To mark the completion of easing myself back into running with the Couch to 5K program, I signed up for an event! I have had the Constantine Yorkville Run event in mind for almost a year. I first learned about it last year, on my way to the Y on a Sunday in September. I had to wait to cross the street while 1000 runners made their way across the intersection at Bay and Bloor.
Instead of waiting to cross Bay Street, I kept walking south on the same side of the street, in the same direction of the race route on Bay St. I knew the starting line crowd would dissipate before I needed to get to the other side. By the time I had walked with them for 10 minutes I had race fever myself. I literally got a rush just venturing out into the road as I made my way across, being careful not to interfere with the back-of-the-pack participants still coming (in a thinner stream, as I had predicted). I decided to set it as my year-out training goal.
This happened despite my saying several times along the way in recent years that I am done with events. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve ever been an especially competitive participant. But I have used events to good purpose as training goals before. And this one has certainly done its job. Race day is on September 20, and with just over three weeks to go, I’m feeling good and motivated. It is a charity race with fundraising minimum. My charity of choice for the event is SeaPaws Rescue, an organization based in Ontario that rescues animals locally and overseas. If you’d like to support SeaPaws Rescue through my fundraising page, I would very much appreciate your donation.
I only started training in earnest back in April, when I embarked on the Couch to 5K plan with “beginner’s mind.” It hasn’t gone fully as planned, but I got far enough into the program (to the end of week 7) to feel sufficiently back in the game by about a month ago.
I transitioned from that to the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training (FIRST) training plan, as outlined in the book, Runner’s World Run Less, Run Faster. The program is designed to help people run faster with lower than the usual recommended mileage. It has two main components: three purposeful, quality runs a week and two cross-training sessions. Purposeful runs, as the name implies, have a specific training purpose. The three runs are: speed work; tempo runs; and long runs.
Each has a distinct purpose. The speed work sessions are intervals aim at VO2max development with intense intervals that push the pace hard, followed by periods of recovery in between. The tempo runs maintain a sustained effortful pace over a specified distance, most closely mimicking the effort required on race day. The long runs are meant to promote endurance.
The cross-training can be any aerobic activity. I have selected swimming for my cross-training sessions. I hope I can maintain this commitment. I have been having some difficulties with ear aches. This has been an issue for me throughout my adult life. I have managed it in the past with ear plugs. But I am back to experimenting with ear plugs to find a kind that creates a sufficient seal. So far, I have not had any luck. Last week’s swim resulted in a week-long ear ache. So we’ll see. But that’s the plan. The purpose of the cross-training activity is to maintain aerobic capacity while giving the running muscles a rest. Swimming is perfect.
I’m enjoying the idea of the FIRST plan, though I’m sure my intensity and distances are not what the founders had in mind. Regardless, I have built up to 6K for my long runs, so I know I can comfortably complete the 5K on race day. I’m enjoying the speed work a lot — I love interval running and the soft perimeter of Queen’s Park is perfect for the short bursts required. I’m using the NIKE Run Club app’s guided speed runs for coaching through those. As far as tempo runs go, I am maintaining my target pace and slowly extending the time I can maintain at tempo. Yesterday I did two 7-minute intervals at tempo, with a 2-minute rest and recovery walk in between. Next week I’m extending those to eight minutes. And the week after I’m keeping to eight minutes but reducing the recovery time to one minute instead of two. My goal after that will be to maintain 10 minutes at tempo twice, with one minute between.
I think/hope the adrenaline of race day will enable me to cover 5K in three 10-1 intervals. That is my goal — to finish the 5K in under 35 minutes. After that, I will work on a new goal for a spring event. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
I don’t actually speak arm so I am just guessing here.
What am I talking about?
Well, you see, I have been diligently following the Hybrid Calisthenics exercise program since early July and, as a result, I have done a lot of pushups against the wall and leaning against my kitchen counter.
In fact, I have done 705 pushups in total, 90 of which were done (in 3 sets of 30) on Monday morning against my kitchen counter.
I am really proud of myself and I feel powerful and strong as I do each set. (Well, for most of the set anyway!)
And I am also proud of the fact that I am not overthinking the program, I’m just following along and trusting the process. (This is kind of a new thing for me because my brain is always trying to leap ahead and ‘What about…’ every detail of anything new.)
