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 have marvelous friends who are supportive, encouraging and unapologetic when calling me out on being mean to myself. I’m very lucky.
There were several gems I have mined from those discussions. Today I am looking at a question my gym buddy Rob asked me.
Why did I want to ride 100 km?
The first answer that came to mind was that I wanted to test if I was ready to ride longer than 100 km.
I’m very comfortable completing the MS Bike Tour. The two days of 80 km supported every 20 km felt great. It’s a different challenge to ride continuously in 50 km blocks. I underestimated that gap and was disappointed.
The myth of linear progress
I wanted to complete a 100 km ride as part of a story of physical fitness that showed progress.
When my results were similar to the ones I had 12 years ago it felt like a set-back.
In chatting with my friends in Randonneurs Ontario they shared stories of struggling to have consistent times on a given distance.
We spoke about routes, conditions, health, training, age and injuries.
There are a lot of variables that affect how long it takes to complete a route. Only some of those are under my direct control.
Is that the real reason?
Rob invited me to push against the first answers to validate if that is really why I wanted to ride 100 km.
Hope
What I wanted out of the ride was some evidence that my longest distances are ahead of me.
Ten years ago I completed the People with AIDS Bike Tour from Toronto to Montreal. It was 600 km over 6 days. The longest distance on a given day was around 135 km.
2016 Me, in Montréal, embracing a volunteer at the finish line.
Between then and now I quit cycling in 2020 (during the pandemic) then re-started in 2023.
I’ve been inconsistent. Without a capstone event after the MS Bike Tour my distance peters off each year. I have not used the indoor trainer in the winter.
New goals
What I really want out of cycling is more adventures with Michel. We are getting ready to try some rail trails this fall. I got a trailer to bring our dog Lucy along.
Active living
My big picture goal is an active life that supports my physical and mental wellbeing. I really enjoy shorter jaunts and I want to extend that to longer rides.
Consistent Riding
There is no secret to going longer, faster and happier on a bike. It’s time in the saddle on a consistent basis.
Training for the PWA ride had specific milestones to meet in order to be allowed to ride. There were distances to hit, an average speed above 20 km/hr and a deadline for back to back 100 km days.
Unstructured fun
In the shoulder season my focus will be fucking around and finding out. I will try some wider tires and some rail trails. I will get on my bike 2-3 times a week in addition to my utility cycling.
Folks jumping with joy by the waterside.
Thank you
I wanted to wrap this up with a giant thank you to my friends and family. I never imagined my writing about being disappointed with my 100 km would illicit a tsunami of responses. Texts from Nova Scotia and British Columbia and every province in between!
Messages from folks showing they had read every word and could relate. Thank you for reading my posts and connecting over our shared experiences of try to keep these bodies doing all the things.
A coffee with ‘thank you’ dusted on the creamy froth in cinnamon.
The Future
I’m still thinking about my mid and long term cycling goals. I’ll be sure to let you know once I settle on them.
Whatever the future holds, I suspect it will include my dog!
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.
The other day I read an interview with the slow-running, glasses-wearing TikTok sensation Erin Azar, aka Mrs Space Cadet. She is an offbeat, self-made athlete, but one thing she does share with other more conventional runners is that she has a running coach.
Her experience got me thinking about my experience with coaches. For most of my early life I’ve had a vague and unexamined sense that coaches were a luxury item for those who could afford more than group fitness classes (not me). Or, coaches were only for top performance athletes, like those training for the Olympics (also not me). Aside from being on community softball teams with supportive parents, I have never really had a dedicated (volunteer or paid) coach for motivation, safety, or performance in a physical activity.
Now, as I engage more in recreational fitness activities during mid-life, I am more curious to know what I might have been missing.
What I do have (and have always had) is an interest in hearing the perspectives of passionate, knowledgeable people. Maybe that’s why I’ve enjoyed posting interviews on FIFI. Michael Collins, who coaches and trains first-time weightlifters, helped me to understand how coaching can make a sport more approachable and accessible. Longtime curlers Dale Sinclair and Joanne Tarvit taught me about the enduring role that curling plays in bringing family and community together. Coach, player, and referee Kayla Marcoux got me thinking about how officiants can support the safety of players in different soccer leagues.
