On the first day of this summer’s vacation in the North Country, I double-knot my running shoes at 6:30 in the morning and set off for Happy Corners, a favorite little restaurant about 20 miles from the Canadian border and three miles from my cabin. I will not be running to earn forgiveness for a pancake. I will not be running as part of a pre-race training regime.
I will run, as I always do these days, to pit myself against my biggest foe — me. Newly 67. This week of physical trials in Pittsburg, NH, is my birthday present. “Just do it” is not a call to action. “Just do it” is a looming question mark 67-year-olds running up steep hills want answered in the affirmative.
And so I commence. The two steep and long hills I ascend and descend pass by forests of intensely fragrant pines, First Connecticut Lake dotted with loons, and the occasional moose or black bear. I live for this. I see, savor and breathe, aiming as I always do, for big hits of pine-steeped euphoria. The rare bear, busy scouting vacant cabins for cans of beans, seems to mind its own business.
Added benefit: Unanticipated beasts meandering out of forests tend to boost the adrenaline rush.
My goal? To accomplish what I’ve always done — three miles in 28 minutes up and down the steepest hills I will ever choose to tackle on a run. This is a modest goal, unremarkable to most runners. Other runners aren’t here, though. It’s me against me, revisiting benchmarks.
I will run, as I always do these days, to pit myself against my biggest foe — me. Newly 67. This week of physical trials in Pittsburg, NH, is my birthday present. “Just do it” is not a call to action. “Just do it” is a looming question mark 67-year-olds running up steep hills want answered in the affirmative.
And so I commence. The two steep and long hills I ascend and descend pass by forests of intensely fragrant pines, First Connecticut Lake dotted with loons, and the occasional moose or black bear. I live for this. I see, savor and breathe, aiming as I always do, for big hits of pine-steeped euphoria. The rare bear, busy scouting vacant cabins for cans of beans, seems to mind its own business.
Added benefit: Unanticipated beasts meandering out of forests tend to boost the adrenaline rush.
My goal? To accomplish what I’ve always done — three miles in 28 minutes up and down the steepest hills I will ever choose to tackle on a run. This is a modest goal, unremarkable to most runners. Other runners aren’t here, though. It’s me against me, revisiting benchmarks.
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I don’t remember my quads hurting before. They do now. Only a little.
Move left. Logging truck speeding this way. Watch out for flying wood chips and big wind. And that blasted air horn. Wow. That crow wants me gone. Jeez. Stop screaming at me. Switchbacks prevent sore knees on the downhill stretches. Do some. Yipes. Used condoms are like banana peels are like wet leaves. Avoid. Breathe… Air this delicious is only here. Crisp and sweet. The hungry snap of a Macoun fresh off the tree. Sensory associations I can taste. Border Patrol again. Haven’t they got anything better to do? “I’m doing it,” as Dad used to say when he approached the gym on his walker and pushed it aside to climb on the recumbent bicycle, “little by little.” His mantra is my mantra. First Connecticut Lake dam: “water descending in thunder” — John Muir, writing about a waterfall in Yosemite. My hero, always. |
Since this race is me against me, my victory lap is solo. It feels glorious. I turn off the road, trot across some grass and the dirt parking lot and I ease to a stop. Catch my breath. Step into Happy Corners, sweaty and pleased. Pancake, please. Coffee, for sure.
Self vs. self means I am bound to past performances that go back decades. After breakfast I return to the cabin, pack a light lunch and some of Pittsburg, N.H.’s, cold, sweet water and climb Mount Magallaway for spectacular views of Maine, Quebec, sometimes even Mount Washington, and Vermont. Another easy walk in the afternoon follows, and then the gin and tonic and all the fresh vegetables collected from farm stands on the trip up. Succulent rewards, all.
I will make other hikes and another run or two this week — all mile markers measuring, not distance, but that illusive tension between fitness and injury, between inhabiting a functioning body and the alternative, the slow and persistent dip toward the inevitable.
Activity equals life. The inevitable is forestalled, at least for today. Happy birthday, Rae.
Self vs. self means I am bound to past performances that go back decades. After breakfast I return to the cabin, pack a light lunch and some of Pittsburg, N.H.’s, cold, sweet water and climb Mount Magallaway for spectacular views of Maine, Quebec, sometimes even Mount Washington, and Vermont. Another easy walk in the afternoon follows, and then the gin and tonic and all the fresh vegetables collected from farm stands on the trip up. Succulent rewards, all.
I will make other hikes and another run or two this week — all mile markers measuring, not distance, but that illusive tension between fitness and injury, between inhabiting a functioning body and the alternative, the slow and persistent dip toward the inevitable.
Activity equals life. The inevitable is forestalled, at least for today. Happy birthday, Rae.
North Country foliage in all its autumnal glory. Photo by the author.