But this weekend I got a little bit curious about whether, after all of those wall and counter push-ups, I might be able to do a single push-up (in good form) on the floor.
I was really hoping to execute it easily and feel the same kind of ‘look at me using my muscles!’ power that I feel when pushing off from the counter.
So, I rolled out my yoga mat on my bedroom floor and got down on my hands and toes, arms extended, and tried to lower myself down to the floor…
That’s when I got a big nope from my arms.
In fact, they flatly refused to bend at all.
See? So stubborn! Image description: a black and white cartoon-style drawing of me having a conversation with my arms while trying to do a push-up. The drawing shows my head, upper shoulders, and arms and I am in plank position on a flowered yoga mat. I have my hair in a ponytail and I am wearing a dark coloured tee-shirt. I am saying ‘Look, Arms, can you just try bending a little?” And a speech balloon at my elbow says, “Nope!” The drawing is resting on a small grey easel-like stand that is printed like an octopus tentacle.
I wasn’t testing if I had the strength, I was essentially trying to figure out how to encourage my elbows to bend and let me lower myself to the floor.
I tried to coax myself into it, tried to remind myself that I had lots of strength now and that I only had to do one push-up but still my arms were having none of it.
Normally, I would find that extremely frustrating but, instead, I felt curious.
I knew I probably had the strength to do a floor push-up but for some reason it just wasn’t happening.
What was getting in my way?
Why couldn’t I get my arms to bend?
I don’t generally have any reluctance about getting on the floor.
I don’t mind lying face down for child’s pose, to start cobra, or to do stretches so it’s not specifically about getting close to the floor or anything.
Maybe it had something to do with not trusting my arms to hold me up?
Maybe I was unconsciously protecting my shoulder or my neck or something?
I’ve been mulling it over ever since and I still have no idea why that mechanical action just wasn’t available.
But in the course of writing this, I realized that I might have had more success if I had started that push-up in a different part of the process.
Maybe my arms would be more cooperative if I started out at the bottom of the push-up – lying on the mat with my hands by my shoulders and my elbows pointing up – my arms would be willing to try pushing myself up to plank position.
So, I’ll give that a try the next time I’m on my mat.
Other than that satisfy-my-curiosity attempt, though, I think I will just keep working through the program and see how I feel about more floor pushups once I get to them.
Perhaps the process of lowering my incline over time and gradually getting closer and closer to the floor will override whatever made my arms so reluctant to bend on this first try.
But if I still find my arms are locked and stubborn at that point in the program then I’ll try digging around in my brain to find the problem.
No need to do that sort of excavation when the problem may yet solve itself, hey?
When I started The Conqueror 2026 challenge in January, I set myself a goal of 730 kms of deliberate exercise* for the year.
For those of you playing along at home, that would be the equivalent of 2 km per day, every day.
Why ‘the equivalent’?
Because I don’t actually care all that much about walking that specific distance.
What I care about is increasing my daily exercise/activity levels and the Conqueror challenge lets me measure everything in terms of distance so all of my fitness activities are adding up to the same thing. *
If that sentence made you say, “Wait, what?”, please allow me to clarify.
The distance was pretty arbitrary in the first place – I picked it to represent the approximate amount of activity I figured I could do most days.
I don’t care specifically about walking that distance, I care about doing that much activity.
The app lets me input other activities – like calisthenics, yard work, or dancing – into the tracker and tells me the walking distance that is equivalent to that activity.
Since my ADHD self tends to struggle with tracking/measuring progress, especially if that tracking is overly detailed or fine-grained, having everything translated to distance is really helpful. AND having everything rolled into one metric reminds me that all of the different types of exercise I do are all part of the same goal – feeling better and moving more easily.
But even though the tracker is useful and has helped me to be way more consistent than I would otherwise be, I am currently behind on my challenge.
a screen cap of my challenge homepage that shows two gray rectangles in the centre the top rectangle says ‘goal distance 730.0 km’ and the bottom rectangle says ‘Reason – to challenge myself to move a lot each day.’ behind the rectangles are two images that will be on the eventual medal I will receive. In the upper right corner is the long neck of a dragon outlines of clouds behind it. The dragon is gold and the cloud outlines summer gold, and some are bronze. In the bottom left corner is a grey silhouette of a howling wolf sitting on an outline of a rock and there are outlined clouds behind it. At the bottom of the image is a circular logo that says ‘Conquer 2026’. And shows two trackers. The top one in gray and black indicates that I have travelled 42% of the distance. I need to travel this year. The bottom one indicates that 57% of the year has passed. Underneath both of those is a sentence that reads 103.7 km behind your planned pace.
