Light and Momentary

Gains in the mail

I am writing this post with my feet propped up on the coffee table, next to a big jar of protein powder that landed on my front porch this evening.

I fear I have wandered deep into Bro Madness territory now, and if I am not careful I will start sporting tank tops in February (sun's out, guns out!), spouting pseudoscience, and sprouting tattoos of my squat PRs.

But it turns that occasionally, just occasionally, the Beefy Buff Bros are onto something. It is hard to eat the amount of protein that's recommended to optimize gains (oh gracious, I just used the word "gains" in a blog post and I wasn't even joking), and I'm enjoying the gains (twice -- I did it twice in one sentence).

Well, okay: about 85% of me is enjoying the gains (oops, that's three) and 15% of me remains a little ambivalent.

An illustration, if you are not weary of these posts in which my current fitness regime collides with decades of messaging about what's attractive: I was in the bathroom, preparing to jump in the shower, when I caught sight of my shoulder in profile. "Oh, ugh," I thought to myself, "look at that back fat." I took a closer look, and said to myself, "Hold on, fat deposits do not usually end in a tidy visible line running obliquely across the scapula. I think what you mean is 'Look at those REAR DELTS.'"

I have been working for those rear delts, my friends. I do rear delt flies at the very end of my Day 2 workout and they always hurt. I always think about skipping the last set, because they are painful, but I keep at it until all three sets are done. AND LO, now I have an unfamiliar bulge on my shoulder. It's a good bulge, a hard-earned bulge. But dang, I have absorbed a lot of BULGES ARE BAD bunk across the past 51 years.

I am thinking about the gym bros who walked up to Joe over the summer and said, "Dude, you're looking big," fully intending it as a compliment. What would I do if someone walked up and said that to me? My inclination might be to drop a 2-pound jar of protein powder on their toe. But hey, if you're going to eat the Bro Diet you might need to speak the Bro Lingo.

I will continue to provide you with periodic anthropological updates from the weight room-- and, apparently, from the kitchen too.

Back to the gym with Joe

I asked Joe if we could lift together while he was home this weekend, because I was pretty sure I could bench a hundred pounds today, but only pretty sure. It was so nice, you guys. I miss that boy when he's away. He spotted me and -- milestone alert! -- I did indeed bench a hundred pounds for the first time. 

The nice thing about going with Joe is that he will give me as much or as little input as I would like. He has many, many sensible thoughts on how to optimize efficiency, but he also knows that it can get a little overwhelming to hear about 25 things I could do differently. So I tried a wider grip for bench, based on his comments (he was right about that, by the way), and I didn't worry too much about whether I was fully extending my arm for every single rep of incline bicep curl. 

I love having someone to chat with about how much harder it is to do incline bicep curls. 

Bulky

If you are a woman my age you were probably cautioned about the weight room. "Careful," they told you, "you don't want to get bulky." This was said with a twist of the lip and a cautionary tone. You don't want to get gangrene. You don't want to get syphilis. You don't want to get bulky.

The weather has changed and I am making the switch to tops with longer sleeves and more fitted shoulders. And guess what? I have definitely added some bulk.

This is not entirely a surprise. Back in August I tried on a blazer that used to fit perfectly, and it was decidedly snug through the shoulders. But this morning I donned a pale-green blouse I've worn for years. I have worn it happily across a 30-pound weight range, but it does not fit me now. I wore it anyway, and spent the whole day feeling uncomfortable.

I guess this makes sense. Across the past ten years my bust and waist have been different sizes at different times, but never my shoulders. News flash, ladies: if you spend 5 months building your delts (and your lats and your traps), you may find that you need some wardrobe adjustments.

Can I tell you that I am having extremely mixed feelings about this? I love being able to shoulder-press a pair of 35-pound dumbbells for 3 sets. I've never been this strong before. I find it so satisfying to knock out sets of 10 or 12 pull-ups on the pull-up machine. (It will take me some time to do a double-digit number of unassisted pull-ups, but the amount of assist I need is dropping steadily.)

The pale-green blouse is too tight across my shoulders and upper back because I have persevered. I kept at it with deadlifts, even though the form is a total pain in the butt. I did bent-over rows until I felt queasy, and then I stopped and did the same thing twice more. I worked my delts even when I wanted to give up.

My body did what I was asking it to do: it grew me some nice sturdy new muscles. It feels ungrateful to have mixed feelings about this. And yet-- do you know any woman who wants to be labeled "sturdy"? I'm not sure I do. Have you ever heard a woman say, "My fitness plan has been such a success that I need larger clothes!" I have not.

It used to be part of my identity that I was "the skinny one." Part of me wants to say "to heck with that! it's better to be able to open your own jars than to be 'the skinny one'!" It's pretty sad that women so often think they would be "better" if they were smaller -- if less of them existed. If girls and women learn that it's undesirable for them to have visible muscles, then they're easier to push around. And who wants that?

