“Here we go again with the bombardment of “New Year, New You” ads and messages to “eat this, not that,” or “do this specific workout for 30 days to get amazing abs.” You know the drill and they’re probably in your feed as we speak.
In this first-of-its kind episode, Feisty Media podcast hosts Kathryn Taylor (Girls Gone Gravel), Sara Gross (Women’s Performance Podcast), Kelly O’Mara (If We Were Riding), and Selene Yeager (Hit Play Not Pause) unite for a candid conversation about these societal pressures of New Year’s resolutions and the pitfalls of Fitness Challenges within women’s fitness culture.”
Although this guide is focused on seniors, lots of people benefit from chair exercise. I did a fair amount of chair yoga while I was waiting for knees replacement surgery.
“Finding Balance is about the community of cyclists from Alexandra, Central Otago who all share a similar love and passion for their place, people and sport. Alexandra sits alongside the Otago Central Rail Trail, NZ’s Original Great Ride and the unique landscape provide trails for a variety of cyclists. The network of public and private cycling and mountain biking trails enrich the lives and well-being of locals and have helped put the region on the visitor map. The community who pioneered the trails is now tackling the challenge of access and maintenance to preserve these trails for future generations.”
Back when Sam and I started the blog in 2012, two years prior to our 50th birthdays, we had the modest objective of tracking our road to 50, with the goal of being the fittest we’d ever been in our lives by the time we got there. We expected it to be a two-year project. We thought we would wind down the blog when we turned 50. And here we are, 12 years later.
As anyone who has been following the blog for awhile knows, Sam is prolific. I’m always in awe of how she comes up with things to write about, week-in, week-out. One of her signature approaches when we started was to write “six-things” posts. For example, “Six Things I Love about Aikido and Six Things I Struggle with” from the second month of the blog. The longevity of the approach has proven itself. See her “Six Things Sam Wants to Blog about.”
Sam is also a big fan of gratitude, and so am I. So here are my Six Things that Make Me Grateful for Samantha in My Life:
We are like-minded in so many ways, but just different enough that I keep on learning from her. When I say we are like-minded, it is hard to capture the extent to which this is true. From our philosophical sensibilities to our basic sense of academic values, from our commitment to family to our appreciation of a good sleep…more often than not I don’t have to explain myself to Sam because she already gets it.
Picking up on this, we have an ongoing conversation that we pick up and drop and pick up again, about little things and important things. It started about 31 years ago and has never stopped. Without that conversation, we would not have landed on the blog idea, the fittest by 50 challenge idea, or the Fit at Mid-Life book idea. I am grateful for the ongoing conversation and the many years of friendship that has made it possible.
Her energy for keeping the momentum of the blog going for so long. I am so grateful to have been a part of the co-founding of this wonderful community. But it’s obvious that Sam is the main driver behind the blog’s success. Because of her efforts, we have an amazing group of regular bloggers, many subscribers on various social media platforms, and have built something that we can all truly be proud to be a part of.
The opportunity to co-author with her. I have never in my life enjoyed any writing project as much as I enjoyed writing Fit at Mid-Life with Sam. We spent a few days at the Banff Centre together to write the proposal. And while writing the book, we literally used our writing sessions as breaks from work. We went to an on-campus lounge, opened up our laptops to the shared google document, and wrote together.
Her patience, care, optimism, and sense of adventure and fun, all of which combined to get me to try triathlon, to learn how to ride a road bike with clipless pedals, and formulate my fittest by 50 goal of completing an Olympic distance triathlon (I did two!).
She is practical and has integrity. It isn’t easy to be a dean, and it wasn’t easy to be a department chair. Sam does lots of things that are not super easy, and I’ve learned a lot from watching her do them.
I should add a bonus thing, which is that because of the blog and the book and our friendship, one of my favourite photo shoots ever was the one Sam and I did together with Ruth Kivilathi. It yielded some amazing photos that always lift my spirits when I look at them. So I’ll end with that. Photo credit in all the photos below goes to Ruth.
Looking forward to Sam’s party this afternoon — another talent of hers is bringing people together!
Image desciption: Collage arrangment of four photos of Sam and Tracy. Top left: Tracy leaning on Sam’s shoulder, Sam on her bike, both wearing sunglasses, slight smiles. Top right: Sam and Tracy talking to each other, white background, room divider in the background. Bottom left: Low angle shot of Tracy and Sam in an urban setting, Sam on her bike. Bottom right: Sam with bike and Tracy sitting on a ledge in front of an industrial, red brick building. Photo credit: Ruth Kivilahti.
I’m occasionally amused by the search terms which lead people to the blog. Where do I find them? WordPress tracks them for us.