Luckily, I’m not fazed by this in the least.
There were definitely times in the past when I would have ditched the challenge by this point because of the focused effort it will take to close the gap between my current position and the ideal position for this point in the year.
But this current version of myself is looking at that gap and thinking. “I can totally close that!”
And guess what?
I’m right!
It may take me until the end of September but I am 100% confident that I will catch up, keep going, and earn a 2026 Conqueror challenge medal.
I’ll let you know how things are going at the end of August.
*And ‘deliberate exercise’ means additional movement that I have chosen to do – i.e. I am not measuring steps that are part of my daily activities.
**Besides fitness, of course, but the idea of being ‘fitter’ or having a good ‘fitness level’ is not even remotely tangible.
Image description: Overhead shot of white running shoes on a dark hardwood floor. Shoes show a bit of wear and tear, laces untied. Photo by Tracy Isaacs
Back in early April I posted about easing back into running with the Couch to 5K program. It’s a nine-week program and I had high hopes of being able to complete it as written, within the nine weeks. In my original post I said I’d report back at the end of April with an update, and I thought I’d be done by the end of May.
Well, life has a way of not cooperating with the best laid plans, doesn’t it?
Things started to go sideways when late April got ridiculously busy with the end of classes. Then I had an intensive photography workshop in Indiana where it rained pretty much all the time. I took my gear but I had neither time nor energy nor weather to get out for my runs.
And then I four days after I got back I lost my mother. And that was it. For the next several weeks life was a surreal blur of grief, spending time with others in grief, and making plans to celebrate the life of a wonderful and much-loved woman who we were expecting to be with us for some years to come. It was very sad. And there was no room for a training program.
I have regained my footing enough to get back on track and have almost completed Week 7 of the program. The big jump from reasonable walk and run intervals happens in week 5, where the third run suddenly has a 20-minute continuous run flanked on each end by 5 minutes of walking to warm up and cool down.
Week 6, which is behind me now, goes back to more run-walk intervals but ends with a 25-minute run (as always, 5 minutes of warm-up and cool-down). And Week 7 is just three 25-minute runs, repeating the third day of Week 6. I don’t anticipate any new hurdles (let me touch some wood!) to get in my way. If I’m right, that means I’ll bring the program to a close in the first week of August.
So how’s it going? On balance I’d say it has gone and is generally going well. I did not use the C25K app. Instead I set up the intervals on my Intervals Pro app, and when we got to the longer continuous runs of 20 and then 25 minutes I used the Nike Run Club apps guided runs with Coach Bennett. He’s cheesy but oh so encouraging and makes me feel like I can do it. And so I did that for the first 25 minute run. The other day I did one on my own, using my own inner voice to self-coach in Coach Bennett style. That was my best run to date and I felt a real sense of accomplishment.
I felt nervous about the 20-minute run in week 5 and the 25-minute runs at the end of week 6 and throughout week 7. I have not done a lot of continuous running training in my life, opting mostly for the 10-1 run-walk intervals that the Running Room promotes in its run club, which is where I got my start.
There is an ongoing debate about whether to do continuous running or run-walk intervals. Some people say that over distances the pace balances out and you get a little break to look forward to every 10 minutes. That makes it psychologically easier for some people. I have tried both ways but I admit that I feel like more of a badass when I do continuous. I also find it in some ways easier to maintain a slightly slower consistent pace for longer than to start running again after a one-minute walk break. The countdown at the end of the break sometimes feels as if it’s signalling a fresh new punishment. It’s all attitude and different things work for different people, but at the moment, not taking walk-breaks makes running a more positive experience overall for me. I also had my best 10K time ever (way back when) after the only time I consistently trained for continuous running rather than 10-1 intervals.
I am feeling enough back on track that I even have plans for when I’m done this program and can do 30 minutes of continuous running. I don’t think I will hit a 30-minute 5K, but even in my 50s I couldn’t do that. I’m going to do the Run Less, Run Faster cross-training plan that follows the FIRST method where you do to do three “quality”run and two cross-training workouts (I’m going to swim) each week. I’m also adding some resistance training and a couple of yoga sessions each week. The runs in that program are purposeful: one tempo, one speed intervals session, and one long run.
