Every time I make a wish, blow out a candle, throw a penny in a fountain or do a piece of work on myself, I ask for ease in my life. Ease was my word for 2025. It keeps coming back, a wave washing against the shore of my mind.
Ease is the memory of a moment emerging from sleep. A cat kneading my hair, purring. Sunlight. My partner next to me. A weekend day stretched out ahead of us. A run. Good food. Lying on the couch with a novel. Time with friends.
That life no longer exists.
Hear the grunting sound, as I push all my weight against a heavy load of unease, hoping to shove it aside and finally step into lightness. Straining toward ease.
When I saw the movie, The Odyssey, the line that stabbed me in the heart was Odysseus describing the Sirens’ song: It told you that what you most want is what you can’t have. And what you most can’t have is what you already had and lost.
The good food, the novel and the couch, the friends are not lost. They are still in my life. And the running, well, in this moment, the tendonitis that prevented me from running in August has cleared up. My runs the last couple of weeks have felt fluid and strong. Last week I did my first handstand since my shoulder injury in mid-May. After a period of injuries, my body is at ease. Not lost.
And some part of me is still not satisfied. I want them all. All the eases. All at once. I’d be at ease, if I could just have … What I already had and lost. My wish steers me toward the rocks.
Every day some source I read or hear tells me that whatever ails me can be cured by mindset. Sometimes I want to scream at them, that’s easy for you to say, you have (insert things I wish I had: a loving relationship, or financial security, or an important job), try being me!
So much self-pity in so few words. I am frustrated with myself. If only I could wave a mindset wand and wish my dis-ease away.
I’m tired. I’m in mourning. I’d like to believe that’s not self-pity. Not there yet.
Comment from this time in 2024, when I (Tracy) said speed work seemed unnecessary!
Last week Samantha sent me the above reminder of something I said two years ago. The gist of it was a challenge to the idea of being speedy. Indeed, I said “I used to care about going faster but now I just care about continuing to get out the door.”
Fast forward to the present, where in my preparations for my recent 5K I included speed drills. And after completing the 5K to my satisfaction, I set a new goal that would shave a minute and 40 seconds off of my time.
“What changed?” Samantha wanted to know.
Back in September 2024 I was still trying to regain my running rhythm after an Achilles injury that had plagued me since 2019. It took me out long enough that I lost all the gains I’d made over the years. And so that fall of 2024 I was in the mindset where I just wanted to run again and I didn’t want to be injured again.
It was the right frame of mind for the time. But why have different goals now? It’s not as if I am ever going to be speedy. So why bother with speed work and speed goals at all.
As some readers may know, I have been back to the beginning again with Couch to 5K starting in April. I got behind but stuck with it and I liked having structure and a goal. The structure came from the program itself. The goal was simple: complete the program. After I managed to get through week 7 of the 9-week program I switched to the FIRST program outlined in Rin Less, Rin Faster.
For this you do three purposeful runs a week plus two cross-training sessions. The three runs are speed intervals, a tempo run, and a long run. I found myself enjoying switching it up rather than just pounding the pavement in the same way each time I went out. It made things fun. I discovered that I enjoy speed work. All the while I keep my perspective. I am not and never will be a speedster.
As the date of my 5K event approached, I found myself excited to go out with a time in mind. My goal of 37:00 was not a time that would break any records. Not even personal records. But it helped keep me on pace and I finished in 36:40. That felt like an accomplishment.
And so I set a new goal. To hit a 35:00 5K. It is giving me something to train for and we’ll see where it takes me. I said to Samantha back in 2024 that I just wanted to get out the door.
Today, it’s the variety in the training that is actually getting me out the door. One thing I’ve learned over the past 14 years since we’ve been blogging about fitness is that things change. I change. And I need different plans for different times.
Right now I’m enjoying the purposeful running 3x a week. I’m struggling with the swim workouts because of ear aches. I am experimenting with different ear plugs but I’m nervous now whenever I do freestyle, which is my main training stroke for a good workout. It is the only stroke that gives me these ear issues, no doubt because of the head turning for breathing.
So that’s what I’m working on now, as well as sticking with the running through the winter and incorporating resistance training a couple of times a week. I’ve been sporadic with that but it’s important.
All in all, I like being able to set new goals, change my mind, push myself in different ways, and evolve in my priorities. I don’t need to be locked into one track just because I was there before. That is the stuff of boredom and burnout. When I shift and change, it stays fresh and motivating.