Well. I might want that a tiny bit. I just might.

I am not going to pretend this makes a lot of sense, but I am also going to guess that many of you will find it unsurprising. 

#58

In the spring of 2020 Joe told me I could learn how to do a pull-up in a month, but he amended it to three months when he saw what my actual upper-body strength situation was like in May 2020. I lost momentum with home workouts, though. I reached the point where I could do the two halves of a pull-up separately (from dead hang to 90° elbow bend, from 90° to the top of the bar -- I just couldn't stitch them together), and then I developed a repetitive strain injury in my right elbow.

In May of this year Joe asked me if I'd be interested in lifting with him, and I said yes. I have all but stopped knitting, because I think the combination of lifting and knitting last summer sparked the repetitive strain issue. I have tried to strike a good balance between pushing myself and listening to my middle-aged body. I have asked Joe a kazillion questions, and he has responded with patience and encouragement.

And guess what? Today was chin-up day!

It was kind of accidental. I was using the platform-assisted pull-up machine, and it was slightly broken. I set the pin at 10, meaning it was supposed to offset ten pounds of my weight and I would lift up the rest. But that's not how it worked-- instead the platform lagged down below my knees, offering me zero support. I got to the top, unsupported, and thought, "Did I really just do that?"

Trying to chin myself on a pull-up bar has been frustrating, but today showed me two of the reasons why. With all of my bar attempts I have had too much swing from stepping forward off the box. I can't lift myself and stabilize myself at the same time. The platform-assisted pull-up machine lets me focus on the lifting. There's no swing to worry about.

It also feels easier to do the move with bent knees than with straight legs. I don't know if that makes sense mechanically, but that's how it feels.

So it turns out that I could not do a pull-up after one month, and I could not do a pull-up after three months. I have lifted weights and practiced pull-ups three times a week for NINETEEN WEEKS. On the one hand, I'm proud of that. The weight room hasn't felt like a welcoming space, and I've stuck it out anyway. I went back after the day I left the gym crying. I've learned some of the form pointers and some of the jargon, and I've made gains across the board. But on the other hand, I've been a little frustrated with the fact that I've been trying to do a pull-up for NINETEEN WEEKS. That's a long time! That's 57 pull-up-focused workouts! But today, day 1 of week 20, workout #58-- today I did it.

Almost

Remember how I was going to give an unassisted pull-up a whirl today? This morning I warmed up in the basement, where we have a pull-up bar in front of the furnace. (This is a terrible place for it, because it's way too easy for swinging knees or feet to kick the furnace, but it's also the only place for it. Every other door frame in our house has a lintel that's pentagonal rather than rectangular -- the top, instead of being flat, slopes upward to form a gentle point in the center. You probably wouldn't notice it unless you were trying to hang a pull-up bar.) Then I did a platform-assisted set at the gym: 8 reps, 40 pounds offset. And then I chalked up and faced off with the pull-up bar. 

First I hopped off the step and tried to pull up from the bottom of a dead hang. I couldn't do it, so I tried again. I have to stand on tiptoe on the step to reach the bar, so I gave myself a gentle upward nudge with one foot. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't generate a lot of upward oomph while standing on tiptoe. But that little nudge was all I needed: I swooped right on up to the top from there. So I did a few of those and then went back to the platform-assisted machine to get a bit more volume in.

It makes sense to me that I got nowhere from a dead hang: I haven't been practicing that specific maneuver at all. With platform-assisted pull-ups you always get some help at the bottom; that's just how the machine works. With band-assisted pull-ups, the bottom of the rep is where you get the most help, since that's where the resistance band is stretched the farthest. 

Joe says I should check out "scapula shrugs" on YouTube to tackle that last tiny bit of distance between me and a real true honest-to-goodness pull-up. I guess, actually, I've been imprecise in my nomenclature here-- I almost always use a chin-up grip (knuckles facing me) because it allows me to use my biceps more than a pull-up grip does (knuckles facing away). I mix it up a little bit, but I figure I'll start with a chin-up and progress from there.

I think I'll also try some reverse reps in the basement to see if that helps. I made up that name, I think, but what I mean is this: start at the top, let myself down, and then pull myself back up. It seems like it might be easier to change the direction of the movement than to overcome inertia at the bottom of a dead hang. Maybe? Maybe that just sounds like wishful thinking, now that I've written it out.

Anyway: I'm close! Really close! Maybe I'll post a video when I get there.

More lifting musings

I wish I had some middle-aged-lady friends who wanted to lift weights with me. It's nice to have a lifting buddy. You can cheer each other on; you can spot each other when you're doing hard things. I suspect it wouldn't feel quite as lonely in the Bro Zone if I had a workout pal.