I’m working on the 5K distance and signing up to do a local 5K in September. I’ll post more about that in a bit. Meanwhile, wish me luck as I embark on the final couple of weeks of C25K. I can see the value in this program and I recommend it for anyone just starting out or wanting to get back into running.
Hmm, if I were to pull a Tarot card before I started exercising would that mean I was doing a woo-kout?
Yes, I do find myself funny. Your mileage may vary.
As a writer, a storyteller, and someone who is intrigued by mysteries, magic, and ghost stories, I love Tarot cards, Oracle cards, story dice, and all of that kind of stuff.
A few tiles from a set of oracle tiles I created for myself out of wooden tiles, drawings, stickers, and collage items. Image description: six small rectangular tiles on a wrinkled green cloth. One tile has three candles and a striped background, one has a gold star against a background of black lines, one has a window or maybe a French door against a green background and there are flowers in a vase in front of the door/window, another has the word wonder cut from a magazine against a black background with gold polkadots, another shows a green puzzle piece against a background of gold and black alternating lines, and the final one shows a sticker of a snail moving up a green hill that I drew on the tile.
And I use those tools regularly for writing, storytelling, journaling, and reflecting.
I’m not particularly mystical about using them. I know that some people are very engaged with the rituals around Tarot but I generally think of myself as in conversation with my subconscious rather than with an unknown force. (The woo in my title is more about playing with perceptions than about my approach to engaging with these tools.*)
I like the way that Tarot or Oracle cards give me a container for examining my thoughts, feelings, and reactions to a situation.
And given the speed at which my ADHD brain seeks context, generates ideas, and weaves a web of connecting thoughts, it can be a relief to have a structure I can borrow to organize my thinking.
So, when I found myself planning to journal on the question, “What could make it easier for me to exercise?, it made sense for me to turn to my Tarot cards for some guidance.
 I drew the Three of Cups.
This particular three of cups card is from the Phantomwise Tarot by Erin Morgenstern and the images are related to her book The Night Circus. Image description: A tarot card is propped up between the keys of my black computer keyboard. The card depicts three feminine presenting figures in long dresses and black opera gloves lifting glasses high in the air towards each other in a ‘Cheers’ sort of gesture. The occurred itself is black, and all of the images are in black white and grey.
The interpretation of this card seems pretty straightforward (although there are ways to dive deeply into the meanings of any card, of course.)
This card is about friendship, joy, support, and connection and it resonated with me in terms of my exercise practice.
I know that all of those things can be helpful for any ongoing practice but I hadn’t really thought about whether I needed to include them in my fitness plans.
But ensuring that friendship, joy, support, and connection are part of the plan seems like a pretty good place to start making my exercise easier to do.
So I changed the nature of the questions I was asking myself.
Instead of just ‘What could make it easier to exercise?’ I asked myself:
How can I make the exercise process more fun?
How can I make exercise a more social activity?
What kind of support do I need to make it easier for me to exercise?
Now, I know that all of these questions have come up for me before.
They’ll probably come up again.
But since the initial question occurred to me now and those other questions arose as a result, they’re worth exploring.
I don’t think I would’ve thought along these lines without drawing that card.
I probably wouldn’t have considered whether I needed a social element or more moral support right now.
But since the themes of that card resonated with me, I’m going to explore how they might be helpful to me.
A different card may or may not have resonated but, at the very least, it would have guided me to different questions to consider.
And journalling without pulling a card would have probably been helpful but my thoughts may not have been focused and they likely have sent me off in a whole different direction.
So, just as I had hoped, pulling a Tarot card gave me a container for my thoughts, a way to direct my inquiries that felt purposeful.
And even if the card hadn’t resonated, I would have been able to journal about why that definitely wasn’t what I needed – a helpful piece of information in itself.
Anyway, I’ll let you know about any useful answers that arise from my journalling in response to these questions.
And now I have a few questions for you:
Do you ever use Tarot as a way to guide or contain your thinking on a given topic?
Have you ever found Tarot useful for your fitness practices?
Would you like me to pull a card to help guide your thinking about a fitness question?
If so, please let me know in the comments!
*If you have a more mystical or esoteric approach to using divination tools, please don’t think I am dismissing you here. I am aiming for a clear description of my approach not a dismissal of yours.
