It’s springtime. In Toronto, this means that the weather is all over the place. Some days the temperatures reach double-digits, other days, there is snow and ice in the forecast. Either way, I often wear the wrong clothes this time of year. Too warm while running and too cold while doing everything else.

Springtime means that some of us are thinking about family gatherings where we will eat chrain (horseradish) on gefilte fish and matzo ball soup or cabbage borscht. Others are thinking about their baked ham with all the fixings or the tofurkey with mushroom gravy or they are dreaming of semolina cake drenched in sweet syrup. Many are thinking about how to avoid THAT relative or THAT conversation at the dinner table.

Springtime also means that there is a high likelihood that people who haven’t been exercising as much as they’d like, during the winter, start thinking they want to get in shape for spring/summer.

I think it’s great if people want to increase their fitness level. I am supportive of adding exercise to your life, either at all or more than you already practice. But for the love of spring gatherings, please know that you do not have to “go all out”. You do not need to try for “six-pack abs”. You do not have to go from 0 to 100. Not only do you not have to, but, you shouldn’t. It won’t be sustainable. You may injure yourself. You probably will think of it as a chore or punishment if you go too hard. It frustrates me to think that exercise, which should be enjoyable, is often practiced in a way that makes people think of it as punishment.

As someone who is committed to exercising, regularly, at all times of the year, I offer caution. A friend once said to me that your hair should fit your life, not the other way around. That advice has stuck with me. I think the same is true with exercise. It should fit your life. You shouldn’t have to mold your life too much to accommodate regular exercise.

If you feel you need to ramp up your workout because it’s spring – go for it. But keep it sustainable.

I fear people see the flower buds emerging and start thinking they need to belch off their spring feasts and go all out. That may work for some but I think it is much more realistic to make a plan. Start small. Do a little more at a time. Be prepared to adjust your original plan and tweak it. A regular, sustainable, exercise plan looks more like the steady up and down of a picture of a standard electrocardiogram reading than a picture of going up a mountain one-way. It’s more likely that there will be a regular habit a year or two from now with a measured, flexible, plan rather than a “get six-pack abs my summer” plan.

What does a sustainable plan look like? If you haven’t been exercising at all and you are thinking about taking up running, try a couch to 5K. If you have been regularly running a 5K, think about training for a 10K. I advise against going from nothing to training for a half-marathon. And, if you start a couch to 5K and you feel comfortable staying at 3-4K for awhile, then do that and move along when you are ready.

If you haven’t been doing anything and you want to start going to the gym, try a few out – perhaps try Class Pass or similar where you can try a few different gyms to see if they fit your personality, needs, pace, etc. Then once you find one that you really like consider buying more passes there. I advise against buying a year long membership at a gym that you haven’t tried out more than once. And, if you find you don’t like the gym atmosphere, try some at-home workouts. There are many apps and YouTube videos to choose from these days and they can be just as effective. You can also do your own body weight exercises at home. I may have shared a video about that recently.

Also, don’t try to do too many things at once. If you are trying a new training program, don’t worry too much about what you are eating – other than that you are listening to yourself when you are hungry. Eat things that make you feel good before or after you work out. Different things work for different people. Try to tune out the chatter in some gyms/fitness spaces about what you should or shouldn’t eat. It is rarely helpful information and making too many changes at once is often a recipe for disaster (well, not really a disaster but maybe finding yourself back at square one, which is also OK, because there is always opportunity to try again – with small steps).

You may be encountering “influencers” showing off their springtime abs and telling you how to achieve them. I am here to tell you that you don’t need “springtime abs”. No one “needs” a “six-pack” on their abs. There is nothing in my life that having “six-pack abs” would enhance. But – better focus, stress relief, more energy, better sleep, feeling stronger – all of these things are achievable over time and are sustainable over time. You’re more likely to feel all these benefits for the long haul if you start out small and build, as opposed to, “going out hard” or seeking some other unattainable or unsustainable goal that will only leave you more frustrated.

I came across the following advice on a stranger’s social media the other day, “You are not required to finish your work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it.”

Apparently this advice is from “The Ethics of the Fathers” a collection of wisdom from the Jewish Talmudic sages, in this case, Rabbi Tarfon, who lived and taught 2,000 years ago.