"Everybody's nice in the gym," Joe tells me. "Even if they look scary, everybody's always friendly and helpful."

I am finding this to be a leetle less true for me, though. I was not always especially welcoming to that one lonely guy in Pilates class, so maybe I understand why the weight room guys might seem a little standoffish. 

Lately I've been making slower headway. I've been more cautious about bumping up the weight I'm moving, opting instead to bump up the reps with weights I know I can handle. I don't want to be like "OF COURSE I can bench 90 pounds!" and then get pinned under the barbell, gasping for air while all the beefy bros around me carry on with their workouts, their AirPods blocking out the sound of the sad middle-aged lady wheezing "HELP!" (Why yes, I do seem to catastrophize about any workout regimen I undertake. Catastrophizing is practically my superpower. I'm pretty confident there are no kraken in the weight room, but plenty of other catastrophes loom.)

Still, I'm definitely making headway. I did use the 35-pound dumbbells for shoulder press today. My squat is just barely into triple digits, but I'm pleased that it's there. I look forward to lifting workouts in a way that I have very seldom looked forward to endurance workouts. Today I watched a Jeff Nippard video because it looked interesting to me, not because Joe wanted to know what I thought about it.

It's weird to be the only person in my demographic in the space, though. There are other faculty who use the pool and the cardio machines and the track. The weight room is almost entirely students, the large majority of whom are male.

I'm about 98% certain that I have the strength to do an unassisted pull-up now, but I'm not quiiiite sure how to make the transition away from the pull-up machine. The prospect of going for it on the pull-up bar and failing in public is a discouraging one. I need to figure out how to balance my unhelpful tendency toward self-doubt against the reality that it's not a super-friendly environment. But you know, when I picked up a pair of 35-pound dumbbells for shoulder press this morning, I thought to myself, "This is a bad idea; I can't do it." And I was wrong. I might be telling myself the same false thing about pull-ups. I think on Saturday I'll do a warmup set on the platform pull-up machine and then give it a go on a pull-up bar. What's the worst that could happen? Whatever the outcome, it is unlikely to involve a kraken attack.

The pull-up quest continues

I'm inching in the right direction, friends. On Thursday I did a platform-assisted pull-up with 20 pounds offset, and it was hard but not bonkers-hard. Today I thought I'd try one with 10 pounds offset, and...close but no cigar.

Here is a weird thing I am noticing: when I try these single reps at or near my limit (is "single reps" an oxymoron? what do you call it when you're only aiming to do one because you know you can't do a whole set?), I feel it most in my triceps afterward. This is weird, because triceps don't have much of a job to do when you're completing the first part of a pull-up. Are my triceps working hard to keep me from plummeting to the ground afterward? Are they over-engaging to try to stabilize my not-yet-up-to-the-task biceps?

Do I have any women readers who do pull-ups? Have you experienced this? Joe is a little puzzled about why my triceps are more grumbly than my biceps or lats after these max-effort attempts.

(I guess I don't have to restrict this question to women, but it seems pretty certain that all the men who read here started their pull-up training with bigger biceps than mine.)

Reminder

Hi, did you need someone to remind you gently that it is better to get off the couch and be slow than to sit on the couch and wish you were faster? Consider yourself reminded.

The half-marathon training group is much smaller than the last time I did it, and the 12:00+ group is very tiny-- there were only three of us plus a mentor. The lone male was running a little faster than 12:00, and the other woman was moving slower than I was. But she cut the course short instead of running the full distance, which meant that I was the last person in the entire group to finish. This is not my favorite feeling, but OH WELL. 

I find that the group mentors make a huge difference, and this time it's Denise again-- the same Denise who was SO AWESOME about my brainweasels during the 2016 group. I woke up at 5 this morning and thought to myself, "Why did I sign up for this? I'm going to have to run 8 miles and I can't run 8 miles." But I went back to sleep for a bit longer, and when my alarm went off I got out of bed and ran through my running checklist. It's true that I can't run 8 miles at this point, but I can run 3. And I did!

Also, invigorated by my run, I went to the tire shop when I got home. I am awarding myself some bonus Adulting Points today, let me tell you.

Small victories and backhanded compliments

I went back to the gym today, and it was fine. It is going to take me a while to get an unassisted pull-up, but I am nibbling away at the amount of assist I need. Joe advised me to tweak my bar placement while squatting, and it feels a lot more stable now. I benched more today than I've benched before, and when I cautiously bumped up the weight for French press it felt exactly right.