Over the past few years I’ve come to realize that these folks (and others) have all been, in some way, my coaches. They’ve helped me to learn about my new-ish fitness activities or unlearn some of my prior assumptions and fears. When I take the time to ask players I admire for their input or advice, I benefit in so many ways. And most times I don’t think they mind me asking!
So, while I have never had A coach, I know I have the humility and confidence to seek learning and feedback opportunities from different people. What I lack in early life sports and fitness training I make up for now in mid-life with being coachable.
What is your experience with coaches (past or present)? How coachable are you?
Last year, I started thinking about returning to being a lifeguard. I have decided I don’t really want to be a lifeguard as much as I want to be a swim instructor, ideally teaching adults from the immigrant community. If they can swim, they will be more likely to get their kids to swim, and swimming is literally a lifesaving activity.
Being a swim instructor in Ottawa requires six courses. I am just over half way through the course that will get me more than half way through the certification.
I’m currently doing an intensive Bronze Medallion and Bronze Cross combined course. It’s seven weeks long for five hours a week, and last Friday marked week four. I already have my standard first aid and CPR “C”/AED. Assuming I pass, my next steps are a short course in airway management, my lifeguard course, and finally the instructor qualification.
Browsing through the course catalogue, I might be able to find a lifeguard course that caters to people over 30. That would be nice. But I need to weigh it against the convenience of a closer course that I could combine with airway management. Decisions, decisions.
I also need to get my swimming speed up just a bit. I’m on the bubble for completing the lifeguard anaerobic test (50 metres in 60 seconds) and the endurance (400 metres in 10 minutes). Maybe the lifeguard course for older people will be a touch more forgiving…
I’ll report back in a few months. Wish me luck!
The lovely big pool where I swim every Friday night.
A few years ago, my friend Bess came to visit and I took her to my ballet class. She has zero interest in ballet but was fascinated to hear the feedback we were getting: it was just like what she uses when heavy weapons fighting.
Bess, on the right in a red surcoat and holding a sword and shield, has her feet ready to advance on her opponent, who is wearing a black surcoat.
Use your core muscles. Keep your spine aligned. Bend your knees so you can spring up and land without injury. Engage those quick twitch muscles so you can move around the floor. Pay attention to the angle of your wrists: it can mean the difference between a “killing” blow and a wasted hit with the flat of your sword. Or if you are dancing, it’s the difference between a graceful line and strong back muscles vs looking like you have chicken wings for arms.
A woman in a long flowing blue dress holds her arms above her head with her elbows bent. To the left is a pair of white chicken wings with the words “chicken wings” below the,. Image: Zarely.co
That experience has stuck with me, especially when I realized it applies to other sports.
When riding my horse, all those instructions about core, posture, and arm position also apply. Swimming is also all about core, alignment and precise use Of arms and wrists for maximum efficiency when moving through the water.
From watching other sports, especially things like martial arts, it appears these principles are pretty universal.
This discovery has allowed me to take feedback from one sport and apply it to another. Mental images that helped in ballet turned out to be really useful for correcting my riding. Figuring out how certain muscles feel when properly engaged helped me recognize when I was working my core in the pool.
Equally important was the recognition that those translatable skills can make it possible to try a new sport with less fear of the unknown. This is probably that magical knowledge (whether conscious or unconscious) that makes natural athletes “natural”.
I haven’t yet decided to take up anything new, but I like the idea that I could do so and not be starting at absolute zero. In my heart, I’m like the character in the children’s book Brianna Bright, Ballerina Knight, who isn’t very good at ballet but bumbles and stumbles her way through other sports until she discovers fencing,
Brianna Bright, a cartoon girl with long brown hair in a pony tail, eats dinner while images of her as a ballerina and a fencer float above her head. Image copyright Liana Hee, 2018, text copyright Pam Calvert, 2018. Courtesy of Two Lions.
“All riders are expected to complete two back-to-back minimum 100km rides over two consecutive days (e.g. Saturday and Sunday) by this date.” By what date? By July 17.