I am no where near a Talmudic scholar but I understand that the saying “You are not required to finish your work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it” could apply to your career, your family life, and so many other parts of daily life. I think it can be summed up in “enjoy the journey rather than focus on the destination”. Similarly, It says you have an obligation to labor, to continue trying and making your way through the world, in essence, making a difference (more likely meant for bigger implications than exercise but how we feel affects how much energy we have to put towards higher social endeavours). At the same time, the advice also focuses you on the effort, not the outcome. The main idea is the project, not the success. Success can be measured in many different ways and I think that is best left up to the individual. But, when it comes to exercise, I think it is wise to consider enjoying the journey, putting in the effort that works for you, that challenges you, for where you are at that moment, and not focus on an arbitrary and not always achievable outcome, such as the shape of a particular part of your body. You are more likely to allow exercise to become a regular habit if you focus on the benefits you receive while doing the work day-to-day and to make the journey manageable and inspiring, rather than, excessive and tiring. You may never have six-pack abs, but you may feel better, body and mind, from doing the regular work.

I’m two months and a week out from getting COVID. Recovery was slow but I’m glad I paced myself. 

I’ve done a lot of accessory work — rows, dumbbell squats, modified split squats and a few things I can’t remember the name of but they do wicked things for my core. 

I was glad I had done my research and learned what to do and what not to do. In my last training session I was back on chart to overtake my personal best in deadlifts — my current lift is 198 lbs or 90 kgs — and they feel really good. 

The place I’m noticing the change in fitness the most is in cardio. After being able to climb stairs with relative ease, it was a little dismaying to find myself having to take slightly longer breaks between sets to recover. That too is passing. 

So it is important to rest and not rush things. I have more energy these days, the episodes of brain fog are fewer, and I’m getting better sleep. Not going to lie: it’s been frustrating but I’m glad I went with the program. 

I’m looking forward to adding a daily walk in now that all the snow is melting. I’ll be reviewing my fitness plan for the year and modifying a few things to accommodate a slightly slower pace. But for now the fitness outlook is promising and I’m very happy with where I am. 

You can also read my earlier post about exercising after covid here.

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Okay, I’ve set up work auto-reply for medical leave.

Thank you for your message. I am on medical leave, recovering from knee replacement surgery. All going well, I expect to back in the office Monday, May 24th. Professor … and Professor …. will be taking turns as Acting Dean of the College of Arts while I am away and they can be reached at artsdean@uoguelph.ca. If you need to schedule a time to see me on my return, please contact the Administrative Officer of the College of Arts…

That takes effect Tuesday.

But today is my last day working on campus.

Today was also my last day of personal training.

It’s my last day of bike commuting.

Last night was the last night of physio devoted to my left knee. I felt like it deserved a graduation ceremony. I’ll be back there of course next week for the right knee.

This weekend I’m finishing my Zwift training plan–Build Me Up Light.

I’m also putting all my winter work clothes away.

Don’t wish me luck just yet. I’m blogging Monday and surgery is Tuesday.

And look, spring finally arrived on campus!!!

Last week, from his hospital bed, Pope Francis formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, a 500 year old set of papal decrees that gave full encouragement and permission to European explorers to take over Indigenous land in the Americas and convert Indigenous people to Christianity.

In some ways, it feels totally anachronistic to be having a conversation about a 15th c. series of decrees from the Vatican. But these decrees fundamentally shaped — and continue to shape — our notion of how we relate to resources, land and the people around us. And as hikers, cyclists, runners, paddlers and yogis who talk about feeling the earth beneath our feet, we need to pay more attention to the assumptions we make.

Last year, Susan and I were walking with the old lady dog on the wooded trails behind Susan’s cottage that everyone in the cottage community has hiked on for decades. Suddenly we were confronted by a red-faced man who furiously informed us that this was HIS land, that he had BOUGHT it, and we had no right to be on this land.

Susan said something mild like, “oh, we live over there, and we’ve been walking here for years.”

“Well it’s MY land and I don’t want anyone on it.” He seemed on the verge of foaming at the mouth, and his obviously long-suffering wife shepherded him away. Doctrine of Discovery in action.