In the middle of all this, I overheard a man talking to a younger woman as she returned a pair of 30-pound dumbbells to the rack. He said, "That's a lot of weight for a girl!" I limited myself to a horrified look in response, but I have been thinking about it ever since. I wanted to say, "Hey, buddy, don't pretend to pay someone a compliment while asserting your own superiority-- and, by the way, the word you want there is 'woman.'" I wanted to say, "What if someone said to you, 'Hey, you're not bad-looking for a hairy old man'?" Or even "Gosh, that's a long sentence for a man!"

I know that two wrongs don't make a right, and that men are perfectly capable of complex syntax. But I don't know what kind of response might have sent the message I wanted him to hear. The woman in question didn't seem terribly rattled by it. She said, "That's kind of insulting," and he tried to shrug it off.

The gym is a weird place. What would you have wanted to say -- zingy, charitable, or in between?

Meltdown in the rearview

Yesterday I left the gym in tears. At the end of my workout I got a piece of unsolicited feedback on my form for the last exercise and I knew I was going to cry.

"Do not cry," I told myself, "not here in the Temple of Masculinity." 

But it was too late.

The thing about getting back to regular workouts after months away from the gym is that I am also back to arguing with the voice in my head that says "you don't belong here." It had been quiet for a while before COVID, but it is quiet no longer. It's especially loud in the weight room. 

I walk differently in the weight room: long stride, shoulders back, chin high, eyes slightly narrowed. And I just this minute connected the dots-- it's the same way I would walk down a street in Chicago if I wasn't quite sure I was safe there. It's my "don't mess with me" walk.

Fat lot of good it did me yesterday.

I've been posting cheerfully about lifting and all of those stories have been true. It's been fun to learn new things and make gains; it's been a good kind of hard. This story is also true: I am not a natural athlete. Sometimes I get so discouraged that I cry.

Tomorrow I'm going back. Let's hope it goes better.

Women and their bodies, part 2

A couple of times now I have watched Joe interact with guys who haven't seen him in a while. "Dude," they will say, "you're looking really big."

They intend this as a compliment. "I can see you've been working hard in the gym," they are saying. But this is about the most gendered thing I can imagine, aside from "Nice Y chromosome, man!"

No woman, I've told Joe, would ever -- ever -- say to another woman "Hey, you're looking really big!" That's a surefire way to damage a friendship and get yourself labeled as a tactless ogre, a person to be avoided.

Right?

Lots of people have written about fat-phobia and the pressure it places on women to vanish (partially, at least) -- to make themselves smaller. This summer I am also bumping up against some internalized muscle-phobia.

If you asked me outright whether it was unladlylike for women to open their own jars and move their own boxes, I would snort and and roll my eyes. "Of course not," I would tell you. At the same time, somewhere along the way an idea took up residence in my brain about the "right" amount of strength for a woman to have. 

Which is weird, but maybe you know what I mean. I'm guessing you do not aspire to look like Mrs. Olympia. 

At our gym fitness activities have fairly predictable gender ratios: a Pilates class might include one man but probably not; the same is true for dance-based classes like Zumba. Spin classes and cardio machines are roughly 50-50. The weight room is 80% male; some days it's closer to 90%. 

Why is that?

Women and their bodies, part 1

I have spent almost 51 years living in this body and the whole time I've been a little vague about where my biceps actually are. I mean, I knew they were in my upper arm. I didn't think they were responsible for, like, popping my ears or flexing my toes. But when my own personal biceps began to grow in response to regular weight-training, I said to myself, "Huh, those are not quite where I was expecting them to be." 

Here is another fairly obvious thing I did not know: a person can move heavier things if she is not embarrassed about making the occasional weird face or involuntary noise. I'm not going full-on Adam Ondra in the gym, but I'm definitely scowling and breathing loudly. The first time I watched Joe lift something heavy without a mask it was a little startling. "That's the scariest face I've ever seen you make," I told him. Joe says you know it's a good workout if you make scary faces by the end of it. 

I think many women my age are socialized to think that they should be quiet and smiley when they work out, which is why the articles show us waving 5-pound dumbbells around, which is why our biceps don't get very big, which is how I lived more than a half-century in this body without a clear understanding of where my biceps are. Better late than never, friends.

Decrepitude might be underrated

Tonight I am feeling a little glum about the difficulties of maintaining some degree of fitness in middle age.

I have been trying to be cheerful about the way the triathlon turned out, but I was disappointed that my time was so slow. I was not expecting to tear up the course, because I made a deliberate decision to do fewer endurance workouts each week (three of them per week, with one workout that involved two sports) so I could lift with Joe three times a week. And I only had two months to go from couch to triathlon, so I guess my time was always going to reflect those months away from the (COVID-infested) gym. But I was also slow for silly reasons, as I discovered when I looked at the data from my watch.

