of the internet! The aging post was a reflection on Gretchen Reynolds’ book, The First Twenty Minutes, in particular the chapter on aging. This was the very first time I ever considered that we might have a hand in the way we age.

Sam has faced setbacks of late that have driven home the point that aging is not simply a lifestyle choice. And even during our challenge she had some personal tragedies and losses of family members that made it clear that we are not fully in control of every aspect of health and aging. But the idea that at least some people might make choices that either speed up or slow down the march of time is, as Sam said at the time, certainly intriguing. And it has stuck with me and in many ways has been a positive factor in some of the things I managed to do during and since the challenge (like triathlon!).

I also love Sam’s post on ladylike values and sport performance values. Her question: do they clash? She considers some examples, like blowing your nose on the bike or having to act in ways that command attention (like kiaing in Aikido — that’s where they yell). Her conclusion: “I think we women athletes may need to say goodbye to our inner ‘ladies’ and channel our inner “bad girls.” This makes me smile still: yes, we are a feminist fitness blog. Look out.

There are any number of other posts from Sam that have stayed on my radar: “Remembering Marion, my favourite fit feminist ninety something friend,” where she reminisces about an amazing woman and friend whom she’d recently lost. We should all be so lucky to be even a little bit like Marion when we’re in our nineties (or eighties, or seventies or…!); “Loving the body you’ve got: Love a better motivator than hate,” which, for obvious reasons, sends an important message right from the title, and then backs it up with research findings. And then there was “The dad bod? Fine. But what about the mom bod,” where in her body positive way Sam applauds the relaxed standards around men’s bodies and then laments that we don’t have similar relaxed standards for women’s bodies. Of course, later, she would notice an alarming trend, suggesting things are going in the wrong direction: “Men, meet normative thinness.”

I’m mostly drawn these days to posts that dig deep, depict challenges overcome or challenges that defeat us and how we handled that, or question dominant narratives. Humour also works for me. We can strike a heavy tone sometimes, and since we don’t actually coordinate posts, sometimes (like when Trump got elected or when a harsh winter seemed to drag on too long) that tone can hang in the air without abating.

I adore the way Cate reflects in her posts. She chews things over and divulges her deepest feelings about them and usually comes to some sort of resolution, all in a way that resonates strongly with lots of people (me included). Her posts “What does it mean to look my age?” and “Making peace with our changing bodies” both do this brilliantly and reassuringly. And of course, her travel posts! They’ve taken me places I’ve never been. There are many, but “Why I run when I travel” really opened things up for me and made me consider that some of the places where I choose not to run might be places I actually could run if I took an attitude more like Cate’s. She’s the most adventurous person I know. Her birthday word cloud shows I’m not the only one who thinks that. And my all-time favourite Cate post: “What are we making together?” This post touched me deeply. In it, she laments the reality of feminists unleasing their fury on other feminists, and proposes a new idea: dialogic communication (i.e. “This means communication based in inquiry, and the assumption that the other person has a valid reason for their point of view.”)

And then she went on to say what it means for our Facebook page (where we had been experiencing some UN-dialogic communication), which everyone visiting knows to be a feminist context to begin with. She said, if you’re on our page “and you think “this doesn’t feel feminist to me,” why not get curious instead of police-y?  Think maybe, huh, I wonder why Sam thought this was a fit on this page?  how does her version of feminist differ from mine?  ASK her — This triggers something for me, why did you think this had a feminist lens?  Ask yourself — how can someone I otherwise agree with have this perspective?  What am I missing about why they might have posted this?  And even if you do understand and disagree, think about what this says about the wonders of multiplicity and how two people can differ and still respect each other and have more in common than they don’t.” Go, Cate!

