I always enjoy my walks with Khalee but they are usually better for my mental health than my physical health.
I have a tendency to fall into an ambling pace rather than putting much cardio effort in. And that’s fine on days when I need the mental break more that the physical exertion but on busy day when I won’t get a lot of other exercise, it would be swell if my walk did double duty.*
A sunny day photo of my dog Khalee standing on some muddy grass next to the sidewalk. She is a light-brown, medium sized dog and she is pointed away from the camera but she is looking back over her left shoulder because I called out to her. The shadow of my upper body and my hand holding my phone can be seen on the sidewalk.
So, I’ve decided that I am going to try doing a 5 minute warm-up before heading out the door.
My thought here is that by warming up beforehand, I won’t be spending any of my walk warming up. Instead, I’ll be spending my walk already in a good heart rate zone.
And, since I am already in that mental and physical space, I’ll be more likely to stay in exercise mode instead of amble mode.
I’m writing this on Monday afternoon and my wrist spy reports that my heart rate average was a few points higher during our walk than it usually is. And, I felt really good about the extra effort.
One day, one reading, and a subjective report is hardly scientific but it is encouraging enough to tell me to keep trying.
I’m going to do a warmup before every walk for the next week and see how it affects my heart rate and my overall feelings about walking.
Updates as events warrant.
A sunny day photo of one of the sidewalks that Khalee and I travel on during an average walk. There is a road on the left and a line of trees with a little snow underneath on the right. People’s backyard fences are just behind the trees but they aren’t visible in the photo. A blue sky with some fluffy clouds can be seen above.
*This isn’t the first time I have noticed this. I wrote about it in this post about my two-speed dog back in February 2023.
At that point, I came up with a couple of things to try but my focus was more on alleviating boredom than on trying to add more of a cardio element to my walk.
I still do those things sometimes on my walk but that requires me to a) remember b) start a new ‘task.’ And if ai have already slipped into amble mode, I may not have the spare energy to initiate a new task. ADHD strikes again!
I was a proud “Dickie Chick.” One of a threesome of sisters, with a dad named Dick, who participated relay-style in the 70.3 Ironman in Muskoka in 2017. One sister swam the 1.9k, the other sister biked the 90k, and I ran the 21.1k. (That’s me on the right.)
The Dickie Chicks. Janet is on the right.
I remember flying past runners who were doing the full slog, calling out “just doing the relay” so they wouldn’t feel bad. As beaten up as they looked, I was strangely envious of their extra sweat, grime and grit. Fleetingly.
Running prevailed and I started to get serious about it. I raced for personal bests and prizes and bought a Garmin. About a year ago, I noticed my runs were turning into countdowns: 9k to go, 6k, 5k, 4k, 3k, 2k, done.I was also getting unnecessarily anxious before races, even before speed workouts. (Ridiculous!)
A few months ago, my oldest son announced a goal to do the Muskoka 70.3 Ironman to mark his 40th birthday.
And there it was—that fleeting feeling from seven years ago. Me? An Ironman? The feeling started to linger. It started to grow.
I did some research, talked to a few experts. Before long, I’d gone way past doing the 70.3 in cottage country at age 64. I was fantasizing about being at the 2025 Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Spain on November 8, 2025, at age 65.
I kept things to myself. I was afraid that if the words came out of my mouth, I’d be committed.
Uncertainty swept in. I hadn’t swum lengths in four decades, not to mention my childhood trauma over cold water.
In a bold moment, I called a personal coach—Ryan Power, as good as they come. I was surprised he was keen to take on a 65-year-old female novice. You know what he said? He said that he’s currently working with seven athletes right now and two are over age 75.
Well then.
He said that an equivalent to qualifying for the world tri championships is qualifying for the Boston marathon, which I’ve done twice.
Well then.
It’s in the cards, I said to myself. I was ready to let it out of the bag. Now I’m committed.
What has gotten into me? I prefer simplicity. What can be more complicated than a triathlon watch, or a fuel plan to sustain 8 hours of work?
