Aqueduct

Posted by amy at November 2nd, 2007

Oh faithful readers, please join me in celebrating my triumphant first-place-in-my-division 5k Sam Gomez race last weekend. The more observant reader might notice that I actually came in dead last, a good 15 minutes and 86 seconds behind a gentleman competing in the 75 + division, but you would be the same people who see the glass half empty. Running a 5k on a Sunny afternoon in October wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but running it over the age of 75 in under 40 minutes just might be, we’ll see.

A few weeks ago, I gave up my nightly jog for a trip to the attic for yoga. The front of our attic is huge and empty. Earlier this summer, fresh from a weekend visit to a spa with my wonderful mother, I rushed out to home depot and bought a decent sized rug, some candles from pier one and a couple of tapestries later, and I’ve got a yoga studio. I told myself that after the Komen race for the cure, I could move inside.

I didn’t know that I could really make the switch, but one night when I was playing in I-Tunes, I found a great podcast by Hillary Rubin and I’m hooked. If you’d like to try yoga at home, start with one of these. Hillary talks you through each pose with encouragement and advice as if she is in the room with you, watching your body move. “That’s it, now drop your hips a bit, more, that’s it, you got it.”

And yet it is incredibly challenging, both physically and intellectually, because Hillary primarily uses the Sanskrit terms and I just didn’t pay enough attention in yoga classes in the past to match the Sanskrit name to the names I’m familiar with “downward dog” “mountain pose” “wind relieving posture”. I’ve got two yoga books up there with me, one of which is stick figures in poses with names like “bend over” and the other has lots of great images, but is lacking in a Sanskrit index.

Tonight I hit a stumbling block with “Vashistasana to Wild Thing” which brought me down here to my computer, and the urge to share Hillary with you.

I needed a man in my i-pod to get me off the couch and onto a 5k, and now I’m hooked on a woman telling me to drop my heart into my hands and release. I could give up my cell phone today, but you’ll have to fight me for my i-pod.

photography by James Wvinner

Posted by amy at September 30th, 2007

I’m not sure why I’m so surprised by the following realization, but the fact that I continue to find out new things about myself makes me incredibly happy and makes me optimistic about entering my forties and fifties.

Growing up under the shadow of the baby boomers, I was under the impression that I would peak in my early 20s and everything after that would be a slow decline - in health and in happiness - until death. My study of student protest leaders in the 1960s magnified this impression - looking at how they aged (or didn’t in some cases) wasn’t all that pleasant.

I struggled through my teens and twenties with figuring out who I was, and in the back of my mind was always the refrain that I never wanted to be “one of those people” (who woke up early to fly model airplanes, or who packed the same lunch every day or who never moved from their hometown for example.) I started to let those ideas go as I began to become more comfortable with who I actually was instead of defining myself by what I wasn’t.

And now, now I’m beginning to expand my idea of what I’m capable of. I never knew I could be the kind of woman who … run 5 miles, can do a high ropes course, likes beets! My husband reinforced this for me last week, when explaining to our son Alex why I had to go to Boston to run this race. “Because mommy needs a goal, something she can mark on a calendar and work towards and feel good about herself for reaching.” [slap hand to forehead, yell Wow, you’re right] How could I not have recognized this about myself before?

Just imagine what other cool things I can learn about myself as I set new goals and explore new possibilities.

My next goal? I’m going to start doing some hill training so I can the snowshoeing 5k this winter, and I’d like to get back to my yoga practice? Maybe 50 sessions in 60 days? Sounds doable to me.

What about you, did you ever imagine you could be the kind of person who ….?