When you go from bike to run, it's really easy to go too fast. I know this; I know I can't run by feel without setting myself up for misery. What did I do on Saturday? I ran by feel, that's what. Every time I finished a block of running I was gasping for air. During the race I chalked it up to a tough bike leg and insufficient intake. Yesterday I discovered that in every one of those blocks I was hitting a per-mile pace that was 2.5 minutes/mile faster than my training runs. No wonder I was gasping! No wonder I was plodding in between! That was a totally avoidable flavor of difficult.

Part of the purpose of endurance workouts is to teach your body to be less uncomfortable while exerting itself, and part of the purpose is to teach your brain that you can be uncomfortable and it won't kill you. I didn't manage my energy very well during the triathlon-- I was moving pretty briskly, by my standards, when I crossed the finish line, and it didn't feel hard. This means I had enough in the tank that I could have raised the overall pace, even though it didn't feel like that at all on the course.

Amy and I are talking about doing another triathlon in the fall, and I am trying to decide how I feel about the idea. Races are really motivating for me, but I dislike the sensation of public mediocrity. This shouldn't really worry me, I know. No announcer is going to say "And bringing up the rear, the pitiable Jamie Gladly of Gladlyville!" I have a couple of slower local friends who race often, and I would never say, "I don't know why they even bother." I have only enthusiasm for their efforts, so I don't know why I have trouble thinking about myself in the same way.

But I do.

Tonight I went to the climbing gym for the first time in a while, and it was a discouraging trip. I left with a serious case of the WHY BOTHERs.

But I think I am going to get up and run tomorrow, and lift on Thursday and Saturday, and complete my race on Sunday even if it is slow and painful. I think I am going to say yes to the fall triathlon, even though I still feel self-conscious about the last one. Probably decrepitude is worth avoiding. Probably.

Race Report

I was pretty sure the triathlon would be canceled, but the director posted early Saturday morning: "it's on!"

The radar made it look like there would be thunderstorms in the area between 7 and 8am, which seemed certain to delay the start if not cancel the race. But we headed out anyway.

Many, many people had decided otherwise, it transpired. Of the 250 people who registered, fewer than 150 showed up. "You can just line up and get in the pool," said one of the volunteers. "I want to watch some swimmers first," said Amy, who agrees with me that humans are not meant to be aquatic. So we watched some swimmers, we got set up in the transition zone, and we put on our goggles and swim caps. 

"Swimmer!" shouted the volunteer, and Amy jumped in. "Swimmer!" he shouted a minute later when the next person climbed out, and it was my turn.

Some of you will remember that I expended many pixels, many many pixels, describing my swim angst in my previous two triathlons. Part of the problem was that I couldn't see through the water or to the turnaround at the other triathlon site, part of the problem was people pushing around me and kicking near my head, and part of the problem was that I'm not a very good swimmer. I had been trying to prepare mentally in my swims this year, but I wasn't sure how it would go. 

"The first hundred yards are going to feel kind of crummy," I told myself as I pushed off. I was moving slowly, but I felt surprisingly relaxed about the whole thing. It was a pool! Kraken-free! I had my very own half-lane! No problem! "It gets a lot better after 300 yards," I told myself. And sure enough, 300 yards in I was able to think more about technique and less about just reaching the other end. It's unfortunate that it takes me 300 yards to focus on technique given that I was in a race with a swim leg only 400 yards long, but hey -- the last 100 yards felt good. I grabbed my glasses and ran down to the transition zone. Easiest swim leg ever.

Look, I made a swim anxiety pie chart:

In transition, Amy was almost ready to head out, but I thought I'd probably catch up to her. In our previous triathlons I finished the bike leg a little faster than Amy, and I thought we'd be evenly matched this time since she was riding her speedy new bike. The bike leg has been the most fun for me in the past, and I was glad to have the swim behind me. Whee, the easy part!

Except-- not so much. I got the pedals spinning and shifted into high gear, ready to crank out some miles-- and the pedals locked up. Oh dear, I thought to myself, that's a little worrying. I coasted, downshifted, and they stayed locked. I coasted, downshifted, and no dice. I was beginning to wonder if I'd have to concede defeat after 200 yards, but finally things started moving again. "I bet it will get better if we just keep moving," said Optimistic Jamie. "Or...maybe we'll get stuck in a cornfield miles from anywhere," muttered Skeptical Jamie. Optimistic Jamie prevailed, but for the first 3 miles I never knew if I would be able to shift gears smoothly or if my pedals would seize up again.

It's hard to go fast with seized-up pedals, but I kept plugging.

About 5 miles in, the hills started. Now you guys, I had heard that this was a hilly bike course, but I had always rolled my eyes. "Oh, yes," the person from West Virginia [me] would say, "I'm sure it's 'hilly.' I've seen what passes for 'hills' in these parts." But I'm telling you, they must have imported some hills from West Virginia just for this race. I saw the first one coming and I was about as flummoxed as if I'd seen a seam of coal in a cut on the interstate. (That sentence will make perfect sense to anyone from WV and might sound like gobbledy-gook to anyone from the Midwest.) 