I don’t really like spending money. In the last 20 days, I have spent at least $2.5k, and according to Austrian triathlete, Clément, I can expect to spend another $3k to get myself geared up for competition, and then $2.9k in every year to follow. (Not including things like Spain.)
A bike covered in tri gear.
Worst of all, I can’t figure out the leg action to clip out of the pedals on my new road bike.
“You’ll want to clip out with your right leg,” said the bike specialist, “so you can lean away from the traffic.”
But my right leg wasn’t working. Forget the traffic, I thought, I’m using my left.
Last week was my first official week of training. Don’t tell Ryan, but after day one, I had a stiff back. After day three, I had a bruised elbow from banging the lane ropes. And on day five, I added a scraped knee to the old bod from tipping over on my bike. (I’d clipped out—yay—but forgot to use the brakes.)
It’s week two. I can hardly wait to get going again.
Will I make it to Spain? I have no idea. But I like picturing myself crossing the finish line. If that gives me joy and motivation and a good reason to hop out of bed every morning, then why not try. Anyway, I’m 64; I can do whatever I want.
Is that the point of this endeavour? That I’ve reached the age where I can do whatever I want? Let’s think about this.
I cannot get too excited and talk about my new hobby too much or people will think I’m bragging. No one likes a braggart. Humility is the much-preferred trait, especially in the family I married into.
I cannot let myself get too exhausted. Yawning through social gatherings is equally as unattractive as bragging. And I need energy to continue baking bread, concocting hummus, and creating grandkids’ birthday cakes (another source of joy).
I cannot let my new hobby negatively impact my 42-year marriage. I cannot consume our travel budget around races; I cannot get too obsessed because that’s hard to live with; I cannot cram the drying rack with any more workout clothes; I cannot let this interfere with happy family traditions; and I certainly cannot expect a cozy night on the couch livestreaming tri championships. It’s not golf, after all.
The cannots add up, and they’re hard; I think about them all the time. But I cannot not do this or I’d be short-changing myself on something my gut is telling me to go for. Who cares if I get a little excited, exhausted and obsessed? It’s nothing that a new drying rack can’t fix. Or a glass of wine in Spain.
Lots of athletic wear on a clothes drying rack.
Janet Tufts’ bio
With over 30 years of local, national and international experience in the non-profit and public sectors, Janet is currently enjoying semi-retirement, balancing a part-time role as Executive Director of Operation Walk Canada with her love of reading, writing, baking and moving. Previously, Janet served as the Executive Director of both Big Brothers Big Sisters of London and Area and the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.
From 2016 to 2018, Janet spent two years in Malaysia as a member of a multi-cultural team that led the government’s implementation of their blueprint for public school transformation. Janet holds a Master’s in Business Administration, Bachelor of Education, Bachelor of Arts, and a Professional Certificate in Communications and Public Relations. She has served as a director on numerous boards, and is currently a board member of St. Joseph’s Health Care London. Janet embraces any opportunity to be part of a humanitarian mission and to date, has been to Southern Sudan, Peru and Ecuador.
But the next day at the gym, Sarah spotted the tick on my arm. It was hard to finish the workout so we could get home and remove it properly with tick tweezers.
There was a rash around it, so I went to the pharmacy to see what to do. The pharmacist recommended seeing my doctor who got me in the next day. She examined the bite to make sure no bits of the tick remained. I got a prescription for a one day prophylactic dose of antibiotics, and I promised to get back in touch if I had any symptoms. If I do, there is a three week course of antibiotics in my future.
Because of course it’s not ticks that are the problem. It’s that they transmit Lyme disease, which can be very serious.
What to do about preventing tick bites?
Tuck your pants into your socks, wear white or light colors so you can better see ticks, avoid hiking in tick zones.
Also, mostly all the places I live and travel are now in the tick zone, where there is a higher than usual risk of contracting Lyme disease through tick bites.
Public Health Ontario Lyme Disease Risk Map
For sure, you should invest in a pair of tick tweezers and keep them with you. They’re different than regular tweezers and better for getting all of the tick out.