I once saw Atul Gawande talk about aging. As a book reviewer, I look forward to reading his books and telling others about them. I reviewed two — Checklist Manifesto and Being Mortal. He writes for the New Yorker and he’s a Boston surgeon. He makes complicated things like unsterile hospitals, zero infection rates, and care and respect for the aging seem do-able.
Gawande spoke to an interested crowd packed into a second-floor loft space near the Meatpacking District in Chelsea on a cold and icy night. We all risked broken limbs on ice-slicked cobblestones to get there.
He talked with us like he would talk with a colleague — direct, relaxed and connected. He drew a straight horizontal line across a small whiteboard. About halfway across the board the line plunged straight down at a 90 degree angle. This, he said, pointing to the severe angle, is the way we used to age. Our decline was sudden and swift. Now, he said, redrawing the line, many of us experience a different sort of aging, where the angle of decent drops gradually. The gentler the decline, the better the quality of life.
So far my decline is of the gentle variety. Today, then, I am lucky.
I am lucky to be able to exercise. I am lucky I haven’t had to replace body parts yet. I’m lucky I can still afford the expensive New Balance running shoes I need to stabilize my footfalls. Without them, my knees are prone to injury. I am lucky, lucky, lucky.
People I know and love say we are masters of our fates. We get what we deserve, in short. True, I try to behave myself with people, I try to eat organic and I try to exercise but none of these things are going to insure protection from the inevitable bad luck, however it will come to me. As my friend’s doctor once told her, “Today, your complaint is nothing but someday, sadly, it will be something.”
I am a baby boomer. I belong to a tribe of go-getting, control-oriented over-achievers who expect a little fun along the way. I, too, strive for a full and active life. I tend to keep on truckin’ because it’s more than a sentiment, more than a comic strip. It’s a way of life. To prevail, I establish no line of demarcation between young and old. I do what I always do, unaware of how I must appear to others who see me as old, who shoot me a patronizing thumbs up as I jog up the hills.
I understand completely. If I spent a lot of time looking in the mirror, I’d probably succumb to the obvious, that I’m old and shouldn’t be wearing shorts or strapping on my excellent iWatch or working my way up Fourth Lake where, yesterday, a woman fell and had to be carted off by a rescue team.
Three years ago I crashed my bike and broke my right, dominant hand. A man at a party greeted me with, “What is a 60-year-old doing riding a bike?” I was stunned and hurt, as if I was being told to settle down and pull up a recliner.
People’s attitudes about those of us who are actively aging can hurt. My husband’s 30-year-old daughter called me “spry” this summer and I balked. Spry is code for old and dotty. When applied to baby boomers, such words ignite a firestorm.
Senior sex? Most people’s reactions go like this — “Eeewwwww.” My friend Joan Price, senior sexpert with a number of books on the subject to her credit, calls it “the yuck factor.”
Maybe that’s why God made old people deaf. They don’t have to hear “eewww” and “yuck” and “spry” applied to their lively physical activities.
Running is a significant part of a holistic approach to well-being — a balance involving body, brain and psyche. Balance is complicated, with many parts. When you’re younger, balance comes naturally. As I age, however, oversight of balance is almost more than my brain’s frontal lobe, where the task manager resides and ages with the rest of me, can manage. Perhaps we lose our balance when our brains tire of keeping it all straight.
I ask those I respect for advice about fitness. My gynecologist, upon retiring, gave me some parting wisdom:
“Pay attention to your joints.”
I checked in with Steve, a man who cycles with a fat-tired, one-speed bike on those steep Pittsburg logging roads.
“Weight training. That’s the fountain of youth, Rae. Lift those weights.”
Joints, muscles, vitamin D, where does it end?
Hey. Need I say?
At 67 every run or speed walk ends with a “thank you.” My gratitude is real, fed by gorgeous runs along Manhattan’s High Line, the Hudson River, Gloucester’s Good Harbor Beach, and Rockport’s woods and shore roads. Nature and fresh air are significant integers in this fine-tuned equation that equals “upright.” Most of my cardio-vascular trials are outdoors, in all kinds of weather. A sustained rapid heart rate in fresh air calms my psyche, boosts creativity, clears cognition and polishes my humanity. I am a happier person when I get back home.
The first time I tore my meniscus — I stepped on a rock while running — Dr. Smith said: “I advise you to get aggressive about treating this injury.” My knee looked like a balloon and I could hardly walk. “See this surgeon. I know how important running is to you.”
It’s not a stretch to say I smile because I run. I love better because I run. Probably, I run because I run. Tricky business, a 67-year-old who needs her exercise. I might as well stick in the moment where the hills aren’t too steep and the pancakes taste real good.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Gawande spoke to an interested crowd packed into a second-floor loft space near the Meatpacking District in Chelsea on a cold and icy night. We all risked broken limbs on ice-slicked cobblestones to get there.