I have been experimenting with when and how to write different things, I have experimented with different ways to approach my volunteer work, I have given a lot of thought to how ELSE my Go Team ideas might apply in my life, and I have experimented with my well-being practices.
Here are some of the things that have come up for me so far and some questions I am pondering at the moment.
As soon as I mention pondering, I gotta break out a Pinky and the Brain GIF. Image description: a GIF from the cartoon Pinky and the Brain in which The Brain (a short white mouse with an oversized head) is asking Pinky (a tall skinny mouse who looks kind of goofy) ‘Are you pondering what I’m pondering?’ The mice are in a homey setting within a green cage in a laboratory. This question always came up in episodes of this show when The Brain, who was supposed to be a genius, had hatched a plan to take over the world and Pinky, who was rather silly, would respond with nonsense.
My medal from the Salem Witch Trials walking challenge. The medal is a black rectangle is kind of like a wrought iron gate along the top and sides with four points along the bottom line. The medal is decorated with a crescent moon, a sun, a crow on a branch and a bat hanging from a different branch. Then there is text that reads ‘The Salem Witch Trial Virtual Challenge’ The words ‘Salem Witch’ are in green and the lettering is ornate and kind of spooky. It is attached to a green ribbon with decorated with stereotypical ‘witchy’ items like beetles, moths, crystals, a dousing rod, and a fly agaric mushroom and a purple banner that reads ‘Make Every Mile Count.’
It’s really fun to have a tangible, obvious, and related reward for my efforts.
While I am very used to activities in which the effort is its own reward or ones in which I decide on my own ‘prize’ that often has nothing to do with the activities itself but this is different.
While I set my timeframe, the distance and the reward were both set by someone else and I enjoy the feeling of meeting some sort of standard (even a loose one) and getting a medal as a result.
Now, let me be clear – I am in no way treating this like a medal that I won. I know I wasn’t actually racing. I didn’t have any competitors except myself and my time was snail-paced but the medal does remind me that I made a choice to do a program and I completed it.
The fact that I really like how the medal looks is also a bonus.
My feelings about this medal – and the related challenge – are really interesting to me and I am definitely going to explore more tangible and related rewards for my other fitness experiments this year.
And this is where the January experimenting comes in:
I decided to experiment with a longer challenge so I signed up for a 2026 challenge with the same company and, like with the shorter challenge, the fact that I can see each day adding up is giving me a little extra push to move more daily.
BUT it will take all year to earn my medal so I’m going to need to invent some more immediate (and related) awards for myself to earn on a regular basis.
Question: What kinds of rewards will feel more directly related to my fitness practices?
Imperfect Practices
Several of my Go Team 2026 posts have been a bit of a thought experiment for me as I figure out whether I am regularly applying these ideas to my life/practices and how ELSE I might want to apply them.
My Sunday post this week is an excellent example of that experimentation.
That post Done Beats Perfect is about getting so caught up in doing things right that I end up not doing them at all has really helped me tune into something about myself.
I have ‘discovered’ this fact many times in many different contexts but each time I rediscover it, I find a new layer.
I spend too much time trying to figure things out before doing them.
For example:
My ADHD brain is convinced that there is value in waiting to start work on my core because I wouldn’t want to waste time on some practice or program that doesn’t work.
So, it kind of shelves the project of improving my core while awaiting more information BUT it keeps the thought in rotation so it FEELS like I am working on it all the time even though I am not actually doing any work.
But since it has been on my mind for ages, I do get the bonus (annoying) feeling that I am not getting any results for my hard work.
So, a lot of time passes, I don’t end up finding the right system for strengthening my core AND I don’t actually work on a less than perfect system AND nothing changes AND I feel frustrated with myself.
This is all kind of subconscious and I see the illogical nature of this process when I consciously consider it.
But until it occurs to me to bring the thought forward I just have this annoying contradictory situation in which something is sort of on my mind, time is passing, there’s a feeling of effort but no results, but I also know that I am not actually working on that yet.
It’s a bit like when I sit down to write but I can’t make the words string together at the moment so I sit at my desk and putter around at all kinds of distractions. I feel like I am working on it and getting nowhere but there is actually no work taking place.
In that situation, I need to become aware that I am doing that (again!) and remind myself that the only thing that gets my writing done is putting words on the page and then moving them around. I have to coax myself to stick with it past the initial pain of dealing with an ambiguous situation and trust that if I go through the tried-and-true procedure, the work will get done.