You should also regularly check yourself for ticks if you’ve been out in the woods.
Stock photo from WordPress, two hikers, one examining the other’s leg to check for ticks, presumably
Lyme disease is pretty serious. I remember reading this account of Shania Twain’s twenty year battle with it.
“As it turns out, the chance of catching Lyme disease from an individual tick ranges from zero to roughly 50 percent, according to Mather. The exact probability depends on three factors: the tick species, where it came from and how long the tick was feeding.”
Around here, they’re almost all black legged ticks, and I think about half are carrying Lyme disease. But if the tick isn’t in you for very long, the risk is still pretty low. Overall, it’s about 5%.
For me, this means I’ll keep hiking in the woods but I’ll also keep a sharp eye out for ticks.
Today I’m on Cape Cod with friends, having a mellow weekend of walking, talking, eating good food and relaxing. It reminds me of the joys of early springtime walking. You see the signs of the seasons changing– bits of green and more activity among the animals. I’m reblogging a piece I wrote last year about similar pleasures in a more southern location– South Carolina– at the turn of spring. I hope you can get outside, wherever you are, to witness what Nature is up to.
I had previously written about Masters athletics as seen through the camera of Alex Rotas Photography. What about my personal experience with Masters swimming? The training, the competitions, the racing?
THE TRAINING
What IS training? Well, you have to push yourself physically and mentally to build up cardiovascular capacity and speed. Early in the season, the emphasis is on building cardiovascular capacity by focusing on mileage. I moved up a lane with swimmers faster than me and distances longer (about 2200-2400 m per 1 hour workout). The workouts asked for speedy intervals: 100 m on 2:15, 50 m on 1:10 (meaning you have that amount of time to swim and rest). I aimed to swim 100 in 1:45 (which meant 30 s rest) and 50 m in 50 s (20 s rest). When they’re repeated in the main set (4 x 100 on 2:15, 6 x 50 on 1:10), it’s hard! It feels like you’re swimming through mud and you’re breathing hard at the wall. By the end of the set, you’re seeing stars. But that’s how you train. And technique is so important….you can swim faster without swimming faster by having excellent technique. No matter how tired you are, you’ve got to maintain technique. And there is support and camaraderie during the workout (c’mon, you got this! Just there and back two more times!). High fives and affirmations after the workout, along with the swim itself, brings a shared sense of accomplishment and joy.
About a month before competition, the training starts to emphasize speed, so there’s faster intervals with extensive warm ups and cool downs. Our coach held clinics on starts, turns and relay takeovers. It gets so that you go on autopilot when you dive into the water, getting into the dolphin kick, breaking out with quick strokes and NO BREATHING (swimming is the only sport where the coach yells at you for breathing) and then settling into the stroke.
THE MEET
The Masters Swim Ontario Championships (which we call Provincials) was held at the beautiful Pan Am Games pool in Markham, ON. There were about 30 teams from Ontario (and other provinces) and the venerable team from the Canadian Forces (stacked with young, strapping, fast swimmers). Our team, the London Silver Dolphins, consisted of 14 swimmers. Masters swimming is done by age group; your age is calculated as of Dec 31, 2024, so I was competing as a 59-year-old in the 55-59 age group. One of the pleasures of Masters athletics is “ageing up” into the next age category where you’ll be the youngest! So here I was, the oldest in my age group, at a long course meet, at my first meet in 8 years. Talk about ageing up…from 51 to 59!
The nice thing about Masters swimming is that you swim with people with similar times (seed times), not necessarily with people in your age group. So I’d be swimming with a 40-year-old to the right of me and a 71-year-old to my left, if we all had entered similar times for that particular event.
Before every event, every swimmer gets butterflies, and the urge to pee (the nervous pee!). But you have to work through it. I did a little meditation with deep breathing before my heat. One thing our coach told us that stuck with me is to “trust your training”. That means have confidence in your pace, your stroke, your starts and turns, your breakouts and finishes. You KNOW how to do this. Don’t panic. Just swim. Fast!