I have a little mantra I repeat to myself when I am running or biking up a hill: "you can take the girl out of West Virginia, but you can't take the West Virginia out of the girl." By the end of the hilly section, though, I was saying to myself, "...maybe, actually, you can take the West Virginia out of the girl." Those were some actual hills! Ouch!

I did absolutely zero hill training, and I am a little abashed to admit that my longest outdoor bike ride was only 10 miles. So the last 5 miles of this 15.5-mile course were always going to hurt, but I compounded the problem with poor planning: I brought no water and no fuel. I had assumed there would be a water stop somewhere along the bike course; there was not. My mouth got drier, my pace got slower, the wind felt stronger. My glutes were on fire and I was increasingly saddle-sore. But you know, if you keep pedaling for long enough, eventually you get to the end of the bike course even if it is your slowest-ever bike leg.

Back in transition it took me longer than usual to unfasten my helmet and peel off my gloves. I racked my bike and drank some water and ate some Sport Beans. "5K," I said to myself. "Let's go."

I attempted to run out of transition, but you might not have recognized the movement as running. Is there a word for a hybrid shuffle and limp? Shufflimping? "We would like to speak to the manager," said my glutes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever," I told them. "NO," said my glutes, "WE WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER." I wound up walking a chunk of the 5K -- not brisk-walking, but p-l-o-d-d-i-n-g -- because you can't run with dead glutes. Or maybe you can, but I cannot. I also find that I have trouble catching up if I let myself get dehydrated. No matter how much I drank, my fingers kept tingling the whole way.

One unexpected gift from the stormy forecast was cool temperatures and cloud cover. I would have been truly miserable on that bike leg if the sun had been out, a fact I only realized when the sun began peeking out from behind the clouds on the shadeless run course. It was humid as all get-out, but at least it wasn't hot and sunny to boot. (In another bad planning moment, I forgot sunscreen. I also wore my goggles around my neck for the entire race. Maybe that's what slowed me down, you think?) I ran some, and walked some, and ran some, and walked some, and finally I could hear the music and the crowd. I ran the last bit, waving at Elwood and Stella and Amy and her husband as I rounded the last corner. 

"Jamie Gladly of Gladlyville!" boomed the announcer as I crossed the finish line. I collected my medal and stuffed some finish-line snacks in my pockets, and off we went. We made it to my FIL's party with a little time to spare.

Joe's Personal Training Tips

I just finished my fifth week of weight workouts with Joe, and it's been pretty fun. He's always been a kid who dives deeply into whatever his current interest might be, and he's been focused intensely on learning about weight-training for a couple of years now. He has been extraordinarily patient and encouraging as I've been figuring out a beginner routine, and in this post I am going to share some of his thoughts with you.

If you were to google "weight training women over 50," you would get a lot of articles dotted with pictures of gray-haired ladies smiling as they heft 5-pound dumbbells. Joe rolls his eyes at those articles. He says 5-pound dumbbells are going to get you exactly nowhere. He says it's more fun to move heavy things, and more valuable to lead with compound movements rather than emphasizing work on isolated muscles. And he also says you haven't really worked out if you haven't made some gruesome faces while trying to do something that feels a little too hard. If you're smiling, he would say, you need a bigger dumbbell.

Here is my current split, designed especially for a somewhat fearful and injury-prone middle-aged lady:

Day 1
Assisted pull-ups, 4 sets of 6
Bench press, 3 sets of 6-12
Squats, 3 sets of 6-12
Bicep curl/French press superset, 3 sets of 10-15

I want to be able to do a pull-up. I was pretty close to hitting this goal last summer when a repetitive strain injury intervened, but I have mostly stopped knitting this summer and it seems to be working fine. So far. Joe has me doing the highest volume on assisted pull-ups because that's the outcome I'm focused on. I am throwing in a little extra volume with 50 pounds offset (sets of 7, not 6), and adding a few panting ugly pull-ups with 30 pounds offset. This was the week when something clicked, and my arms and back were like, "Oh, you want us to move like this? Can do." It felt pretty cool.

Day 2
Romanian deadlifts, 3 sets of 6-12
Lat pulldowns, 3 sets of 6-12
Shoulder press, 3 sets of 6-12
Pteranodon swoops, 3 sets of 10-15

Lat pulldowns also target the pull-up goal. Romanian deadlifts have been the hardest exercise in terms of form, but I am persevering. Joe is telling me I should also try conventional deadlifts, but I keep telling him I'll try them later. At the student fitness center, the staff will complain about deadlifts that are too loud, and I feel a little too uncertain about lifting weights to take a rebuke in stride.