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.
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.
A few weeks ago, I shared my excitement about a longer run I’d done with a close friend, a runner and occasional running companion. Some context: as those of you who read my posts know, I’ve set myself the challenge of doing a 21k run once a month this year. This is a stretch, given I never ran that distance once last year and had foot surgery. It’s a challenge I think can complete. And each time I’ve set out so far this year, I’ve felt a frisson of fear. So, when I finish, I’m relieved, with a side dish of woohoo. When I shared, my friend said, with real frustration: “Every time I think I’ve done a good workout, I hear what you’ve done, and I feel like a loser.”
Crap. My first instinct was guilt. Am I a jerk? Why did I even need to say it? Did I offer the news in a showoff tone? Was my timing bad? Out for dinner on a Friday night. I am still thinking through how I might have said things better or whether I should have held off. I’m still examining my own motivations for sharing. Why do I even need to? (Even as I’m sharing my accomplishment here, too).
Sure, I know that the comparison isn’t mine to manage. Still, I don’t want to make my friend feel bad. Nor do I want to have the wind sucked out of my sails. The math her brain ran wasn’t her workout versus her goals. It was her workout versus mine. And she felt like she’d lost. And then I lost, too. Because comparison is a rigged game. Nobody wins.
This is happening all the time. Someone gets a promotion and we audit our own career, instead of truly celebrating their achievement. Someone posts a beautiful photo of themselves, and we scrutinize ourselves in the mirror, alert to everywhere the crow has stepped. The scoreboard is running 24/7 in the background, and we are behind.
I have those game announcer voices, telling me someone else has more. More success. More money. More love. More beauty. More … you name it. All of which can spiral me down the I’m not enough drain. So much noise.
When is anything enough?
I know. You know. We know. Enough is enough when we decide that it is so. We live in a maelstrom of enablers (hello social media), which inundate us with opportunities to compare and despair. The real accounting has to happen inside our own selves, or it will eat at us in perpetuity.
Our work is to find that tiny pause between the comparison and the collapse. My longtime mindfulness practice serves me here. When I give the voices space to rant and offer them gentle support. Plus, the slow accumulation of wisdom that comes from long years of repeatedly recognizing the fruitlessness of comparison.
There’s no finite supply of fitness, or success, or beauty, or achievement being divided up among us. My enough does not necessitate someone else’s not enough. Even if the voices inside our heads want us to believe that this life is a zero-sum game.
Oh, and also, when I told my youngest brother that I’d run my April 21k, he told me that he’d done seventeen (yes, 17) 21k runs already this year. Did I feel frustrated? Maybe the teeny, tiniest bit. Mostly, I thought, wow. He’s on a streak. Also, youngster!
On May 1st, I did my 21k for the month. I woke up with that pre-run anxiety. I arrived home on my doorstep with a thrill. A reminder of the joy that lives inside my body.
I’m probably not alone in having stops and starts in my fitness routines. My favourite themes over the years have been about starting small, doing less, getting over injuries with small steps. And that’s where I am again after deciding that I would not participate in winter running this year. It’s been a long winter. I got out there today after a four-month hiatus.
Since I’ve never really managed to stick with a consistent running routine for more than a few months at a time since just before the pandemic, I feel as if I am starting at the beginning.
Today was the first nice day of nice spring running weather, where I could run in shorts and a t-shirt. And so I chose it to be my day one of the beginners running program, Couch to 5K.
Couch to 5K is probably the most widely used learn to run app. It’s a nine-week program designed to get someone from not running at all to running for 30 continuous minutes over the course of three runs a week for nine weeks.
It starts easy and that is just what I want after a long hiatus. Week one has three runs the same: 5 minutes warm up walk, and then 8 intervals of 1 minute of running followed by 1 1/2 minutes of walking, and closing out with a 5 minute walk.
I’m going in with beginners mind because despite having many kilometres under my feet, I feel like a newbie. And I’m open to learning something new about what I can do and how I can do it.
I have let go of what I “used to be able to do,” and am focusing on what I can do today.
As you may have noticed these past months, I’ve been exploring how it is to do various things alone—drinking champagne, eating dessert—and those explorations were, of course, really about doing other things alone—hiking, biking around a new city, lazing in a city park and so on. I’ve been thinking a lot about all the qualities and sensations of being alone. All the different things I do alone. How each thing feels different when I do it alone, from when I do it with another person. How some things, which I never thought could be good alone, are.