THE RACE
You stand beside the starting block. One whistle from the starting official and you get up on the block. “Swimmers, take your mark”… you bend over into your ready position. Sink into your legs, they are the power for your dive into the water.
BEEP
You are briefly airborne, then fwooom into the water. The silence, the cold water. Dolphin kick, kick, kick Breakout stroke, stroke, stroke (NO BREATHING). Settle into your race pace. As you approach the final length of your race, build into your maximum pace. During that final flip turn, your lungs feel like they will burst. That final length is ALL OUT. All you hear is your hard breathing. All you feel is fire in your legs and arms. That last 15 m, you are seeing stars. WHERE’S THE WALL? PULL, REACH, touch. You’re done! Now you can hear your teammates cheering!
And you’re an absolute wreck. “Swimmers, clear the pool”. You have to hoist yourself out of the water and head to the cooldown lane. Easy swim until your breathing settles down and the burning feeling in your legs and arms subsides.
Here were my events and times:
50m freestyle: 42.34 s
100m free: 1:35.39
200m free: 3:40.39
400m free: 7:43.62 *Personal Best for long course! And a Bronze medal in my age group!!
And two relays: 4×100 free (women’s) and 4×100 free (mixed).
Medals and ribbons from Provincials 2024.
The 400 free was my best race. I felt relaxed, settled into a fast and easy pace, and swam negative splits (each 50m was faster) throughout. Those fast intervals of 50s on 1:10 in training really helped! At first, I thought I was going too fast, but I remembered to “trust my training”. And it felt great. I had enough in the tank to sprint the last 15 m. And it was a personal best by 10 seconds!!
The 200 free was (and always will be) my WORST race! It’s a tough race, holding speed for 200 m. During the last 10 m, I felt like I was swimming through muck and mire. Why wasn’t the wall getting any closer??? It’s the one race I will always swim, as a perpetual challenge.
The placing within your age group determines the number of points you earn for your team. The team with the most points wins the meet! So it’s about the team, not the individual. And our team placed 3rd overall! Everyone had at least one Top 3 finish in their age group. We were awesome!
But most of all, I love the camaraderie of our team. Everyone is so supportive, cheering our teammates on, recording their split times, hanging out and chatting and examining the heat sheets during the lunch break, sharing snacks…it’s what Masters swimming is all about. We all find joy in the demanding regimens of training and competition, and in the friendships we make along the way. And we all discover that we are stronger than we know!
Nationals are next, in May!! Can’t wait!!
Image of a brown-skinned, grey/black haired woman with glasses wearing a dark blue t-shirt with the text “I swim like a girl. Try to keep up”.
Today is National Only Child Day. I am technically an only child although I do have some step-siblings. As I was reading about the history of Only Child Day it got me thinking about how much impact my childhood, and the related lack of siblings, may have had on my fitness habits, likes, dislikes, and interests.
I grew up in a fairly sedentary household. I was rarely encouraged to join team sports or to spend time in the outdoors. As a child of the 80s I had freedom to roam the streets on feet or bicycle “until the street lights came on,” but I can’t remember ever being out that long. When I was in kindergarten I joined a girls soccer team. The Panthers. We had all black uniforms with white trim and we were hot stuff. But after a schedule change I left the team because the team practice times didn’t work for our family. In later years we lived in communities with outdoor pools and I was in the water as much as possible. Swimming as a sport was not common in our area, or at least I didn’t know about it, so as much as I enjoyed being in the pool it was more playing around and less structured.
I never had floaties that were this cool in the 80s! Photo by Leo Rivas on Unsplash
All of this is, of course, my experience. I’m sure others had similar experiences and equally sure many others can’t relate. But Only Child Day got me wondering how the fitness experiences of my youth might have been different if I had siblings. Would physical activity been something we would have done together, either formally or informal play around the house? Would a sibling have spurred some sort of competitive motivation to join a team sport, either with them or to outshine them? Would my naturally introverted self been more willing to hang with the neighborhood kids running/riding the streets with a sibling by my side? Or would I still have been the same indoorsy kid who would rather read or do a puzzle than go outside?