Most people say "lateral raises" instead of "pteranodon swoops." But I need something to amuse myself by that point in the workout, so I imagine myself coasting through a primordial forest instead of wilting on the gym floor.

Day 3
Assisted pull-ups, 4 sets of 6
Bench press, 3 sets of 6-12
Calf raises, 3 sets of 10-15
Rear delt flies, 3 sets of 10-15

Joe encourages me to alternate between barbell and dumbbell bench press, but dumbbell bench press feels scary to me. "You are not going to drop the weights on your face," Joe says in a deliberately patient voice. But...I am not convinced about this.

Things I did not know a month ago:

1. The order matters. Lead with the compound movements so you can get the most out of them.
2. Encouragement matters. Yesterday I went by myself because Joe was playing board games. I benched 65 pounds for 6, and I knew, I absolutely knew, that if Joe were there saying, "C'mon, drive!" I could have squeaked out another one or maybe even 2. But the Joe-in-my-head voice is not as powerful as the Joe-at-my-elbow voice.
3. Newbie gains are a thing -- a fun and motivating thing. When I started, I could do two sets of pull-ups with 70 pounds offset before I had to switch to offsetting 90 pounds. There's a sign near the assisted pull-up machine that says "One day the thing that feels hard for you today will be your warmup." And who knows, it might even be true.

Persist

I was going to run 6 miles this morning, but I miscalculated. I didn't take any water along, and the water fountains on the trail are all shut off, and my fingers were doing their dehydration tingle by the 2-mile mark. I decided I'd run 5.5 instead, and I told myself I could take a walk break at the halfway point.

The stretch of trail right around the 2-mile mark on this route is one of my favorite spots. It follows a pleasant little creek, and there's lots of shade. But then a big chunk of the third mile is painful. The shade disappears, and as you leave the water behind you run uphill for a good half-mile. "2.75," I kept telling myself. "Walk break at 2.75." A middle-aged man passed me, running up the hill and breathing raggedly, but I passed him back shortly afterward; he had shifted into a walk.

I ran to the top of the hill and kept going, with an eagle eye on my watch. At 2.75 I turned around and walked for a minute, in which I encountered the man for a third time. He was running again. "I was hoping you'd be running all the way to the end of the trail," he said. "It was inspiring to see you go!"

Now you guys, if I had to pick an adjective for that stretch of my run, it would not be "inspiring." No one would be playing the Rocky theme song -- maybe instead there is a theme song for Limpy, Slow-Moving Middle-Aged Lady Whose Entire Triathlon Goal Is "Finish, Don't Be Last." Now as I am describing the encounter I am wondering what else might have spurred him to say that -- was he hitting on me? was he thinking to himself, "c'mon, man, you can go faster than that!"? But sometimes on the trail people are just plain kind and encouraging to each other, and that's the spirit in which I took it.

"Inspiring?" I thought to myself as I headed back through the broiling shadeless section of trail, downhill this time. "Inspiring," I thought to myself, as I inched toward my house. "Inspiring!" I thought to myself, for longer than I would ordinarily think about a 20-second exchange with a stranger.

So this is a reminder, if you needed one, that sometimes when you do hard things imperfectly but persistently it is an encouragement to people who are struggling to do the same things. Go forth! Persist!

Strength training with Joe

I've been lifting weights with Joe. Last summer I was working on strength training at home, but the combination of upper-body workouts and knitting did a number on my right elbow, and I decided to back off on the strength training. But this summer I decided to back off on the knitting, and I'm going to see how the strength training goes. 

Joe says, "You're stronger than you think you are," which is an encouraging thing to hear. He said it in the context of a discussion about dumbbell bench press, which left me worried that I was going to drop a dumbbell on my face. Today he spotted me with a barbell instead, and it went better than I thought it would.

Weight training is such an unfamiliar world for me that I just googled to confirm: barbell is the thing I was using at the gym today; a barbel is the thing sprouting from a catfish's face. It is not a very female milieu. I'd say the man:woman ratio in that section of the gym runs at least 4:1, or maybe 5:1. Joe sends me videos with titles like "How to do a perfect Romanian deadlift" (my Romanian deadlift is pretty imperfect), and they are hosted on channels with names like Beefy Buff Bros or Dudes And Their Delts. If you're calling a video "Get Massive Hamstrings!" you are not aiming it at the average American woman, who is probably balancing a mild interest in working her rear delts against the certainty that her sleeveless blouses will not fit if her shoulders get bigger.

Will Jamie manage to pull off a pull-up this summer? Will she turn into a Beefy Buff Babe? (One of those outcomes is more likely than the other.) Stay tuned!

