Category: aging

What progress means as we age
aging · blogging · cycling · fitness · fun · nature

What progress means as we age

elan.paulson1 Comment

This year five friends and I tried to repeat a two-day cycling tour some of us had attempted a few years ago: the Guelph to Goderich rail trail, which is just short of about 150km of gravel path through scenic rural Ontario.

The first time, it was my first multi-day cycling tour ever, and I didn’t even own my own gear. We’d unknowingly scheduled the original ride during a derecho storm, so we made it most of the way until the rain, the cold, and the trail that had turned to a sandy stream made the ride not fun anymore. After getting 2/3rds to Goderich, we stopped at a brewery in a small town called Blyth and called it a day.

This time, the rain and the cold were back, fortunately only during the second day. But with the dramatic turn in weather from the first sunny day, so once again we found ourselves soaked, muddy, and at the brewery, warming up with a beverage and deciding to end the ride there.

Sun and shine and smiles on the first day….

In the car on the way home, I thought about what it means to progress in a sport or exercise activity. Typically, to me it has meant faster times, more goals, or better scores. Really, though, the goal posts are always moving as we age. The same journey gets harder over time, even with more experience and better gear. Not even considering an adjustment for age, we chose not to feel bad that we didn’t finish at Goderich but good that we got as far as we did. As my friend Lisa said with a smile, “I’m confident there weren’t many 60 year olds out doing as much as I did today.”

Lisa and me riding into town, soaked but happy. Photo by GA Koops.

Progress was being able to get the same thing done even after a few years of creaky bones, knee problems, more stiffness. Fun and accomplishment were our goals. As I enter mid-life, that kind of relative thinking gives me a new and better way to measure my own success, one that acknowledges what I can’t control and focuses on what I can (like chasing joy rather than results).

For long-time readers, this blog is itself a testament to this kind of context-based thinking about fitness and aging. As we write, over the yesrs, what is maturing along with our bodies is our sense of what progress means. We can give ourselves permission to move at a pace that reflects the time and space we’re in, rather than set ourselves up to fail with ever-higher expectations that don’t appreciate where we really are.

The Guelph to Goderich rail trail line is referred to fondly around here as the “G2G.” Now that we’ve made it as far as Blyth, twice, it’s now sort of a new tradition for us, our “G2B.” And if we can get even that far again in a few years, rain and/or shine, we’ll all be happy with that.

Gotta keep your strength up! Delicious pie and tarts at the end of Day 1.
Flying & Falling into a New Decade
aging · femalestrength · injury · mindfulness · running

Flying & Falling into a New Decade

MinaLeave a comment

The morning after I turned 60, I headed out on a run with my youngest brother who was in town. What a treat! And he pushes my pace. For the first bit, I felt fleet and strong. Flying. The kind of run where your feet barely seem to touch the ground, tiny levitation rockets in my shoes. And that was just a feeling, since my feet were clearly on the ground when I tripped over a tree root.

I went down hard, catching myself on my shoulder. The result: a badly wrenched shoulder and a pivot from a brisk 9-mile run to a nauseous crawl toward CityMD, arm cradled against my body.

Everything in me wanted to scream until my lungs gave out, why me? Beneath that was a darker feeling, too: that the universe had smacked me down, put me in my place. I had wanted too much. I had been too pleased with myself about still being strong, still being fast, still being the person who runs the morning after her 60th birthday. So, the universe decided to show me who was boss.

I was already prickly about 60. About a month ago, a young man I passed in the final kilometers of a 21k (he could not have been older than his early 30s) said, with dismissiveness: well, maybe when I’m 60. I didn’t hear past that snippet. I kept running. I hear versions of these casual dismissals of people based on their ages often. The unquestioned assumption that age is a one-way street, that it diminishes us.

Even with a hurt and hurting shoulder, I questioned. With difficulty.

The list of things I could barely do at first was graceless in its mundanity. Open a bottle. Get dressed (oh yes, including pulling up my pants after going to the bathroom). Brush my teeth. Grab a glass in the cupboard. Never mind trail running or mountain biking. Did I mention I was three days from leaving for two weeks in the Canadian Rockies? I had planned solitude and mountain time to contemplate my new decade.

Close-up of a human arm showing visible bruising and discoloration on the skin, with a wooden background.