The Friends for Life Bike Rally has its rules. I am sure they are good rules and they have them for a reason.
But here’s my reaction:
And truth be told I haven’t yet ridden 100 km in one go this year.
Yes, I’ve ridden 97 km and I was tempted to go all Cate-completist about it. and make it an even 100 but I didn’t. I wasn’t even exhausted but I was, as usual, done with Toronto traffic and all the red lights.
I have been doing back to back rides. This past long weekend I did 46 km on one day (Canada Day at Niagara Falls with Sarah) and 77 (with David) on another and then another 49 km (in Southampton with Sarah and her very speedy ZSUN teammate Nats).
But the astute mathematicians among you will note that that’s not 200 km over two days.
You can see my Strava profile here if you want to check up on me. Lol.
So what’s my plan?
I’m riding this Friday with Jeff, had planned on 70 km or so. I might ride with some GCAT folks on Saturday but that’s more like 60 km. Sunday there’s a wedding. So I don’t think it will be this weekend.
Next weekend looks good though. Sunday, July 17 is the Tour de Norfolk. We’ve committed to the 100 km.
I think I have a plan. We could ride 100 km in Guelph on Saturday and then the Tour de Norfolk on Sunday. Let’s hope for good weather and all going well we should be able to sneak in our back to back 100 km rides just under the wire.
(This post is long. Get comfy and get some tea before you dig in.)
Usually when I have my dobok on, I’m heading to a Taekwondo class but for a few mornings last month, I headed to art class instead.
This photo is a few years old but I am wearing my dobok and I am smirking so it is still relevant. Image description: a selfie of me in my dobok with my hair pulled back in a green bandana. My blue front door is behind me and I was on my way to TKD class.
Thanks to my friend, Jennifer, I had the opportunity to be a model for three sessions of the sketching group that she helps organize and it was a delightfully positive experience for me.
I was nervous about it at first. I wanted to be a good model for them, to do something useful and interesting, but I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to hold my TKD movements for the right length of time or that I would lose focus and move at the wrong time.
My concerns made sense – I knew I would have to do two 5 minute poses, two 10 minute poses, and a twenty minute pose and then we’d have a break before I did a long pose – 45 minutes to an hour. Even the shortest of those is a long time to hold a move that is supposed to take a few seconds and I had literally no idea what I was going to do for that long pose.
Luckily, for the first two sessions, Jennifer had me do something different for the 45-60 minute pose. Instead of being still, she wanted me to repeat a series of motions over and over so the artists could practice quickly capturing basic elements and then add in details as the movements were repeated. (Doing the same set of motions over and over for an hour was NOT a problem for someone who knows 16 different TKD patterns and is working on the 17th.)
By the time that we got to the third week, I had figured out that I could use some of our stretches for that long pose so it ended up being almost relaxing.
Overall, being a model was an interesting experience that gave me some real insights into my TKD practice. It helped me to make some connections that I hadn’t fully thought through and it helped me have a better sense of where I am in some important aspects of my training.
Here are a few of the things I took away from my brief modeling career. 😉
Reasonable Facsimiles
Before going to each session, I spent a lot of time thinking about the poses I was going to do – factoring in how long I could hold them and what would be interesting for the artists to draw. They had requested poses at different heights but I also considered having variety in the poses in other ways – my hands turned differently or my foot at a different angle. Doing this sort of deep thought about my abilities and about how to get my movements just right was a really great way to assess my strengths and to ensure that I really understood how certain movements are supposed to look.
I did end up presenting some ‘reasonable facsimiles’ because there would be no way that I could, for example, stand on one foot for 10 minutes straight. I could, however, stand on one foot and rest my other knee on a support so it was almost like I was in the right position. That did mean that I was using my muscles differently than I would in a pattern but the session was about the artists practicing, it wasn’t about producing perfect drawings for a TKD manual. The key thing for me was that I had a very clear understanding of the difference between how I was modeling a movement and how I would execute it in practice. I really had to understand how it was supposed to be done in order to adapt it to use in the session.