Catherine, another resident cyclist and our “weekends with Womack” blogger, came on board as a regular quite soon into the blog, way before the end of our challenge. Besides being funny and smart at the same time, Catherine is super talented at dissecting the latest scientific research and research headlines to give important perspective that is not readily available elsewhere. She did this in” Cleaning is not the new cardio” and also, more recently, in “Can leaving the light or TV on at night make you gain weight? Shining a light on the subject.” She’s also really good at ranting: “What’s so great about more?” And at being funny and fun more generally: “A tale of two bodies, or how (clothing) fit is a feminist issue.” Catherine also blogs honestly about her own struggles and is reasonable in a way that resonates with me. I really identified with her recent post “What’s so great about more? Less is just fine as it is.” It picks up on one of my favourite themes: doing less and scaling back. It is always comforting to find kindred spirits on this front. #weekendswithwomack for the win!

Nat, also an early-in-blog regular, writes easily and honestly about hard health things. Blood pressure, sleep apnea, plantar fasciitis, bad doctor experiences. She also writes about her fitness pursuits, which haven’t always been easy — like when she learned to ride with clipless pedals and didn’t die and when she was the crying woman in a yoga class. We both had concerns about being bad feminists and since I think Nat is an awesome feminist, I cheered a big cheer for all of us when she said: “no one gets to call me a ‘bad feminist’ but myself.” Yeah! And another of Nat’s post that left a great impression on me and, re-reading it makes me want to make my own “stop doing” list: “My 2017 Stop Doing List.” We all need a stop doing list. If you haven’t yet figured it out, I’m a fan of #satwithnat.

So about those deep topics that resonate with me at a level that goes way beyond feminist fitness, right to the gut. Susan has a fantastic and gut-wrenching post that she wrote in the days following the inauguration of the new US president in 2017. Yeah, that president. The post was entitled, “Running from my despair,” and she warns us at the outset, “Okay I’m not messing around here, this is not going to be a fun post.” She talks poignantly about fear, despair, the “struggle to feel meaningful,” about privilege, and about how running helps (sort of). And Kim’s post about “girlfriend therapy” and “finding the time and the space to make new female friends in middle age.” She talked about that in the context of one new friendship: with Susan (yes, our Susan of the “Running from despair” post). That one warmed my heart because seeing the blog at work, bringing women together in friendship and support, is a beautiful thing. And I like them both. And girlfriend therapy plays a huge role in my life.

Speaking of making new friends…I had a really great experience last year getting to know Cate and Christine when the three of us facilitated our only fitness challenge group to date. The three of us didn’t know one another all that well when we started. We live in different cities and we hadn’t spent a lot of time together. But by the time the group wound down, we had developed an intimate three-way friendship that included almost nightly chats about everything under the sun. I totally fell in love with them both. Christine is a champion of timed challenges of all kinds — writing challenges, drawing challenges, and yes, fitness challenges. She’s got the best smirk EVER. And she blogs beautifully and humanely about her fitness pursuits. Her “Getting pushy with push-ups” starts with a bold statement of a desire that many of us share: “I want to be able to do push-ups easily.” Her cousin, Ken (a chiropractor), set up a 3x a week “phase one” plan for her to help her get closer to that goal.

During our challenge group, Christine set out to do yoga every day for 30 days. She invited us to join her. I tried, because her post about it — “Yoga. Practice.” was so inviting. As was the idea that 7 minutes a day is all we were aiming at. Christine’s post gave all sorts of good reasons why that commitment was do-able. It all seemed so alluring, the way she put it in her post. I didn’t quite make it. But it gave me another reason to check in every night with Cate and Christine.

A few other posts that I want to mention before I end this overly long reminiscence:

• Martha’s smart analysis of the Caster Semenya decision that said she would need to take medication to reduce her testosterone levels if she wanted to compete in women’s competitions. “Women, sport, and sex tests” tackles an important issue in women’s sport and draws out the wider implications of the decision.
• Bettina’s posts about bouldering always grab my attention because it’s completely new to me. In bouldering, as in most things sporty, men like to explain things (unsolicited) to competent women. Bettina recounts an outrageous experience of that in “Men explain things to me: the bouldering edition.“
• Along the same lines, Marjorie gives a great list of criteria it would be great for such men to reflect upon before they offer their advice to perfectly competent women who didn’t ask for it. I wish we could post this — “‘Just trying to be helpful?’ How to know if it’s okay to offer me advice at the gym” — one in gyms everywhere.
• Mina’s reflections on grit in “Is Grit Good or Bad?” is another one of those posts that helps us to reflect on our own fitness practice. At least, that’s the impact it had on me. We hear a lot about the virtues of sticking things out. But we hear a lot less about how to make decisions about when to let a thing go. She offers a list of questions we can ask ourselves, the last of which is “where would I rather spend my grit?” I love this. Why? Because it suggests that, realistically, we need to make choices. We can stick some things out. But over time we accumulate more commitments (in all areas of life) than we have space for. This is where I find myself these days — with a few more commitments than I can handle, and a time when I am engaged in the life-equivalent of licking my wounds and regrouping.
• Two women who have a spot in my heart and who blog here occasionally, not regularly (though we would love it if they did!) are Audrey and Rebecca. They had a great ranty interaction about the Lingerie Fighting League (subtitled: “because we don’t sexualize women fighters enough already”) a few years ago.
• Finally, I love the post where we got to celebrate our 20,000 wordpress followers. There had been a time, in around 2015 or so, when we were picking up 1000 new wordpress followers a month. But then it tapered off and we were waiting. And waiting. And waiting to hit 20,000. That finally happened. And it felt great. Sam blogged about it in “Celebrating Feminist Fitness with our 20,000 WordPress Followers.” Why do I love that post? Because we are not alone. And when we started our fittest by 50 challenge back in 2012, it was just the two of us and we had no idea where it would take us. We were going to stop blogging when we turned 50 because the challenge would then be over. And here we are, both about to turn 55 and the blog thriving as a community we could not have even imagined.

The length of this post proves to me just how much appreciation I have for all of the other bloggers at Fit Is a Feminist Issue. Together, as a team, we really have built something special, with plenty of diverse content that speaks to a much wider palette of issues than how to be a fit feminist. It’s been a privilege to be a part of it.

Next week, on Tuesday and Thursday, I’ll post my 3rd and 4th installments of my two-week good-bye. Until then…do you have any favourite posts you’d like to mention?

Like my post in praise of the 5 km and other shorter distances, I’m here to sing the praises of the shorter effort. In this case it’s the half hour fitness class I’d like to say nice things about.

I use the university gym and fitness centre and I love their range of classes. I often go to indoor cycling in the winter and aquafit in the early morning. I do whatever fits. But daytime classes are tricky. I’m mostly booked on the hour, pretty much every hour, for most of my days on campus. I like the idea of exercising at lunch but if my last morning meeting ends at noon and my first meeting of the afternoon starts at 1, full hour classes are out. Sure, the gym is just a few minutes away. Sure, I’m a super hero who wears leggings under work clothes for a quick change but even I can’t manage that. (See Sam is on Conversation Canada talking about super heroes and leggings.)

Then, I noticed them. Half hour “express” classes. The one I’ve been going to is the TRX class. I love it. Starts at 12:15, ends at 12:45.

You might ask–and you’re right to ask– when on earth do I eat?

The thing is since breakfast is at 6, there’s no way I’m going to make it to noon anyway. I usually eat half my lunch early. Call it second breakfast. Mid-afternoon I finish my lunch. It works.

I’ve been going to the express TRX classes Tuesdays and some Thursdays. I really like it. Since I can’t walk much these days I need to make real effort to get movement into my day. Yes, I bike to work. Yes, I wobble on my new stool. But mostly I sit a lot. The TRX class breaks it up. I love the TRX anyway. I think it’s a terrific piece of fitness equipment. I’m going to blog about that separately. It’s great strength training. And I’m back at work in the afternoon energized.

And yes, I could go the gym on my own and do my own thing for 30 minutes but I’d have to be pretty organized and focused. I prefer that some one else does the planning and tells me what to do.

And no, I don’t shower. It’s a half hour. I just put on new antiperspirant and fluff my hair after.

Call me a fan of the 30 min exercise class.