I had to borrow rolling luggage, because I could not haul a pack on a wrenched shoulder, and I always travel with a pack on my back. My mountain bike stayed in my middle brother’s garage in Calgary. Still, the first full day there, I wrestled myself into a sports bra, shirt and hiking pants and ventured out. Cautiously. Arm in a sling. A few days later I packed the sling in my little backpack (which didn’t hurt to wear, it was getting the straps on that was the trick). Gradually, I transitioned to trail running shoes and worked myself up to a slow trot. Always aware of my arm.

For the past three weeks, I’ve been managing the background noise of persistent pain.

This is not how I pictured opening this new decade.

And yet. And yet.

Curbed in my go-go mountain enthusiasm, I moved at a pace that allowed me to bask more in all the signs of coming spring. The runoff streams that got deeper with every warming day, so that I had to find new ways to get across that particular bit of trail each time. I had space to think about what it means to cross this threshold.

Because it is a threshold, even if I am, rationally, the same person the day after my birthday as the day before. I have sat with my complicated feelings about being a person in my sixties now for three weeks and something is shifting or emerging from underneath all the accumulated detritus of the years and the immediate distress of the physical setback. It’s a feeling, a sensation, a way of being that is harder to name than fleet or strong or flying.

Out on the mountain trails each morning, even moving with more caution than usual, a feeling spread in me, as the sun moves quietly into the world each day. Grounded, yet light. Buoyant, yet stable. It feels like I have the right to be here without further justification or proof of worth.

This whatever-it-is-ness feels like an arrival. Or a coming home. Belonging. Did I arrive at this feeling because of the fall?  Maybe. If I choose that version of the story, then I can silver line the fall and injury. Forced to slow down, woman discovers inner strength. Another part of me resists the patness of that explanation.  Maybe I just fell. Because I run on trails and other uneven surfaces. A lot. Life happens.  

My shoulder is healing. Not as quickly as I’d like. And when has any injury healed as quickly as we’d like? The pain is still there. Background noise every day. Wearing. And it is retreating. I can increase my effort. Mindfully. The mountains will still be there for next time. My bike will still be there.

I am still here.

Landed in a new decade. Not as elegantly as I might have liked. Penguin-style, which is to say, with awkward grace.

the word optimistic on crumpled paper Aging. Aging? (Guest post)
aging · cycling

Aging. Aging? (Guest post)

Sam B1 Comment

by Winnie

I find all the talk about aging fascinating. We seem to worry about the aging process almost as much as we worry about climate change. And yet, as a very old man always said when I asked him how he was, “It beats the alternative!” I discovered this blog when I was already well past 50; it began after I was fifty, with Sam’s & Tracy’s stated goal of achieving great fitness by the time they reached that landmark age. I have been reading it steadily ever since, and realize I am quite a bit farther on the aging path than the other contributors. So, I thought I’d share a few of the things I have experienced and observed.

In my first post, The Origins of My Surprising Fitness Journey, I described my brain cancer experience:  I was told at age 46 that I was lucky; I could reasonably expect to live 10 to 15 years, but that didn’t feel very lucky to me. So I made ever-increasing forays into fitness. I’m 74, and honestly, I feel stronger and better than I did at 35. Yes, there are a few changes I don’t love: one knee, which was diagnosed with bone-on-bone arthritis about 15 years ago, has very recently made it clear that running is not a reasonable choice anymore. OK, I never really liked running much. I just used it as cross-training for a day or two most weeks, never went farther than the 7 miles (12k) of San Francisco’s (in)famous Bay to Breakers run.

And I wasn’t doing so many push-ups. Hmm. I got back to work on those and am back up to about 10 & still increasing, so no aging problem there. Balance? Nope, with all the dance classes I take, I can claim to have better balance than all the silly tests we keep seeing think a 30-year-old should have. Endurance? My bike rides right now are maxing out at about 30 miles, but I fully expect to work back up to 50 over the next month or two.

We moved four years ago to a Lifetime Care Community, a place that offers independent living, where you pretty much get on with whatever you were doing before you got there, assisted living if/when the need arises, skilled nursing (primarily for recovery periods when you’ve been released from the hospital but can’t quite be on your own yet), and memory care. Sounds sort of, well, weird, to want to live at such a place when we are still so healthy and active, right?

