enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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A bit of running

So I just got back from a little run with C. along the canal.

I'm not running much these days - hardly at all, actually - as I still haven't figured out what I did to injure my hip a couple of weeks ago.

I think it will go away gradually, but I don't want to push it. I suspect that it is related to that joint issue that I had a couple of years ago, and I'll confess that I haven't been keeping up with my core exercises and other physio balancing stuff.

I should be.

It's possibly a shame that I am not even 40 and yet I have a deep-seated belief that I've simply put too many miles on my running body. I just don't have the looseness and strength that I once had.

So it's time to focus more on cycling, swimming, cross-country skiing, perhaps yoga. I actually love yoga, and really ought to start going to the studio that I located a couple of months ago. It would be nice to do that - a project for next month after I'm settled in the job.

I must admit that the thing that I dislike about the gym or studios in general - and I've always loathed this about gyms, which is why I used to rarely go - is that I can't stand the posturing women! There are always these young girls in my gym in crop tops and short shorts who wander around with their abs showing, staring at other women. I can always feel their eyes on me checking out my body and it makes me crazy.

I still have a nice figure, though it is not what it was a few years ago.

I must be honest though - I like my cellulite, like the softness where it exists. It's a weird thing but I don't actually care much that my breasts are not what they were. I'm slowing down in many ways. I just don't feel interested in working myself out like crazy. And I like my body as it is. I'm kind of amused by the changes in it. I mean, I have stretch marks on my breasts!

I like the way that our bodies mature.

I know I often speak differently, but I'm growing into a new kind of happiness that I like.

What it is I know is that for the first time in my life I don't feel like a slave to my physical activity anymore. And I don't have those horrible pangs of guilt and terror that somehow I am not doing everything that I could be doing to achieve my best results as an athlete.

I simply don't care anymore. And it feels so good.

I like my spinning class because I do it at my own pace. I wear a full-coverage top and medium-length shorts. I do it with a range of people with a range of body types, and I feel absolutely no need to compete with anyone. I've never told the teacher that I used to be an athlete. In fact, the only person in the gym who knows this is my friend Francois, and he only knows because the colleague who convinced me to go to spinning and who was a running partner this summer knows this. (The only time I am even remotely tempted to tell the teacher that I used to run hundreds of kms a week is when she hounds me about bringing a water bottle to class. There's nothing that could be further from my mind than taking a drink every ten minutes in a 45 minute class! I would run ten miles in the sun before I would even consider having a drink (unless in a marathon of course, and even then I would not drink until 6 or 8 miles in) if I was properly hydrated before working out, which one always should be, but I digress!)

I like the anonymity. And when the young girls check me out - at least as much I feel to see if I am checking them out - I feel a secret, silent peace that I have traveled many roads with my body over the years and that I am done with the compulsive part. There is a woman in the gym who is a little bit older than I am and who does the same thing as the young girls - and always stations herself on a mat right by my bike near the end of my spinning class, watching me, which makes me nuts. The funny thing is that I see her body as very similar to the body that I saw much of when I was running competitively - excessively lean, gaunt, kind of hollow - and inside of myself I feel a bit sorry for her that she feels the need to drive herself so hard, the need to compare herself to me, and so grateful that I am no longer there. And, factually, I just don't find a sinewy, breastless, scarecrow body very attractive.

I'm not expressing this well. It's perhaps something difficult to understand if you've never felt trapped in such a cycle. It's taken me a while to understand the degree to which I was trapped, and, most poignantly, clearly self-loathing.

Tonight C. and I ran about 4 km. That's it. And when I left his house after dropping him off I felt so invigorated by the cool, dark air and the trees in the neighbourhood that I stopped at the little 500m park in the next block with the little cenotaph and I ran around the perimeter with my arms out, darting in and around the trees. I'm sure that the dog walkers chatting in a circle whilst watching their dogs play thought that I was mad, as did those cruising down the main street to the side of the park in their cars. (That street becomes a young and eligible bar street on Saturday nights, in a low-key Ottawa sort of a way. :)) I felt like a little girl dancing on the grass - healthy and joyful and also a little bit pleasantly tired. :)

PS Did I mention that yesterday when I came to the office and the girls said that I looked like an action star I did a karate kick in the air and got caught doing this by one of the senior directors on the floor? Thank goodness I didn't kick him! He looked rather grumpy about it though. OH how I wish that it had been Mr. B. Somehow I have the feeling that this little bit of stupidity would have won his heart. :) Tee hee.

It was rather funny. (Actually, the funny part was when i ran into one of the girls whom I didn't know later in the day and she said that she liked my tulip skirt, sweater and heels much less than my action outfit...and I took the opportunity to demonstrate that I can still karate kick in heels - she was nearly on the floor laughing. :))

You can't take me anywhere. Not sure if I'll risk doing this around the Minister of Line Dance in a few weeks. My goodness though I must say that those conservatives could use a little bit of karate kicking in their lives...

7:51 p.m. - 2007-11-10

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