One of Jennifer Morgan’s sketches of me. I couldn’t hold sitting stance for 10 full minutes so I did this 9-shaped block while resting on a wooden stool. If I was doing the actual stance, my feet would be more clearly pointing forward. Luckily my goal was ‘look interesting’ instead of ‘do it perfectly.’ Image description: a pencil sketch of me in my dobok doing a reasonable facsimile of sitting stance (legs apart, knees bent) while holding one fist downward at an angle while I hold the other across my chest.
All Kinds Of Information From One Pose
One of my poses involved me reclining on the platform with my legs extended to one side like they would be in a flying side kick. Admittedly, it didn’t look very much like an actual flying side kick but it did give the artists something interesting to draw and sitting with my legs in the right position did give me a solid sense of which muscles I need to stretch and to strengthen to improve my kick.
An unexpected side benefit was the fact that my friend Jennifer, who among her many other accomplishments, writes and illustrates historical graphic novels, found this pose very useful. In her current project, one of the things she has to depict is women my age climbing into a lifeboat. Seeing me with one hand supporting me while my hip and butt rested on a flat surface with my leg out to the side gave her a good sense of how a middle-aged woman’s body would look as she perched on the side of the boat and swung her legs inside.
Using My Whole Body
One of the operating principles in TKD, and probably all martial arts, is that a punch or kick is not just about using your arm or your leg, you recruit a variety of other muscles to add power and refinement to your movements. I understand this intellectually but unless I deliberately choose to focus on it during class, I’m not always sure that I am doing it consistently.
After my sessions as a model, I feel much more confident that I must be engaging my other muscles because of how the artists commented on my poses. Receiving friendly advice to make sure to use my abs to help support my extended arm and realizing that I was already doing that was a confidence boost. And hearing one artist comment to another that I was helping her how all my muscles had to work together to create the movement delighted me – if she could see it, I really must be executing the movement correctly.
Consistency For The Win
As you know from some of my other posts, I struggle with consistency. And, beyond that, I struggle to know if I am being consistent or not, especially when it comes to any sort of physical practices.* I have trouble knowing if I am doing a movement correctly because my brain won’t always hold on to how it is supposed to feel or look.
Another one of Jennifer’s sketches from the session where I was moving. She drew each separate movement next to each other starting with a light sketch the first time I did the movement and then returning to the sketch to add details each time I repeated it. Image description: a layered pencil sketch of me in my dobok with my arms overlapping in front of my chest. The edges of two other sketches can be seen on either side.
In TKD, one of the ways you check for accuracy and consistency in your movements is if you finish your pattern on the same spot where you started it. When I was repeating my movements for the artists, I knew I was doing mostly ok because I was returning to the same spot at the end of each series. What really made me feel good, though, was hearing one of the artists say that she had been worried that it would be hard to capture each stage of my movements but my consistency made it pretty straightforward.
That comment was a delight but I also got something else out of repeating my pattern so many times in a row. Normally, when I practice, I don’t spend a lot of time on my first few patterns. I don’t have endless time to practice and I tend to focus on the patterns that challenge me the most.
For the artists’ purposes though, I needed to pick something that wasn’t especially complicated and that wouldn’t wear me out when repeating for the better part of an hour so I chose our very first pattern. Doing those fundamental movements over and over let me dig deeply into each one and pay very close attention to what my muscles were doing and how I could tweak and improve in even very small ways.**
It was almost a luxury to have nothing else to do in those moments but focus deeply on that narrow set of movements. And when I went to class that night, I could feel a slight improvement in all of my patterns so I will definitely be adding that sort of practice to my routine whenever I can.
Showing Off
Speaking of practice, one of the things that I did before each modeling session was to practice holding different poses and positions to ensure that I could do them for the right length of time. As a result of that practice, I discovered that, if I sit on an upended yoga block, I can hold a squat-like position for over 20 minutes.
When I asked the group if that was a good option for the 20 minute session, they were very excited about the idea of having the opportunity to draw that pose but concerned that I was going to hurt myself trying to do it.