This community has taught me more about aging than I ever thought to learn, and I have never regretted our move. That is only a tiny bit due to one silly little thing: I never expected to go around saying, well, I’m only 70! I have met dozens of people here who are in their 90s and still taking brisk, hilly walks pretty much every day. I have learned about technology, history, sustainability… the list is long. People here are vigorous, intellectually challenging and fun to be around.  And this is a feminist blog, so I can happily add that women are, on average, holding things together longer than men. Which brings me to a concept I read about before I moved here.

Squaring the Aging Curve.

I get a weekly bicycle newsletter in which one of the writers pushed the concept. He had believed that we can keep right on doing a lot of the active things we enjoy. We just might have to slow down a bit. Or maybe not. He didn’t think it would extend our years, but rather than it would keep us feeling better longer, with perhaps a steep drop off at the end. In fact, that is exactly what happened to him. He was still riding his bike in mountainous terrain when he died suddenly. I admit I don’t know much about the science behind this. I don’t even know if it has been tested in any way. We do know that people who exercise more tend to be quite a bit healthier than people who don’t move much.  I do see that people who contribute to my community intellectually, musically, artistically, and who are often to be seen at the gym or out walking, seem to be a lot better off than I ever dreamed I’d be if I reach their ages. I plan to follow that thought for as long as I can!

I admit to being a chronic optimist. To prove that I don’t go too far in that direction, I will comment on a few elements of aging I could do without: getting up to visit the bathroom most nights; sagging, sensitive skin (I don’t burn at all easily & have had a hard time accepting sunscreen – but have grudgingly done it), plus there are more saddle sores; fussier vision, including reading glasses & cataract surgery; dreaded colonoscopy, but lots of years between them. 

Sure, it’s not all easy. With a little luck, though, I think we can breeze through it longer than I expected. I see the fitness everyone here aspires to as an amazing head start to a great old age. 

Bio

I am a lifelong Californian. My mother and father were not born here but moved to the state as small children. I have two grown daughters and five wonderful grandchildren. I spent my working life working at, and eventually running, the family insurance business. My father had introduced many employee benefits – sabbatical starting in 1970, optional four-day work week in 1972, elimination of all official work time rules in 1974. Adults like to be treated as adults, and people tended to stay a long time, so it was a very pleasant working environment with key elements of trust and respect. I also served on a couple of independent school boards, one a strong academic school serving grades 6-12, one a school designed to start helping city kids who had suffered the ongoing effects of racism & poverty to find opportunities they might not as easily discover without support. I live at a Lifetime Care Community where I serve on the finance committee and chair the sustainability committee. I also plan to join the newly formed fitness committee. And for fun, I have ridden my bicycle across North America. Twice.

aging · habits

Nonnamaxxing

Diane HarperLeave a comment

I’m not big on following trends, especially those using terms like “maxxing” but this one made me laugh because I may be a trendsetter.

What is nonnamaxxing? Apparently, it’s a viral TikTok thing that encourages people to adopt the habits of an Italian grandmother, or “nonna.” Things like cooking from scratch, daily walking, gardening, long family meals, real-world social interaction and reduced screen time.

I don’t do all of these things (especially screen time), but I do love to cook from scratch, garden, go for walks or bike rides, and chat with friends.

As the Miami Herald says, movement, real food, social connection and mindset are the pillars of a nonna lifestyle.

An older woman in white shirt and pants enjoys a walk along the beach
No Surrender: Dancing with Resistance and Acceptance as I Approach a New Decade
aging · challenge · femalestrength · motivation · running · Science · technology

No Surrender: Dancing with Resistance and Acceptance as I Approach a New Decade

Mina5 Comments

Cognitive surrender is an essential new term that’s arisen to describe the abdication of our own reasoning to a machine that sounds fluent, confident, and authoritative. Studies are showing that when people interact with AI tools, they accept flawed reasoning at a startling level (almost 75% of the time). Not because they don’t have the capacity to reason better themselves. But because it is easier not to question. As a writer, it will likely come as no surprise that I’m leery of outsourcing. I worry about dulling not just my cognitive capacity, even more so my creativity.

And, yes, I have started working with AI tools, because I also think it’s important to understand what these machines are all about and how I might use them in an un-surrendered manner. I almost used the word collaborate in that last sentence, instead of use. I chose not to, because I’m not yet ready to acknowledge these machines as entities. That feels like surrender. This from someone who is more than willing to see trees as sentient beings well before reading Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears.

I am exploring the border between surrender and leveraging these cognitive machines to free my time for deeper engagement with the world. More akin to my vacuum cleaner than a friend.