Endorphin Fireworks

When the wheels fell off in Gladlyville, I told Pete we couldn't go back to the climbing gym for a while. There were just too many college students in close quarters, in a building with sketchy ventilation. We hadn't climbed in six weeks. Last night, though, we went back.

Our new case counts have been down (although we do keep setting new records for hospitalizations), and last night the climbing gym's visitor counter showed that they only had a single-digit number of guests. I said we could go and check it out, but I cautioned Pete that it might be a quick trip.

You guys, it felt so good. I thought I was saying yes because it would make Pete happy, but wow, have I missed climbing. There were a bunch of new routes, one of which used some familiar holds in a new configuration. I paused for a minute to listen to my internal monologue: "I am going to put my HAND on that BLUE HOLD and I know just how SOLID it will feel! This is AWESOME!!!" -- accompanied by a little fireworks show of endorphins and dopamine in my brain.

It was a little bizarre, honestly, but in an extremely pleasant way.

You can't skip six weeks of climbing and jump back in where you left off. I have some work to do on the mental part of it as well as the strength part, because it's kind of a weird choice to entrust your life to a slender rope while you propel yourself upward-- 40, and then 50, and then 60 feet into the air. But Pete and I are watching the gym's guest counter, and the county's case counter, and looking forward to our next opportunities to climb.

The pull-up quest

Back in May I decided that I was going to get strong enough to do a pull-up by my 50th birthday. I was nowhere on this goal, you guys -- seriously, nowhere. When Joe told me to lie down under the basement table and pull myself up to it, I could only manage three reps. When he had me try a negative (a slow, controlled descent from a pull-up position), I plummeted downward as if propelled by an anvil.

But it turns out that muscles get stronger when you work them, even if they are 49-year-old muscles. I wasn't consistent about exercising during the weeks that we were taking care of Champ, but even so I was making progress. I got strong enough to pull myself from a 90° flexed-arm position to the top of the pull-up range of motion, and strong enough to pull myself up from a dead hang to about 80° of arm flexion. I'm almost there, I thought, even though I can't stitch the two halves of the movement together. I've been using the chin-up hand position (palms facing me) instead of the pull-up hand position (palms facing away), but still! Progress!

About a week ago I bought a 35-pound resistance band to get myself over the hump. I wish I'd bought it in May, but I did not. With that resistance band I could do a bunch of chin-ups, or at least a bunch by my standards. Last Friday over the course of the day I did 14 full reps with the band, going from fully extended arms to fully flexed arms, and 5 most-of-the-way reps. I thought I'd be all set to do one actual chin-up on my birthday.

Alas, I could not do an actual unassisted chin-up on my birthday. I think I was still recovering from the Friday chin-up festival, because I couldn't do one even with the resistance band. Maybe I need more rest to make those muscles grow, I thought to myself, but I probably don't need quite this much rest.

Joe says that if you eat a hundred grams of protein every day the Gains Fairy will visit you will you sleep. Maybe that's what I need to do.

Saturday is my name day. Maybe I will be able to do a chin-up then. I'll keep you posted.

May 5

I have an ambition, my friends: I want to be able to do a pull-up by my fiftieth birthday.

I am exactly nowhere on this goal. Joe was very optimistic that he could coach me to pull-up domination in a month, and then we headed down to the basement pull-up bar together. "Um," he said afterward. "Definitely three months. If you work at it. Maybe not a month."

These are the things he wants me to do:

1. Inverted rows. I am supposed to lie down under the old dining room table in the basement, and pull myself up to its underside. I do not like this, because of (a) potential spiders and (b) actual difficulty. But I have done it twice now. Joe wants me to do three sets to failure. Oh, that's part C of why I don't like it: failure is no fun. It makes my arms hurt. "The fun part," says Joe from his position on the couch beside me, "is that in a week you prolong failure by one more rep and you're like 'yes!' That's a good feeling." 
2. Deadlifts. Joe thinks I could be doing these with 70 pounds, but I roll my eyes at that. I feel like there are all these form details I am supposed to be remembering. I forgot them all between the first time I went into the basement to work on my Pull-up Ambition and the second time. Joe promises he will walk me through it again. At some point he might start requiring a personal training fee if I continue to forget the fine points. ("That's a good idea!" he says as he reads over my shoulder.)
3. Bent-over rows. Again with the form details, only a little less so.

Ten years ago I put "get in shape" on my list of things to accomplish by the time I turned 40. Specifically, I wanted to be able to do a Teaser (that took a lot of work -- my abs were pretty much a marshmallow repository after having five children), and finish the Hundred Push-up Challenge, and run a sub-30 5K. So: triceps for my last milestone birthday, biceps for my next one. ("And back," says Joe. He keeps telling me it's more about my back than my arms.) I'll have to figure out something for my 60th. But first I might have some spiders to relocate, and some inverted rows to suffer through.