I’m not shocked at what people search for. I am sometimes shocked that they click through to a blog with “feminist” in the title. Below are search terms in bold and below my best guess at which blog post their search term pulled up.
The most read post this month was by our frequent guest, that west coast runner and fit feminist, Alison Conway. Her post is The Unbearable Lightness of Brie Larson.
Thesecond most read post was a very old one, from way back in 2013, by Tracy Isaacs, The Shape of an Athlete.
A Walk to Remember was the third most read post in March. It’s by Stephanie Morris.
Sam blogged about recovery shoes in September 2022. This month that post was our fourth most read.
Just Stand Up? Catherine blogged about standing from sitting in 2017 and this month it was our fifth most read post.
Our sixth most read post was Cate’s older post about menstruation and about whether continuing menstruating into one’s fifties was a good or bad thing.
In 2020 Sam blogged about the lack of representation of larger women’s bodies in fitness images. See Where are the muscular, larger women’s bodies?. It was the second most read post in August.
I love it when guest posts make the Top Ten list. 3 things I hate(d) about running by guest blogger Stacey Ritz was our 8th most read post.
Another guest post in the Top Ten list is Movement in Transition by Alex Boross-Harmer. It was our 9th most read post. Here’s hoping Alex and Stacey blog for us again!
Stacey’s post-5K.jpg: “Sinking my teeth into the race’s namesake after the finish. (alt-text: a woman wearing a blue hat taking the first bite of a butter tart)“
All of us at FIFI are grateful to Samantha and Tracy for starting the blog in 2012, inviting us to join as writers and readers, and keeping it going strong in the midst of whirlwinds of change over the past decade plus some. In honor of her birthday, and in no particular order, are 59 great things about Samantha, who turns 59 today.
1–4: Samantha’s in-house menagerie of various creatures:
Three dogs. from biggest to littlest: Cheddar, Charlie and Chase.Lizzie, the bearded dragon, whose eating habits Sam compares to that of a toddler.
5–8: a rotating roster of cats, past and present, including the venerable Zippy, who lived to the ripe old age of 18, Boo, her son Gavin’s cat, who lodges with them from time to time, and her daughter Mallory’s cats Louie and Moon, who visit on occasion.
9–16: Sam’s well-looked after family of Mallory, Gavin, Miles, Kathleen, Sarah, Jeff, Susan, and others I’m forgetting. Not to mention her many friends, students, colleagues, and neighbors (which I’m counting as one for these purposes).
I don’t think I got everyone in this montage, but that’s just because Samantha’s family and friends cannot be contained by mere digital means.
Samantha with family, friends, dogs and bikes.
17–26: Sam’s written a lot of very popular blog posts over the years. Here are ten of them:
The fact that Sam wrote in both 2013 and 2021 about finding clothes to fit athletic women’s bodies shows a real need for this blog. And by the way, it’s not fixed yet. But don’t worry, Sam and the rest of us are on it.
27–31: Samantha has been writing about real women’s bodies (in contrast to Barbie bodies) for a decade before the movie came out. Here are five of her posts:
38–40: Sam continues to embrace the gear! 1.667 boats
1/3 of a big sailboat
1/3 of a small sailboat
3/3 of a canoe
41: Sam doesn’t embrace single car ownership, but shares one with her mum.
42: Say what you will, but I think Sam and I looked pretty similar in high school.
Catherine, with less good hair than Sam but a good shirt.Sam, very composed and camera-ready
43: I think we still look like we could be cousins (which we certainly are in a psychic sense, or something)
Sam and me in fall 2019 at the covered bridge in Guelph. Note similar smiles and eyes.Sam and me in October 2022 at my talk in Guelph– similar smiles, eyes, choices in professional wear.
44: Samantha loves books! She buys books, reads them, talks and writes about them in our FIFI book club (and elsewhere), and gives books to people. Hey Sam– what should our next FIFI book club be about? Something to think about.
45: Sam’s To Listen, Read and Watch posts. They are a relaxing and often informative time-out from work emails or more serious reading. Wanna catch up on some of them? Look here.
46: No matter what sort of snafu or whoopsie-thing happens with the blog (and yes, below our sleek, professional exterior, we are fallible like everyone else…:-) Samantha manages to a) fix it; or b) compensate for it; and c) not sweat about it. Thanks, Sam!
47–59: For each year of this blog– 2012–2023 and on, Samantha and Tracy deserve praise (Tracy’s birthday is coming up soon, too, so stay tuned…)
Happy 59th, Samantha, from me, the bloggers, the readers, and Robert Anderson (who took this photo on Unsplash).