I have been thinking a lot about surrender in my body, too. Every time I read an article about aging and activity, which tells me that I should move more gently, now that I’m on the verge of a new decade, a part of me growls protectively. Not yet.  

This physical version of surrender can be seductive. Messaging that encourages the little voices that say: I’m older now. Intensity is harder. Recovery is harder. Maybe I should just… let these things be harder. Be gentle with myself. Slow down. Stop. Lie down. The End. Okay—those last four are the hyperbole kicking in.The reasoning (without exaggeration) arrives fluently, confidently, with authority. And, as with AI reasoning, if I’m not careful, I might accept these blandishments about aging without interrogating the particularities of my own case.

I see the parallel this way: an authoritative-seeming signal in the form of an AI answer or an aging body; the availability of a path of least resistance; the ways that acceptance is not neutral, reshaping what we expect of ourselves and ultimately what we are actually capable of.

What the cognitive surrender research captures is that the problem isn’t using external tools. We humans have been off-loading cognitive tasks for a while now. Thank you, calculators. The red flag is what happens when we stop verifying. When silken reasoning substitutes for truth. When we accept not because we’ve evaluated, but because it’s so frictionless (and pleasant) to not expend the effort.

In the physical realm, adjusting our expectations as we age is not always surrender. Of course not. Surrender is unexamined acceptance.  Letting the message of limitation go unchallenged. Sliding past the effort of finding out just what we are still capable of.  

I turn 60 this year. I’d like to say I feel easy, breezy about that. I don’t. I’m in search of the right balance of grace and grit. I have set myself the goal of running a half marathon (21 kilometers or 13.1 miles) every month. Twelve months, twelve runs (among all the other runs I will do). When I was younger, that distance was a regular sized effort. Last year, I did not run that distance even once. And my year culminated in foot surgery in late November (which I wrote about here).

The decision has an element of stubbornness, to be sure. I am a Taurus, after all. On New Year’s Day, I started the year running 21k with my brother on mountain trails. I had a genuine concern that I would not run the whole distance. It took a while. I got it done. I was inspired. And so, this challenge. As I write this, four 21k are done. Eight to go.

I hear the voices that tell me: You’re not built for this anymore. I’m checking their veracity. They might be right. I might not be up for the challenge. I want to be gentle with myself, if I’m not. This is not about punishment. It’s about exaltation. The joy of discovering, each month, that I still have the capacity.

When I was a child, my mother always made us take the stairs. I remember glancing longingly at elevators as we passed them by. Now I live on the eighth floor, and I take the stairs almost every time I leave or come home. Not always. I’m realistic, not rigid. Not because I’m proving something. Because the habit of not surrendering has become its own kind of instinct. My mother was training something in me: the reflex to push gently against the available convenience, to stay curious about what I might actually be capable of.

The AI researchers found that people with higher fluid IQ scores were more likely to maintain their own judgment under pressure. I do not claim any extra intelligence. I think gentle resistance is more about habit. The habit of fact checking.

This is what I want to hold onto as I run my way through this year, one half marathon at a time. Not the delusion that there no limits that come with age. I have plenty. Instead, I want to cultivate the discipline of inquiry, to distinguish real limits from the limits that are presented with confidence, waiting for me to accept them without scrutiny.

My body, like a large language model, will tell me what it thinks I want to hear in smooth and reasonable tones. Rest. Take the elevator. Watch Netflix.

Sometimes my body is right. And I will be dancing with surrender and resistance, until I find the choreography that leads to graceful, gritty acceptance.

people in the ocean with a dolphin swimming by. BY Dirk Erasmus for unsplash. Why one new anti-aging supplement is great… if you’re a dolphin
aging · fitness · food · health · nutrition · Science

Why one new anti-aging supplement is great… if you’re a dolphin

catherine wLeave a comment

One never knows what one’s media feed will present to one on any given day.

Last Monday morning, the following ad appeared:

Ad for Fatty 15 (TM), a bottle of pills claiming to improve your health in miraculous ways.
Ad for Fatty 15 (TM), a bottle of pills claiming to improve your health in myriad and miraculous ways.

My first thoughts were:

  • Fatty15?
  • FATTY15?
  • Really?!
  • THAT’S the name the marketing team came up with in order to SELL this to me?
I am so very confused. Thanks Uday Mittai from Unsplash, for the perfect rendition of it.
I am so very confused. Thanks Uday Mittai from Unsplash, for the perfect rendition of it.