There are a lot of factors that go into this line of “what if” thinking…. What if there were siblings? What if either of my parents had a love of the outdoors? What if I really took to team or community sports as a kid? Any one of these might have changed my adult preferences for quiet, solo activity that mostly occurs in my basement instead of in outdoor or community spaces. Or maybe it would all be the same because I just like what I like.
How about you? Any only children feel like having siblings would have changed your outlook on activities? Anyone with siblings feel like they had a big influence or no influence at all?
Amy Smith is a professor of Media & Communication and a communication consultant who lives north of Boston. Her research interests include gender communication and community building. Amy spends her movement time riding the basement bicycle to nowhere, walking her two dogs, and waiting for it to get warm enough for outdoor swimming in New England.
That reminded me of the Pedaling for Parkinson’s ride that we’ve been doing in Prince Edward County for the past few years.
We ride in support of frequent guest blogger and family member Susan, who was diagnosed with PD in 2017. She’s blogged about it here and here, and likely on other occasions as well.
Register for this year’s ride in Prince Edward County, August 17th, here. There are 40 km and 75 km options, and the roads are pretty safe and scenic in the county.
Hope you can join us! It’s a fun ride for a very important cause.
These days, I’m thinking less about my knees. I’m walking more. I’m doing physio twice a week still and personal training twice as well. My balance, mobility, and strength are all pretty good.
Think I’ll take this guy out for a walk today!
Cheddar napping. A blond dog sleeping next to a red rope chew toy.
There’s an adage among commuter cyclists that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong gear. I love that, and for me it has proven to be true. With my studded tires and rain cape, I’m well equipped for riding in all seasons.
But what about the days when the bad weather is in my head? Last weekend I had a day when I just felt exhausted. I hadn’t even put on pants by 4 pm.
It was sunny and I needed something from the hardware store, so I pushed myself to go for a little ride. The e-bike was a perfect choice for a day when I felt too drained to go anywhere.
I started out in the middle option of e-assist, but on the way home I felt energetic enough to drop it to the lowest level. By the end, the weather in my head had cleared up and I was able to enjoy the glorious day around me.
A multi-use pathway along a river, with trees on both sides. The sky is bright blue.
I needed this reminder today so I thought you might, too.
Whether you are trying to add new things to your life, to maintain the things you already do, or to level up a little, it is very easy to get overwhelmed.
And when we’re overwhelmed, we forget that we can only do one thing at a time.
When that happens, we often end up either trying to do everything at once or feeling like there’s no point in doing anything.
If this is happening to you, I’d like to invite you to do one little thing that’s related to your goals, habits, or plans.
Take a really deep breath and let it out slowly.
Do one squat.
Listen to one relaxing song.
Do 1 minute of cardio.
Write 1 sentence in your journal.
Put 1 thing away.
Drink 1 glass of water (or 1tsp of water.)
If you are already regularly exercising/drinking water/meditating/journaling, just add 1 little bit to your practice – one more sentence, one more squat, one more minute.
If you are struggling to take good care of yourself in some other way but you can’t get started because it is all too much, pick a tiny, tiny thing and do that – look up the email address, put on a tiny dab of face cream, do one stretch, put on (or take off) warm socks.
It’s natural to fall into the all or nothing trap, to think that only huge changes will help, to feel like only drastic actions will count.
But, the truth is…
It all counts!
All of your efforts matter.
Even giving yourself the tiniest nudge, the tiniest bit of help, the slightest movement, gets you closer to where you want to be.
Doing one little thing gives you a foothold. It tips the balance in the direction you want to go. It reminds you that you are here for yourself.
No matter how small that little thing is.
Doing one little thing is not going to bring instant, sweeping change but it will be an instant, sweeping victory for Team You.
Taking an action, no matter how small, reminds you that you *can* act on your own behalf and that you will.
And it is going to earn you a gold star:
Image description: my drawing of a cartoonish gold star with a happy face. The background is covered in small blue dots and the drawing is ‘framed’ in blue with black trim.