Being able to pull off that 20 minute supported squat with ease felt a little like I was showing off but it felt more like a personal victory. I could do something kind of challenging AND be an interesting subject for drawing at the same time. Go me!
Peace of Mind
Before I went to my first session, my friend Elaine told me that she found her stint as a model to be very relaxing because she could just be still and breathe.
I didn’t think it would be the same for me because I figured that I would get distracted or that each pose would feel like it was taking forever. I even considered wearing earphones and listening to an audiobook while I posed but then I was afraid that would distract me in a different way.
However, I was surprised at how calm and relaxed I felt most of the time. A few of the poses felt long but overall, I mostly just focused on breathing slowly. Sometimes I counted my breaths in and out and other times I specifically chose something to think about – my latest pattern or something I wanted to write.
I ended up finishing each session with a feeling of satisfaction, the same kind of feeling I get from immersing myself into any project and getting into the flow of it.
Holding poses for so long was a physical and mental challenge but it was an enjoyable one. Being an artists’ model has shifted some important things for me with regards to my TKD practice and I look forward to being able to do it again sometime.
*For example, being told to repeat something until I can no longer hold good form is lost on me because I will never catch the point when I go from good form to not-so-good-form. I don’t know if this is an ADHD proprioception thing or if it is just a Christine thing but there it is.
**I imagine some of you will be reading this and thinking ‘That’s called practice, Christine. Smarten up.’ and you’re right to a certain extent. Thanks to my ADHD, I’ve really only begun to understand how to practice effectively in the past few years. Left to its own devices, my brain forgets that working on small pieces of a project (i.e. practicing) will lead to finishing the project (i.e. knowing a pattern.) Since I can’t finish learning everything about a pattern in one fell swoop, my brain will trick me into thinking that practicing is pointless. So there’s that. BUT, also, the kind of deep practice that I did in the session is a different sort of approach that I don’t often have time for.
You may know about Dory, the little blue fish with the positive attitude from animated Pixar film Finding Nemo. Despite the challenges she faces with her short-term memory, Dory focuses on moving forward. “Just keep swimming,” she says, and off she goes.
Not a picture of my pool, but close enough. Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
I wrote last month about the universal design aspects of our new recreation centre, and since then, I’ve been going to the pool three times a week, channeling my inner Dory. Unlike Dory though, I have been taking notes about some of the things I’ve learned so far.
My usual routine before the pool opened was to get two weight training sessions in a week, and complementing that effort with some floor work at home and trail walking a couple of times a week. My walking partner had to take a break around the same time I got introduced to the new pool.
My first two times in the pool I managed six laps each time. Almost a month later, I get in 10 to 12 laps a session depending on the time I have and whether or not I want to spend some time in the therapy pool playing with the currents. The main thing though is I have picked up my endurance and my speed.
I’m really enjoying it for several reasons. It’s a great way to kick off my day and I get it done by 8 so I am washed, dressed, and ready to work by 9 a.m. I work from home so it’s a good feeling to be at the office by the start of business.
It’s something I can do with my family. My husband and I both have busy work lives; swimming is a place where we engage in idle chatter helping us leave our work preccupations at the door.
I also find it very relaxing. There’s a very meditative feeling to swimming laps, where you go up to the deep end of the pool and then flip back to swim to the shallow end. The repetition is soothing and you don’t have to think hard about the motion.
When I am lifting weights, I am super conscious about my form, ensuring I am in the right position to lift or squat. I’m hyper-focused, in fact, on what my hips and knees are saying, given their previous injury experiences.
In the pool, my biggest risk is running into people. I wear high-level prescription glasses but don’t use them in the pool. As a result, I only see blobs, and sometimes it could just be a trick of the light, while at other times, it could be a person. So far I have avoided any collisions with either people or walls.
The biggest benefit I have found is how helpful the buoyancy of the water has been to my hips and knees. Unlike the trail walking, with its uneven pitch and occasionally slippery gravel (and in winter, sheets of ice), there is no stress placed on my knees or hips in the pool.
In fact, going swimming the day after my weight training has helped ease the tension and stress different muscles feel after a new workout or exercise variation. Swimming helps me get moving more quickly and it has noticeably improved the fluidity of my lifting.