Since I know that completing an imperfect workout or an imperfect practice will be automatically superior to a perfect one that never actually gets done, I need to identify a tried-and-true procedure that I can trust to get my workouts/practices done.
I am going to work on the following questions and develop an experiment based on my answers:
Questions: What procedures can I use to make it easier to do an imperfect workout instead of waiting for a perfect one to arrive?How can I make myself conscious of being stuck in the ‘waiting for more info’ loop?
My plan to connect my drawing to my evening yoga has resulted in me avoiding my yoga because I couldn’t wrap my mind around drawing at that point.
I know that the main reason I didn’t draw was because I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to draw each evening. Frustratingly, in my post about this experiment I actually said that I needed to pick something to draw or I probably wouldn’t do it.
Alas, I forgot all about that aspect of things then just tried to wing it and ended up (temporarily) sinking my yoga practice along with my plan to draw.
So, for now, I am going back to committing to evening yoga and, if I have the energy, I will do a drawing on an index card but the drawing is a bonus not a dealbreaker.
And I am going to consider the following questions and have an answer to experiment with by Wednesday evening:
Questions: What kinds of drawing would be fun and relaxing for me to do each evening? How can I make the process of drawing easier to start?
Row Row Row… my living room?
This experiment is less than two days old but after hearing me wonder aloud if moving my rowing machine from the basement to the living room would make it more likely that I would use it, my husband volunteered to move it for me.
As soon as it was in the living room, rowing felt more like a thing I *could* do instead of a thing ‘I need to get back to’ and now that the living room experiment was underway, I decided to try for 5 minutes of rowing each day for the next week.
I know that’s a small amount but I wanted it to feel easy and I can definitely fit in 5 minutes a day for a week and then review.
So, on Monday morning, I planned to row for 5 minutes but ended up rowing for 15 minutes while watching a video about setting up an artist’s notebook. and it really felt great.
That doesn’t mean that I am changing my experiment though. I am going to stick to the 5 minute plan with the option of doing more but with zero pressure to do so.
Now I am just playing around with the when:
Question: Is it easier to have a set time to row or to just do it when it makes sense on a given day?
Overall, I’m enjoying the experiment approach and I am planning to continue into February.
Have you been doing any experiments with your practices and habits in January? How are things going?
I decided to draw my own calendars this year. This one is above my desk and will have a different robot for each month. Image description: a happy square-headed, rectangular-bodied robot drawn in blue ink. She is holding a sign that says ‘Real Snow Please!’ in one hand and she is holding a star in the other. She is standing on a curved line that is supposed to represent snow on the ground and there are dots in the background to represent snow falling. Text beneath her reads ‘January’ and there are two snowflakes and two horizontal arrows pointing to the word.
I happened to catch a segment on my local radio show about the latest report card and the thing that stuck out for me was the gender component of who isn’t getting enough activity, at least according to traditional measures. You can read the report itself here.
Overall, the report said there has been very little shift in who is getting enough exercise, but also that the study was moving away from traditional measures of physical activity as being primarily moderate-to-vigorous exercise (i.e., physical activity that is planned, structured, repetitive and done with the goal of improving fitness) to considering exercise that is less structured and in shorter bouts – things like active transportation or unstructured light activity such as play or social dancing.
Counting more activities is a good thing! I recently got back on my bike for short trips. Most of those rides were only for 5-10 minutes, but my smart watch said I met or exceeded the 150 minutes of moderate-vigorous exercise, even without counting all the steps I took while walking instead of sitting at work, or walking to do errands.
Those kinds of incidental exercise are what women seem to get while men are more likely to go to the gym or other structured activity.
The big challenge is how to track it. Not everyone wants to use a smart watch, or even thinks about it when going from a distant parking spot to the store, or walking to and from the bus stop, or playing with our kids in the park or walking the dog. But all those things absolutely count and we should be giving ourselves credit for that effort.
Diane in a colourful winter coat and blue bicycle helmet beside her red and white winter bicycle.
Maybe if we do, our results on the next survey will look better.
One of my favourite fit feminist humans recently suggested I try the two-week trial membership for Lost Cycle, a Toronto-based woman-owned fitness company that expanded to my city in 2019. She thought I would like it because, as she said, it was “cycling in the dark to really loud rap music.”
