In late January, I volunteered at the Manhattan half-marathon handing out Gatorade on the coldest day of the year to runners as they crossed the finish line. This was an interesting experience on many levels, but the one I'm going to focus on today was watching people cross the finish line. Runner's had 3 hours to cross the finish line, but the winner crossed it a little after an hour in to the race. This 17 year old kid had just run 13.1 miles in a little over an hour and was hardly out of breath. And this trend seemed to continue through the elite runners, it wasn't until we crossed the 2 hour threshold that people really and truly looked tired. And considering I look spent about 5 minutes into a run this hardly seemed fair. :)
However, watching this actually has been the start of me noticing a huge mental hangup that I've had going on. When I started exercising even though I'd already lost about 40 pounds, I was still about 60 pounds away from a healthy weight and I was very out of shape. I have been out of shape most of my life. It has been a constant state of being in my life. There are a lot of reasons for that but that's not today's topic. :) Today's topic is about the feeling that I've never crossed a threshold from out of shape to in shape.
It will run kind of long so feel free to break up the reading. :)
I got a Groupon about this time last year for a boot camp in NYC that met 3 days/week for 3 weeks. It said all the nice things about how it was for all fitness levels and that everybody worked to their own ability. I got on the train to the city to get to boot camp having to get on the train back to get ready for work and then come back to the city for work. The very first day was about the hardest thing I can remember physically doing. Between the push ups and the running and the bear crawls, I had never felt as low as I did at the end of that first session. And for all the various fitness level propaganda on the website, the vast majority of people in that group were very fit and doing this as cross training for other athletic endeavors. The true pain of it set in the next day when my cat Buddha jumped on my shoulder right before my alarm went off. Every pain receptor in my body went off, and then I tried to turn my alarm clock off and couldn't get my arm to reach over between the soreness and stiffness. I some how made it to work and some how had enough determination to make in through the entire 3 weeks.
I then joined JCF Boot camp because it was in Jersey City so no extra commuting necessary, was much more affordable and the pictures on the website actually had women of all shapes and sizes on it. It turned out to be a much better fit for me, but it wasn't by any means easy. I actually signed up to go to it 5 days/week! I couldn't complete warm up runs without walking and I remember when the instructor had to take a picture of me attempting to do a push up to explain all the things I was doing wrong. And I slowly got better. By September, I was feeling how far I'd come and was now running multiple laps at the park and doing push ups and squats at least a little bit more correctly.
However, I still haven't been thinking of myself as in shape. I have a mental hang up that if I'm in shape, exercise will get easy. I seem to have it in my head that because I still breath hard, I still sweat, and my muscles still burn when I do things that its because I'm still out of shape. I feel like I should look like that 17 year old kid, cool as a cucumber after having run a whole lot of really fast miles. I have worked out at least 5 days/week often more since last May; when I got asked the other day if I exercise regularly I had to say hell yes! But am I "in shape"?
I joined a brand new gym in November. My gym is awesome in that it offers lots of fitness classes including a ton of Group Cycling (aka Spin) classes and even has a pool. I was afraid to try a cycling class until very recently because I have always associated them with the super fit. It wasn't a good fit for somebody trying to get in shape I've told myself, it would be too hard, I would embarrass myself etc. Similar thoughts go through my mind each time I do a race. Even though I know there are walkers who do the races and that all ages and shapes do races, I feel certain that someone will call me out as a fraud for being there. I am sure that I will be last and it will be embarrassing. None of this has ever happened and yet I still feel this way minutes before every race starts.
But the good news, I have started having mini breakthroughs and if you're reading this and nodding along at some of the feelings I hope you can too! I have now gone to 6 spin classes at my gym and been the only person in class twice. I can do it, but it IS hard! However, today during class I wore a heart rate monitor. During a particularly intense time I looked down to see that my heart rate was about 181, that is above 90% of my max heart rate. I had news for myself in that moment, doing something that got me to 90% of my max heart rate is going to be hard! My heart is going to be working hard, and I will be out of breath. Its okay that my muscles hurt! They won't get stronger if they don't! And the effort I was having to put into getting my heart rate that high was much higher than it would have been 9-10 months ago. Heck even 3 months ago. Not that long ago, doing the warm up would have gotten my heart rate that high and I wouldn't have made it to the 45th minute of class hitting each rpm target before I took my heart rate to that level.
Stepping away from boot camp has actually greatly helped me with the realization that I can be in shape and still find exercise hard. I have got to boot camp twice this week, a far step down from the 5 days/week I have been doing. I have never felt so good at boot camp! I feel like I can work harder and stronger because I'm doing other things and not pounding my muscles in a similar way each day. I started boot camp when I was fat and out of shape, but I can't continue to associate the fat Francesca with boot camp. Being sore is not because I'm out of shape, its because I worked hard! I have to start associating the fit Francesca with all things I take on!
And while exercise is hard, being fit is the reward! I walk up the escalators/stairs at the train stations around the city with ease now. I walk to/from the train much faster, I know you're jealous I've found a way to cut down my commute time! :) I can keep up with just about anyone now. In fact this morning after spin I honestly thought that I can't wait to take my 8-year old second cousin out on the paddle boats again because after all these spin lessons, I'm going to have her going crazy fast!
So if you're reason for not exercising is that it's hard, you're right! But the rewards are worth it and I've actually come to look forward to exercising. (and I haven't even talked about how great my clothes fit!) It will take more effort to make it hard as you get more fit, but I am making my peace with the fact that it should never get easy.
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