Overall swimming has given me a new appreciation of how our bodies work differently on land and in water. I’m aware of the resistance water can give you against a current in the same way running or walking uphill forces your lungs to work harder. Most importantly, it’s lots of fun and, for me at least, easy to fit into my schedule.
I’m glad I have found a fun activity that complements my weight training instead of working against it. How about you, dear readers? What kinds of activities are you employing to add interest and variety to your fitness goals and objectives? What are some things you have learned from mixing up your fitness tools?
— Martha lives in St. John’s and enjoys weight training, trail walking, and swimming.
Image description: this color photo shows Alison Conway, a tall blond woman dressed in running tights and long sleeves with neon pink shoes and race bib number 3519, coming through the finishing arch (a red inflated archway that says “Running Room” and “Start/Finish” at the end of the Sarnia Half Marathon. She is flanked by two other runners, also in black tights and long sleeves. On the pavement in front of them is painted the blue and white symbol for wheelchair accessible parking. It’s a grey cloudy day and people look cold.
I took up running after a hiatus of almost thirty years when I turned 50 in 2015. In my early twenties I suffered bad knees and the physio who treated them directed me to the pool. Three decades later I thought I’d try a 5 km running clinic and see how the knees held up. Two years later, I’m logging and loving the miles.
Since Nov. 8th, running has taken on a different significance. Now I start my runs full of rage and despair over what’s happening in America, full of fear that the same will happen here if either Kevin O’Leary or Kellie Leitch (two of the top three Conservative Party leadership contenders, according to the National Post 2/3/17) gains ascendency in Canadian politics. Guilt plagues me. I am running when I should be volunteering or protesting. I spend money on race registrations that would be better spent on larger monthly contributions to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Clearly I have been living with my head in the sand since I didn’t see Trump coming. Now I must atone.
But self-laceration is too easy and familiar. I couId spend the next four years in my head, spinning. Instead, I must sit down and make some hard choices. And one of my choices is to set a limit to how much time I spend running. I’ve been encouraged by friends to take on a marathon. I admire those in my running group who have overcome serious obstacles in their lives to achieve this goal, as well as those who use marathons to raise money for charity. I admire our coach, who is an advocate for at-risk youth and mental health services. But at this moment, whatever benefits I could list under “self care” when thinking about a marathon take a back seat to those I list under “other care.”
The challenge we face now is that each day asks us to make decisions about how much news we will consume, what contribution we will make, what action we will take. The marathon we are all running is the one that involves making these choices deliberately and mindfully, day in, day out, week in, week out, for the foreseeable future. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, panicked, frozen. We all have to pace ourselves. It seems like a good time to ask hard questions of “self care,” to see how far it extends itself to helping those more at risk than ourselves.
We can be more deliberate about yoking our fitness goals to our political commitments. I volunteer for Start2Finish, a reading and running group for at-risk children, and I practice the power pose with little girls every week. “Sweat is great!” is a common refrain; “Just keep running!” is another. There are other programs aimed directly at fostering confidence in girls through running and we can all help to nurture young women by giving them our full attention as volunteers.
In our exercise communities, we can find ways to build relationships and trust with those who do not belong to our particular constituency—in my case, academia—in the hopes of enabling dialogue when so much divisiveness characterizes public speech. I talk too much, but lately I’ve been trying to listen better, to choose my words more carefully when I respond to ideas I consider ill-informed. I am finding out about the community work others are involved in, their sense of local politics and what’s at stake in mapping the future of the city we live in. Now it’s time to take what I’ve learned to city hall, to become an engaged citizen rather than a passive observer. The old chestnut, “Act local, think global,” has taken on new, concrete significance since I decided to focus my attention on doing the next right thing.
What I can’t do is try to run away from the whole sorry mess we’re in, or turn my back on those who need my help and support right now. We need to run toward resistance, not away from it. Maybe one day, for me, resistance will involve training for a marathon. But right now I have more urgent tasks requiring my attention.
Alison Conway is an English professor at Western University. Her favorite workout is running the roads and trails of London, ON.