I am already a fan of doing stuff to music in the dark, as I did with (Remote) Dark Dancing during the COVID pandemic. Also, the timing seemed good to counter any winter break inactivity. So, in spite of reduced holiday hours and some poor weather outside, I made it to four classes, two at each location.
My black car parked in the empty Lost Cycle lot on a cold, wet, sleet-filled winter break morning.
The Lost Cycle studio ambiance is what might be described as “boutique warehouse,” with minimal windows and the company logo spraypainted on walls but also gratis cold towels and individual shower rooms with complimentary products. The fitness areas have quality equipment: ON the bike classes include clip-in shoes and earplugs, while OFF the bike rooms have infrared heat panels and Lululemon yoga mats. The class leaders were all chatty and friendly on their mics, many showing plenty of body tattoos.
The spin class leader‘s station on an elevated platform, close to a podium to adjust sound and light during class.
And, as mentioned, the classes are held in the dark, with just enough artificial and real candle light to see the mirrors and other people.
Dark spin class, with bikes lined up and towels on them. The photo doesn’t capture the ambiance created by the range of electronic dance music and occasional throwbacks.
In class I tried my best to keep up, but made modifications when my knees ached a little. The low lighting and loud music worked to lessen my self-consciousness (being new and only an occasional group fitnesser), though I needed to place myself close to the front to be able to follow instructions. On the mic, leaders were genuinely supportive, reflecting the vibe of the post-it notes on the studio walls: you are enough, you showed up today, you can do this. Other people I have discussed spin with describe being called out during classes. Here, there was none of that.
Dark group fitness with mats, towels, bands, and handweights placed closely together in a heated room. OFF the bike was a blend of HIIT calisthenics, strength training, and yoga stretches.
Near the end of both ON and OFF the bike classes, there is time to really get “lost”: the lights go off and the music goes up and you just have about 3 to 4 minutes to yourself.
And, during the “lost” times while cycling away or lying on my mat, I found myself in tears or near tears. Now, I am in a particularly vulnerable place right now, due to my recent job loss. While I didn’t check if other participants had felt the same thing, in every class I experienced in the dark a kind of emotional release I didn’t know I needed.
Lost Cycle has tapped into different elements of cycle studio / gym ambiance that makes it feel like fun, luxury, and intensity, all the ingredients for something slightly cultish. Though I was on my way to becoming an initiate, I’m not in a $$ position to keep the membership. At least I am taking the lesson home from Lost Cycle: turn off the lights, pump my mid-life music, and make time for both strength and vulnerability.
Let me start by saying that the adage, “It’s just like riding a bike.” is a lie – I have not been on my bike in a while and riding was NOT a straightforward or automatic process.
So, over the past couple of summers – despite my best-laid plans – I haven’t spent a lot of time on my bike. Actually, phrasing it like that makes it sound like there was a time in my past when I did a lot of cycling but that’s not true.
I have had one bicycle or another ever since I was a kid but I haven’t done any regular riding since I was maybe 12 or so. I occasionally used my bike for transportation when I was in my late teens/early twenties and I did a little bit of riding with my kids when they were younger but neither of them were particularly into cycling AND I found it very difficult to pay attention to their safety and my own.
I know there have been a couple of times here on the blog when I have mentioned my intentions to cycle more and I did put in some effort around those times but sooner or later some combination of lack of skill*, poor weather, general busyness, or good old ADHD time/task challenges would waylay my plans.
As you can probably tell, cycling keeps getting put into the “I’d like to but…” category for me so I was quite surprised to wake up last Thursday with the thought “I’m going to go for a short bike ride this morning.”
So, around 10:30, after I drove my eldest to work, I lathered on some sunscreen, excavated my bike from the shed, put on my helmet and took off.
Truth be told, I wobbled off but I was on my bike so I’m calling it a victory.
As I got to the end of my street, I discovered that the easy path to the parking lot I was going to practice in was blocked off by a road crew who were fixing some wiring. So I had to turn around (very awkwardly and with an audience – sigh!)to go another way, another way that was UP A HILL.
At this point, I was being asked to demonstrate two challenging things immediately. I have a bit of trouble making any turns so making a tight turn was a nightmare. And going uphill is, well, going uphill. (And yes, for the record, I *do* feel quite odd talking about my challenges amongst all the excellent cyclists on this blog.)