Okay, what in the wild and unregulated supplement world is this FATTY15 thing? Here’s the TLDR version.

  • There are a lot of fatty acids.
  • They are found in lots of foods we eat.
  • Omega-3 fatty acids are a good fatty acid. They’re found in e.g. salmon, walnuts and edamame.
  • Trans-fats are a bad fatty acid. They’re found in e.g. many ultra-processed and fried foods, and many baked goods.
  • C15:0 is a recently found fatty acid. We don’t know much about it.
  • A new company called FATTY15 (again, wtaf) wants to sell it to you, promising you whole health in a bottle.

BUT BUT… HOW DID THE DOLPHINS GET INVOLVED?

Patience– I’m getting to this now.

It turns out that some dolphins work for the US Navy. They detect underwater mines and enemy swimmers (don’t ask me how). Part of their employee health plan includes research on and treatment of diseases related to dolphin-aging (they get some of the same diseases we do).

This person below– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, the translational medicine and research program director for the Navy’s National Marine Mammal Foundation– led a crack team of dolphin health experts to manage their care.

Honestly, if my job were to make sure that dolphins lived their best life ever while in the emply of the United State government, I'd look that happy, too.
Honestly, if my job were to make sure that dolphins lived their best lives ever while in the employ of the United States government, I’d look that happy, too.

Here’s some info from this article:

The team analyzed the dolphins’ blood samples taken throughout their lives to identify molecules present in the healthiest dolphins. One of the top nutrients was the molecule C15:0, a saturated fatty acid (pentadecanoic acid). In the human diet, C15:0 is present in dairy fat—whole milk, butter, and cheeses.

Obviously, dolphins don’t have that option after infancy, unlike humans. But don’t worry– your research dollars found a solution:

…when they fed [older] dolphins with chronic diseases diets higher in C15:0 (fatty fish), they became healthier. Further research supported their findings that C15:0 lowers risk and can actually reverse many chronic diseases [in older dolphins, maybe], making it an essential fatty acid, a nutrient that the body does not produce but is essential to health.

Venn-Watson co-wrote this paper to argue for proof of concept for C15:0, but with no human studies. Then she started a company to try to sell C15:0 to humans, since dolphins a) don’t carry credit cards; and b) C15:0 supplements are covered by their navy employee health plan. She also wrote a book to help shill this stuff. And gave a TEDx talk to shill some more. But we have any actual evidence that it works?

Healthier skin/hair? NO Balanced metabolism? Uh-uh. Deeper Sleep? No chance. 3X more cellular benefits than omega-3? What does this even mean?
Healthier skin/hair? NO
Balanced metabolism? Uh-uh.
Deeper Sleep? No chance.
3X more cellular benefits than omega-3? What does this even mean?

And is it FDA-approved? Hell to the no. Just like all those other untested supplements. Please, oh, please just save your money.

BUT BUT THE FATTY15 WEBSITE!

It says all kinds of things that maybe are true. What about their claims?

Text on a slide discussing claims about essential fatty acids and a related study, highlighting skepticism towards certain assertions.

To sum up:

  • The dolphins are going to be okay.
  • We are going to be okay.
  • Eating food and moving our bodies are good things to do, be we human or dolphin.
  • The one supplement that I personally can recommend is to supplement your viewing by adding Heated Rivalry to your watchlist. You’ll be glad you did.

aging · celebration · swimming

I am Officially a Senior Lifeguard

Diane Harper1 Comment

Today I turn 65. I already belong to a Facebook group called Senior Lifeguards.

I just finished my skills of the month which are basically the same as the fitness tests for my National Lifeguard certification. I redid that qualification a month ago.

It sometimes seems like a crazy thing to do this job, but I love it. Happy birthday though me!

The back of my red pinny folded to show the words lifeguard/sauveteur in whire, with my green whistle attached by a cord so it’s handy in case of emergencies.
vintage bicycle in lush green field belarus Getting on and off your road bike with grace!
aging · cycling · fitness · injury

Getting on and off your road bike with grace!

Sam B3 Comments

Sometimes I worry that I’ve run out of things to blog about, but then there are new injury and age-related challenges that arise, I know that I am not alone, and I want to share the solutions I’ve found.

One of the things that older cyclists sometimes struggle with is getting on and off our road bikes. It’s enough of an issue that sometimes people choose a different style of bike–say, one with a step-through frame–when they get older. This issue didn’t bother me until knee surgery. My knees aren’t as bendy as they once were, and I also have stiff hips. I do a lot of physio, but I’m still not very flexible.