“I think,” I said, carefully, “that this is treaty land. Whose land actually IS this?”

I went away and looked at the excellent native-land.ca, which illustrates traditional territories, language and treaties. The land in question is the traditional territory of the Anishinabewaki and part of the Williams Treaty from 1923.

As an uninvited settler in what’s now Ontario, no one ever talked to me about what it actually means to be hiking on — or think we “own” — the land. No one ever explained a treaty to me when I was growing up in the part of southwestern Ontario that was the traditional territory of the Anishnaabeg people of the Three Fires Confederacy (Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa). I think — as I assume most white settlers did — that I thought treaties were somehow analogous to real estate agreements, some kind of fair trade.

Well, have a quick gander at this description — this mild history, given that it’s on the gov.ca website – of the fraud and trickery that marked the three centuries of negotiations that preceded the inoffensive-sounding “Williams Treaty of 1923.” And that’s not even getting into the notion that First Nations tradition didn’t include the notion of ownership, but stewardship. Land is not a resource to be owned or used up, but a space of sacred care to sustain life for all creatures for many generations. Treaties were not a trading of equal sets of valued resources, but forced negotiations about the increasingly smaller spaces Indigenous people were allowed to live.

In North America, every piece of land we hike, cycle, walk or run on, and every cubic centimetre of water we sail, paddle or swim on, has a similar history. I was hiking in my favourite corner of my favourite part of the world a couple of weeks ago, a tiny bit of Tsawaut territory on Salt Spring Island. There is a beautiful sign at the entrance with an image of the thirteen moon calendar, gloriously illustrating how humans are embedded in the same system as water, plants and land creatures.

It’s hard to read the part at the bottom right that says “since European contact” in this image. It reads: “Traditional Salish resources were managed for long-term sustenance, however after the colonial Douglas Treaty process of the early 1850s, our lands were reduced to tiny reserves with token rights. The 600-acre section of land around the Tsawout Fulford Indian reserve was surveyed in 1874 for preemption by settlers starting with the Trage and Spikerman families followed by the Bridgman family. Today, archaelogical sites are protected and conservation covenants have been placed on some of the adjacent private lands which protect the area from being developed or contaminated. We ask visitors to respect our continuing stewardship of this area.”

Right next to this land, someone akin to the red-faced chap next to Susan’s cottage has built the most obnoxious huge house looming over the little harbour, with a long drive walled off from the wooded area, complete with security cameras and a little guard house. A little wooden sign next to this monstrosity marks the entrance to the trail as “Trailhead Wen, Na, Nec Trail, Tsawout First Nations.” Google maps labels the trail as Fulford Harbour Trailhead. The Doctrine of Discovery, right in action right there.

So that’s the Truth part of Truth and Reconciliation. We continue to enact 15th century colonial practices, hoarding and walling off land, steadily trying to erase even the smallest pockets of First Nations land. Mining the resources — literal and figurative — instead of honouring the seventh generation principle.

What’s the Reconciliation part of this? As a hiker, walker, cyclist, runner, paddler, swimmer, you are glorying in the land. Do some research to really understand the history of the land you are on, and how it got to be something you think you can “own.” Look at the connections between that ownership and how we treat it and climate change. And explore the emerging Pay your rent movement.

As settlers, we’re living rent-free on this land. The Nii’kinaaganaa foundation in that link is one of the growing number of “pay your rent” entities that redistribute settler money to Indigenous organizations. Follow that link to the Patreon donation button and do some reading about moving up the allyship scale toward “accomplice” and put your money where your mouth is. Or do some research and create relationships with organizations of your own. (I make monthly donations to Indspire, the Native Women’s Resource Centre, Anduhyuan, and Tewegan, and support Clan Mothers Healing Village, the Anishnawbe Health Toronto and Na-Ma-Res annually).

But don’t be the red-faced dude sitting alone in his wooded land hating middle-aged female bodied people and their old lady dogs. That’s so 15th century.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede (she/they), who lives in the part of the world we currently call Toronto, which is Treaty 13 territory, signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit. Here is a photo of Cate and Susan sneaking past the angry man.