Everything Changes. Why Shouldn't Your Fitness?

There’s a website called Athlinks that somehow magically finds every race you’ve ever participated in and keeps it in a nice organized place for you. You can go there and relive the glory of finishing 1st in your age group in the local 5k, or see how you compare to other women age 40-44 in sprint triathlons. It’s like diving into a pool of your own fitness past. It’s awesome. 

If you’ve been running road races or doing triathlons or cycling events for as long as I have (some of these longer than others), one day you will log onto your Athlinks page and see something that might shock you. 

Times get slower. 

Age groups get older.

100 mile bike races became less frequent (ok, non-existent). 

Things change. 

At first, it can be a hard pill to swallow. Especially if you have a touch of the competitive within you. 

But really what this shows you is that things change. And just because things change, it doesn’t mean they aren’t as good or as valuable as they used to be. Over the years, (and you can see this if you look at my Athlinks page) I’ve gotten slower. I’m almost 13 years older than I was when I first found out about this website, when the events started tracking. 

But you know what? I am stronger now than I was then. I am fitter now than I was then. 

As I’ve aged, I’ve had to swallow that pill and adjust for the changes in my body. I’ve had to accept that I can’t run a 5K at a sub 8-minute mile pace anymore. I’m pretty sure I can’t  run one mile on a track at under 8 minutes any more. 

But I have let that go (for the most part). I’m working on it. 

As a trainer of women, I see this ALL THE TIME. We pick ourselves apart, we expect the same results from, essentially, a completely different body. A body that has been exposed to time, stress, work, pandemics, children, surgeries, injuries, changing hormones and so much more.

So I ask you this. When you go to your next class, or training session, or run your next race, instead of lamenting that you are slower, or that last month you lifted more weight, or that it hurts more this year when you do squat jumps, take note of the fact that you and your body are running, and lifting, and jumping. 

When you look at yourself in the mirror and see a waist that might be a little thicker than it was in your 30s, or when you try on your favorite dress you wore on your honeymoon and it doesn’t fit the same (come on, really? Your honeymoon? Unless it was one week ago….maybe give it away or save it in a time capsule), take note of the stuff you can put on that DOES make you feel AWESOME. Because those things are out there. Find them and wrap yourself in them. (They probably aren’t even things…)

Things change. It’s inevitable. One of the hardest things we do in life is try and catch up with how fast it happens.