For me, it almost never is a problem getting on the bike. I’m all limber and stretchy then. Sometimes getting off, though, can be dicey, and it’s almost always when we’re stopping in front of a coffee shop, full of fellow cyclists, that I struggle. It’s embarrassing, and so I’m keen to find other ways to do it. If I’m home I sometimes gently drop the frame to the ground, in the grass, and step out and over it that way. Very easy! But necessarily something I want to do on the side of the road.

This video was really helpful. Turns out that I’m a fan of number 2, the side lean, and it’s how I now how I get on and off my road bike.

How about you?

This was another video of “magnificent” ways to dismount your bike. Enjoy!

aging · celebration · feminism · fitness

Honouring my First and Best Feminist Ally

Diane Harper3 Comments

Dad died a few weeks ago. He was not an obvious feminist ally at first glance; he started his 48 year military career back in the 1950s, not exactly the most progressive of times. He didn’t speak up much, and though he delighted in talking about politics from time to time, he was in his 80s before I knew his voting preferences.

He also didn’t talk about feminism or women’s rights, at least not directly. He did, however, delight in his all-female family, starting with my Mom. She was a rebel, having left her home in rural Alberta for Toronto, having her own career, and having and keeping a child (me) at a time when doing so outside of marriage was almost unheard of. They dated for a month, decided on a Tuesday to get married on a Saturday, and were deeply in love for 63 years.

Dad and Mom at my son’s wedding in 2023. Dad never missed a chance to sneak a kiss, and Mom was always happy to oblige.

My sister and I were raised to believe there was almost nothing we couldn’t do if that was what we wanted. Olympic swimming goals and my career as a concert pianist were derailed by lack of swim club and musical talent, but he happily paid for and drove me to all those swimming and piano lessons, even when money was very tight. Though he never finished high school himself, he encouraged and supported both of us to go to university (my sister did journalism, law, and ethics; I did music, political science, French and international development).

One of my favourite memories is the time he lamented that he hadn’t been a good role model because neither my sister nor I were married. No Dad, you were the best model. You showed us what being a great partner and father looked like, and we weren’t prepared to settle for anything less.

Dad, in Mom’s favourite picture of him.
Chronicles of 50, part 2: Kim is still climbing that mountain, at the top of which she learns a valuable lesson about how to go on
aging · climbing · fitness

Chronicles of 50, part 2: Kim is still climbing that mountain, at the top of which she learns a valuable lesson about how to go on

Sam B

by Kim Solga

(This is part two of a two-part post about Kim’s turning 50. CW: some talk about body image and weight, as a part of reflecting honestly on the aging process)

I was home from Jordan maybe a couple of weeks before Sam starting asking me to write a post about my adventures. I love to write and I love Sam so of course I agreed. I figured Sam wanted me to do a blow-by-blow of how awesome it all was, but I had another idea.

I booked that adventure in Jordan in September 2023, after dad’s death was in the rearview and things with mom were starting to settle down. It was supposed to be a cycling trip at first, and I was super keyed up about treating myself to what I was sure would be a really solid riding adventure. After all, I was a fearless cyclist, and the summer before I was still doing centuries with my club. But summer 2023 was not my best cycling season (no kidding Kim; your dad had just died and your mom had become your ward!), and by summer 2024 and in the wake of the crash, I felt something new.

I thought of the impending birthday riding trip, and I felt scared.

I decided the risk of becoming re-injured in the Middle East was too great. I swapped the riding trip for a hiking one that was classed as “moderate” on the adventure company website, and I began to feel confidence return. I’m a good hiker and I can climb with great endurance; I was sure this would be fun and only a bit of a challenge.

I needed new gear for the trip, so I took myself to my local outdoor shop in early September. I tried on a bunch of different hiking trousers; the ones in “my size” did not fit. By some margin. I grabbed larger sizes, fending off panic. When I found a couple of pairs that fit and looked good I began to breathe out again. But then, oh then, I had to do the swimsuits.

When I flew to Amman on 26 September, I was trepidatious. My body was now noticeably different to me; after the outdoor store experience I began scrutinizing myself in the mirror; my middle was bigger, and seemed to be getting bigger every day. I tried on a bunch of my lesser-worn clothes and quickly built a donation pile. I tried to breathe and reminded myself that when I was sharp in those black and white check trousers I was 43; it’s not unreasonable that they are not a good fit for me now. I made another pile of clothes to take to my tailor, and I assured myself Monty would make me both look and feel good in them again. Still, I cried.