But I got through both challenges with a good combination of spite, perseverance, and walking my damn bike in spots and then had the reward of riding downhill to my planned practice area.
I got to the parking lot and decided that riding in a large oval around the (empty) parking spots would be a good way to practice turning in a low-risk environment. And because I was looping around the same number of parking spots, I could create a baseline measurement of my efforts and how I was feeling at different points in the loops.
It went ok.
I was, however, plagued by the thoughts that pop up whenever I am trying to build a skill. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing here? Is there something you’re missing? Is this hard because you need more practice or is it hard because you are missing some information? Maybe you are wasting time and effort here because there’s a little trick you don’t know? Maybe you should stop until you know what you’re doing?”
(Are those questions an ADHD thing? A Christine thing? A human thing? Since I have always been me, a human with ADHD, I don’t know how to distinguish which thoughts belong to which category.)
I didn’t let my brain talk me out of my self-defined practice though. I filed a few questions away to ask my husband later and just did what I set out to do.
And then I left for home.
It was only as I reached the end of the parking lot that I remembered the road crew and the fact that I had ridden downhill right before arriving at the lot.
That meant I had to ride uphill AGAIN right away and right after tiring myself out with my parking lot practice.
I did a ride/walk combination and got myself back home with minimal swearing but a fair bit of sweating and drank about 25L of water. (ok, it was probably far less than that but this version is more interesting AND it speaks to my perception of my refreshment.)
And I definitely plan to do it again this week.
Maybe even twice.
I think this expression could be described as ‘bemused smirk.’ Image description: a selfie taken during one of my MANY breaks on my short bike ride. I am wearing a grey and green helmet and large sunglasses and I’m smirking in a ‘Get a load of this nonsense.’ kind of way. I’m wearing a black blouse that has white star-like shapes on it, my hair is sticking out under the helmet and kind of curling backward in a mullet-y sort of way and I look a bit sweaty.
*I have always found cycling very challenging. I don’t make good use of the gears (a combination of a lack of practice and an utter inability to remember what to do when.) I find it hard to turn and I get panicky about it and often overcorrect. I am plagued and distracted by the feeling that I am missing an important piece of information that will keep me safe/make this easier. Yeah, there are a bunch of things.
PS – So, I just came back to this post to edit something and accidentally opened last week’s post instead. I had completely forgotten what I had written last week but I was delighted to discover that I actually followed a lot of my own guidelines when I decided to go out on my bike.
When my kids were small I usually walked them to school. It was sometimes a hassle to get three people with ADHD out the door on time but I really liked that I had some exercise built into my day AND that there could be a clear end to the ‘home’ part of my morning and a clear start for my work day.
Now my morning commute is from my breakfast table to my desk upstairs and lately I have found myself wishing for an office a little ways from my house.
Not that I need a separate workspace, what I want is a reason to get moving for a fixed period of time each morning before settling into my workday.
I don’t really need a separate workspace to accomplish that, do I?
I just need to pick a physical activity to represent my morning commute, do it for a fixed amount of time, and then start my workday immediately after that.
But, as always when working around my ADHD, I need to be careful about how I add something into my day. I can’t add something too long or something with a lot of potential for distraction or anything that will complicate my mornings too much.
All of those things are just as likely to wreak havoc on my schedule as they are to help me shape it.
This is partially why the idea of a separate workspace has appeal – I could convince myself that I HAD to walk to get there – but, realistically, I would never actually waste money/time/space to rent a workspace just to make myself get moving.
So, I am experimenting with an alternative approach – getting all of my personal/home morning stuff done and then either taking a 5-10 minute walk “to work” before settling in for my first task of the day.
I imagine myself walking briskly but in reality I would probably look more like this, trundling along in my comfy clothes. Image description: a GIF of a small child in a fluffy coat and pink leggings walking in a bouncy way away from the camera down a sidewalk.
That might mean walking outside (possibly with the dog but I’m not sure I want to train her to expect a walk at that time) or it may mean an indoor walk of some kind but, either way, I will be ending that walk at my desk with a clear plan for my first task of the day.*
In fact, I started writing this post on Monday morning after a brisk, 5 minute walk next to my desk and it felt pretty good.
Updates as events warrant!
*This is a separate part of my plan to make the start of my work days easier – getting a bit more detailed with my task planning. My right-now brain hates breaking stuff down but my future brain loves when it has been done.