In fact, it is this discovery, that more things than I expected are actually quite good when done alone, that has provoked this current deep dive into the varieties of aloneness. It took me some time to get here. My marriage definitively ended about two and a half years ago, so I’ve had some practice at this alone business. And I resisted the potential for good in the experiences until quite recently.
Sports were where I really learned how to do things alone. Specifically, training for ultra marathons was the first time I started clocking serious time alone. Now I do almost every sport, almost all the time, alone, except my occasional Saturday morning runs with friends. Before the ultras, I had multiple running partners. We kept each other company on long training runs preparing for marathons. When I got into the ultras, I didn’t have much company and began to figure out this alone-ness. Until I surprised myself by enjoying the liberated feeling of heading out for hours alone in the mountains or threading through different parks in the city.
In these last few years, I’ve gone through this same process with quite a lot of other activities.
An Incomplete List of Things I Do Alone (which I used to do mostly with another person)
All the sports, most of the time, including …
Run—on roads and trails
Cycle—on roads and trails
Cross country ski
Snowshoe.
Hike
Yoga
Cross-Fit
Also …
Binge Netflix
Go to the movies
Fix magnetic kitchen cupboard door clasps
Rehang the tricky, heavy mirror over the fuse panel
Grocery shop
Go to the farmer’s market
Cook meals
Eat meals
Go to a coffee shop for the occasional breakfast or afternoon macchiato
Go home after dinner with friends (including my own birthday dinner)
Take the subway home late at night
Plan trips
Fly on planes
Wake up on weekend mornings (well really all mornings)
Dance
Go for walks
Take naps
Sleep
An Incomplete List of Things I Haven’t Quite Figured Out How to Be More Than Okay About Doing Alone:
Go to the theatre, live dance performance or the movies. It turns out that what I love about live performance or seeing a movie in the theatre is diving into conversation afterward with my companion, to prolong the delight or bemoan the time we can’t get back.
Swim in a pond or lake. Partly because of water safety drilled into me at long ago summer camp. And I know that’s not the whole reason.
Cook an elaborate meal.
With each experience (on these lists and so many others) there is a process of acclimatization to aloneness, like what I went through in sports. A process of familiarization. Of figuring out how it (whatever it is) works alone. What works alone. How the experience is different. What are the pleasures. And the disappointments. Because to be sure, there are those too. Which is why the title of this piece includes the phrase, more than okay, and not some version of the word, joy. Most certainly, some alone-ness is joyful. And I’m not fully emancipated from my deep-seated desire to be in connection with another human being while experiencing life. Chocolate cake is delicious, and it tastes better with someone I love (friend, family or intimate partner).
A slice of chocolate layer cake from Yiseul Han on unsplash
And then there’s last night, when I finally closed my computer after a disheartening study session for an exam I’m taking in a couple of weeks and, sitting on a chair to take a breath, I had a vivid and visceral desire for a light hand on my shoulder. A gentle kiss on the top of my head.
The past couple of weeks my Saturday runs have been alone. I’ve gone up to the Cloisters Museum, a run I’ve been doing for more than 30 years. Every person who has ever been beside me on that run comes with me in my heart. And I’m there, at every age I’ve ever been on that stretch of road. Still here. In the company of spirits who lighten my step.
I have a bunion on my right big toe. Also, arthritis. Same toe. Poor little digit. A first cortisone shot, disappeared the pain. For about 18 months. Then it came back last summer after a sprained left ankle wobbled my gait, putting more pressure on my right foot. A second cortisone shot provided short-lived relief. My doctor warned me about the diminishing returns. I didn’t expect them to be quite so diminished. Now the pain has flared to a steady, yet manageable level. I’m allowed to run. Even moderately long distances.
What I can’t do is wear heels. And I love heels. I used to be able to not only wear heels but also walk miles in them. Ridiculous. Vertiginous. Platform. Spike. Precarious. I felt sexy and kick ass. I loved them all the more, because I wore the heels after running miles. I loved the crackle of the contradictory footwear coexisting and all the meaning they contained about who I was. I wasn’t only girly. I wasn’t only a runner.
Of course, the heels weren’t truly comfortable. My feet would be sore at the end of an evening. Well, my feet were sore at the end of a long run, too. I was thrilled when Citibike (the shared social bike system) came to New York. Less walking in heels. More riding a bike in heels (so fun). I’m not sure which one caused the bunion—the running or the heels. I have my suspicions, based on which one has become inaccessible. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The pain is.