On our first full day in Jordan, I learned that, with one exception, my hiking companions were about 30. One of them had completed an ironman only days before! Over breakfast the next morning, several of them were sharing mountain climbing stories; the Welsh trio were swapping hill-bagging brags. I realized that this was a super fit group; I was fit too, I once more told myself, but… I wasn’t 30 anymore. And I hadn’t been up a mountain in quite a while.

What if I couldn’t do this? Or worse: what if I could do it, but I was… slow? Held us up? Ended up the slower, older, odd one out?

Anxiety clutched my insides as we boarded the bus for our first destination.

OK, so a lot happened over the next few days. Two of the youngsters fell stomach-ill, affecting our pace and reminding me that everyone is vulnerable adventuring far from home. I kept up; I felt proud of myself. I also struggled with the rock-scrambling, of which there was more (A LOT MORE) than advertised. I turned my struggles into a joke, pretending they were an aberration for me; every new rocky rise sent my heart into my throat.

By the time we got to Mountain Day, me and myself had to have a talk.

You’ve got to make a choice, I reasoned. Up until now, you’ve gotten away (sort of) with pretending you’re still 30, and hiding the physical and mental pain that’s causing you. Sure, you’ve proved it: you can keep up. But why? What do you gain? And what are you losing?

That afternoon, in the back of the open jeep, barreling through the Wadi Rum desert, I told the two women I was riding with about my AnkSpon. About the bike crash. About how my left side hurt, pretty much all the time, and about how I’d initially planned to do the cycling trip but then got cold feet.

One of them, George, asked me point blank: Kim, are you scared of what we’re about to do? Are you afraid of the climb?

I said I was. And then I felt about a thousand times better.

By the time we gathered at the base of Jabal Umm ad Dami , everyone knew I was worried – and everyone knew to look out for me. I joked with Larry the Body Builder, incredibly sweet and unbelievably jacked, that it was a good thing he could bench press two of me with air to spare because, if I got into trouble, he was going to be my ride. He said sure, of course! As we rose into the sky I hung toward the back of the pack mostly, with different 30-somethings taking turns at my side. We still climbed in (what was for the adventure company) record time.

The feeling at the summit was, for me, exhilarating. Not only had I done the thing, but I hadn’t pretended it was easy. I’d asked if I needed a hand. I hadn’t asked us to slow down, but I knew that I could if I wanted to.

We took a bunch of goofy pictures, poised awkwardly on the narrow swell of summit rocks. We turned our mobile phones toward the Saudi border, trying to catch a signal. We ate dates and saluted Mohammed, who (holy crap!) climbs the mountain 3-4 times a week in high season and knew all the best ways down. We laughed at how much more fit he was than the rest of us.

I felt strong, and I felt free.

***

At the end of my two months away, I spent a week at the Plum Village practice centre in southern France. I lived in the nuns’ community, Lower Hamlet. We meditated together, ate in silence together, sang together, cleaned the dishes together, walked together, got lost on a hike together (really! The novice nun who had been there just a few days laughed with us as she told us she had no idea where we were), and much more.

We were present to each other, together. I’ve never felt more at peace, more in my whole self, in my whole life.

This is a typical reaction for first time visitors to Plum Village (I’m assured), but it also had a profound effect on me.

The peace lasted a couple of weeks; the memories will last longer. But not long after I landed back in Toronto, I felt the anxiety return with a vengeance.

A few days ago I was at the gym when I had a panic attack. We were rowing 1000m; I aimed for my “usual top pace” and freaked out when I realized I had come out of the block far too hard. My usual top pace was not my usual top pace anymore.

I got off the rower, stood in front of my barbell, and hung my head between my knees. I couldn’t find my breath; I couldn’t find my ground.

I couldn’t find now.

Later, the coach, Craig, reminded me that nobody is bionic; we all have to adjust, all the time.

And so I’m trying. I try hard each day to remember the lessons of my time away. Of being with the me of that moment; of adjusting myself to the needs of that moment. Of feeling the earth, the rocks, the sun, sky, and air. Of living the exhilaration of the moment, however it shows up to meet me.

It’s a daily challenge. It will be a whole life challenge.