He talked with us like he would talk with a colleague — direct, relaxed and connected. He drew a straight horizontal line across a small whiteboard. About halfway across the board the line plunged straight down at a 90 degree angle. This, he said, pointing to the severe angle, is the way we used to age. Our decline was sudden and swift. Now, he said, redrawing the line, many of us experience a different sort of aging, where the angle of decent drops gradually. The gentler the decline, the better the quality of life.
So far my decline is of the gentle variety. Today, then, I am lucky.
I am lucky to be able to exercise. I am lucky I haven’t had to replace body parts yet. I’m lucky I can still afford the expensive New Balance running shoes I need to stabilize my footfalls. Without them, my knees are prone to injury. I am lucky, lucky, lucky.
People I know and love say we are masters of our fates. We get what we deserve, in short. True, I try to behave myself with people, I try to eat organic and I try to exercise but none of these things are going to insure protection from the inevitable bad luck, however it will come to me. As my friend’s doctor once told her, “Today, your complaint is nothing but someday, sadly, it will be something.”
I am a baby boomer. I belong to a tribe of go-getting, control-oriented over-achievers who expect a little fun along the way. I, too, strive for a full and active life. I tend to keep on truckin’ because it’s more than a sentiment, more than a comic strip. It’s a way of life. To prevail, I establish no line of demarcation between young and old. I do what I always do, unaware of how I must appear to others who see me as old, who shoot me a patronizing thumbs up as I jog up the hills.
I understand completely. If I spent a lot of time looking in the mirror, I’d probably succumb to the obvious, that I’m old and shouldn’t be wearing shorts or strapping on my excellent iWatch or working my way up Fourth Lake where, yesterday, a woman fell and had to be carted off by a rescue team.
Three years ago I crashed my bike and broke my right, dominant hand. A man at a party greeted me with, “What is a 60-year-old doing riding a bike?” I was stunned and hurt, as if I was being told to settle down and pull up a recliner.
People’s attitudes about those of us who are actively aging can hurt. My husband’s 30-year-old daughter called me “spry” this summer and I balked. Spry is code for old and dotty. When applied to baby boomers, such words ignite a firestorm.
Senior sex? Most people’s reactions go like this — “Eeewwwww.” My friend Joan Price, senior sexpert with a number of books on the subject to her credit, calls it “the yuck factor.”
Maybe that’s why God made old people deaf. They don’t have to hear “eewww” and “yuck” and “spry” applied to their lively physical activities.
Running is a significant part of a holistic approach to well-being — a balance involving body, brain and psyche. Balance is complicated, with many parts. When you’re younger, balance comes naturally. As I age, however, oversight of balance is almost more than my brain’s frontal lobe, where the task manager resides and ages with the rest of me, can manage. Perhaps we lose our balance when our brains tire of keeping it all straight.
I ask those I respect for advice about fitness. My gynecologist, upon retiring, gave me some parting wisdom:
“Pay attention to your joints.”
I checked in with Steve, a man who cycles with a fat-tired, one-speed bike on those steep Pittsburg logging roads.
“Weight training. That’s the fountain of youth, Rae. Lift those weights.”
Joints, muscles, vitamin D, where does it end?
Hey. Need I say?
At 67 every run or speed walk ends with a “thank you.” My gratitude is real, fed by gorgeous runs along Manhattan’s High Line, the Hudson River, Gloucester’s Good Harbor Beach, and Rockport’s woods and shore roads. Nature and fresh air are significant integers in this fine-tuned equation that equals “upright.” Most of my cardio-vascular trials are outdoors, in all kinds of weather. A sustained rapid heart rate in fresh air calms my psyche, boosts creativity, clears cognition and polishes my humanity. I am a happier person when I get back home.
The first time I tore my meniscus — I stepped on a rock while running — Dr. Smith said: “I advise you to get aggressive about treating this injury.” My knee looked like a balloon and I could hardly walk. “See this surgeon. I know how important running is to you.”
It’s not a stretch to say I smile because I run. I love better because I run. Probably, I run because I run. Tricky business, a 67-year-old who needs her exercise. I might as well stick in the moment where the hills aren’t too steep and the pancakes taste real good.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Header art by T. Guzzio. Original photo by the author.
CONNECT WITH RAE:
The author's post-hike gin and tonic. Because.
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Rae Padilla Francoeur published Free Fall: A Late-in-Life Love Affair with Seal Press. She publishes fiction and nonfiction, and works as a journalist and book reviewer. Her weekly book reviews run in GateHouse Media papers around the country. Rae is creative director in her arts/tourism marketing business New Arts Collaborative. She was creative services director at the Peabody Essex Museum and editorial manager at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She started her writing career as a journalist. Later she managed several magazines and the Sunday Portsmouth Herald. Learn more about Rae and her work at her blog, and at her website. Rae splits her time between Rockport, Massachusetts and Manhattan.
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