I would look in my closet and long to wear the heels so neatly aligned on my shoe rack. Every once in a while, I would try to put them on, searing myself with the pain. Why couldn’t I just get rid of them? After all, I’ve been in purge mode these last couple of years. I left my marriage with almost nothing from our joint home. I moved around a bit, trimming down my life. I shaved off my long hair.
Yet, I’ve never parted with my heels, even as I knew I couldn’t wear them. Then, a month ago, I thought, now is the time. I sent a little video tour of the shoes to a friend who wears the same size. I brought her a giant bag of heels on the night of my birthday. I am so glad she’s going to enjoy them.
I also felt an amount of grief that I judged to be inordinate. They’re just shoes. Yes. And they were a symbol of a part of me that I don’t want to lose. Insouciant. Bold. Attractive. Now I have to find that in myself, without the shoe-assist. Or maybe that sense of self is already there, if I can just find it. I felt good in heels, because I was strong. A runner. An athlete. Not was. Am. Because I’m still running (and biking and dancing and cross-country skiing and, and …). In the choice between running shoes and heels, there’s no contest. My running shoes are soulmates.
The night my marriage blew apart, I went out to meet a friend in desperation. As I walked out the door of what would soon no longer be my home, the high heel on my patent leather boot from Paris snapped off. Total destruction. No chance of repair. It’s been just over three years since that night. A few days ago, I learned that my divorce was final. I had dinner with the same friend a few hours later. Wearing sneakers with glitter. She was wearing fabulous, crazy platform sandals. I felt a pique of desire for her shoes. For that feeling. And then I caught a glimpse of that sparkle inside of me. Waiting for me to see myself.
The title of this article about Canadian ultrarunner Stephanie Case winning a the 100 mile race Ultra-trail in Snowdonia, Wales, on May 17, six months after giving birth, really gets my goat.
The article itself is just fine. It talks about how 42 year-old Case took three years off from running and this was her first big race since then. It’s honest about some of the challenges she faced both with her body and with managing the logistics of feeding her baby. Case talks about the importance of supporting new moms, and allowing them the space to pursue things they love, while also recognizing that stories like hers risk setting impossible standards for women.
Case did a truly remarkable thing. She ran 100 km in a little over 16 hours, starting a half hour behind the elite runners in the first wave. She did it a mere six months after pregnancy and birth, something that can be really hard on a woman’s body.
Ultramarathoner Stephanie Case takes a selfie while on the trail in northern Wales.
But would there have been the same attention to her story if she had been using formula, as many women do for all kinds of reasons? Somehow I doubt it. I still see way too much “breast is best” social media shaming of women can’t or chose not to breastfeed. Full disclosure: I am very much in the “breast is great if it works for you and your baby, but fed is best” camp. Formula was invented for a reason, and millions of children are alive because they had that option (especially in countries with access to clean water and good quality formula).
Still, if a stupid headline is what it takes to highlight the accomplishments of an amazing woman doing a really hard thing, I’ll swallow my grumpiness and celebrate her.
Yesterday the home I lived in for 28 years was sold. I will likely never call another place home for as long.
In the past three years, I have moved three times, finally landing where I am now just over two years ago. Still, this place I am now, while it is nice, it is not home. Knowing that I will have to move again, I have resisted many elements of settling in-ness. Because, you know, that would just be more stuff to move. For example, I don’t have measuring cups. Or serving bowls or platters. I don’t have a lasagna dish. Or obscure spices for Ottolenghi’s complicated dishes. Things that used to make me feel like a grown up. A person who has groups of friends over for dinner. Plus, given the current state of affairs here in the United States, where I’ve lived for more than 30 years, I can’t help wondering if I should move home to Canada. Or elsewhere.
All this is in direct conflict with my strong nesting inclinations.
So, how do I find ground, when I have no nest? Okay—that’s a complicated visual. Nests are high in trees. The ground is, well, far below. Still, you get the picture of settling, of nestling after a long flight. Parts of me feel in constant flight and they are tired.
Nest in a pine tree by Luke Brugger on Unsplash
Getting into my body offers my most reliable respite—running, hiking, skiing, biking, yoga, dancing, crossfit, pilates and so on. Of all of these, running outside offers me the most solace. With each step, the earth beneath my feet brings me home to my very physical existence.
For that moment of footfall, I land. Rest my wings. Find ground. Come home to my body. May that be enough. For now.
