THE ECO CHALLENGE IS NOT MAKING THE LIST

Tuesday

Chris and I were still living in that weird house apartment in Chickasha when we discovered the Eco Challenge. We were instantly hooked and watched it every year as long as it was aired on TV. Over the years, we became attached to various team members. We had our favorites that would return every year and if one didn’t show up we would worry about them. We were captivated by their stories and the reasons for doing this grueling challenge. One year, we rooted for Team Couch Potato, an American team made up of four out of shape and inexperienced racers. They had all watched previous races and just decided to give it a try. We cheered every time they made a check point minutes before the cutoff time. In 2000, the race was in Borneo. That race ended up being the most brutal of races. We cried as we watched as some of our favorite racers had to give up due to injuries and I roared as Robyn Benincasa led her team to victory that year.

I sat on the couch and cried my way through the entire Fiji 2019 race on Sunday. Amazon has re-booted the Eco Challenge with Bear Grylls as the host. There were new teams and new stories, but some of the old teams were back too. Those were the stories that reached into my heart and squeezed the hardest. Many of those older racers where now doing this race with their grown children and the pride and joy in the voices of the older racers as they talked about how much it means to them to be back and doing this race with their kids, filled me up. The story of Mark Macy and his son wrecked me. Mark Macy has been adventure racing his entire life. We watched him race in Australia, Argentina, and the wretched Borneo race. Mark Macy had planned to run Fiji 2019 with the same group he’d done all of those other races with, but a year before the race, he was diagnosed with Alzheimers. Mark’s son had planned to run the race on his own team, but after his dad’s diagnosis, they decided to do the race together. It was awe inspiring but brutal. Alzheimers not only takes away memory. It also messes with balance and even a tight rope walker would have struggled with their balance in this environment. There came a moment during the race when they had to decide to call it. Watching Mark Macy struggle with the decision to quit was gut wrenching. He looked at the camera and said “If I’m not adventure racing, I don’t know who I am.” Just typing that brought me to tears.

Every year when Chris and I would watch the Eco Challenge, we would talk about what it would be like to do that race. Could we get ourselves in shape enough to complete the Eco Challenge? I mean, we couldn’t do any worse than Team Couch Potato. As I watched the Fiji race, I found myself contemplating that same question once again. That evening, Michael and I went on a short bike ride. I struggled to keep up with him and I kept reminding myself that our bikes are different. His was made for speed. Mine was made for tooling. Still, it was disheartening. Forget the Eco Challenge. I need to get myself fit enough to not struggle on a simple bike ride. I can do that and really, I could probably get myself fit enough for the Eco Challenge. In fact, I want to get myself fit enough for those things, but I don’t actually want to do the challenge. Fiji did a number on those racers’ bodies. Injuries, infections, running on little sleep. Mud so thick, it clogged up mountain bike wheels. One section of the race put everyone in danger of hypothermia. None of that sounds appealing to me. The next Eco Challenge is in Patagonia and the altitude alone is probably going to kill some people.

That’s why the Eco Challenge is not making my Life List. The idea of that kind of torture does not spark any kind of joy. Though, I will tell you that number 23 is ‘slow dance with Andrew Bird’. So I better start training now for that one.

PRIMA DONA

Prima dona

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The only bit of exercise that I have managed to be consistent with during this time of isolation has been yoga. My yoga practice has morphed into a beast of a practice. My teacher training is in Samatva yoga. Samatva is sanskrit for balance and the idea is that your yoga practice should be a balance to your daily life. Ooh boy have I ever taken this to heart. My daily life has become one of sitting at my desk in front of a computer all day. As a result, my yoga practice is all moving parts with many many rounds of sun salutations. I incorporate some mindful, isolated movements to transition between poses. My favorite sequence is one that has me flowing from a standing split to a squatting balance pose that looks like a Russian dance move. From there I move to my sit bones and roll down to my back. Then I roll up back into the Russian dance move and then back up into standing splits. I high-five myself every time I manage to do this sequence with smooth transitions.

With the exception of an occasional dog walk, I have not been doing any kind of cardio type exercises. I used to spend thirty minutes on an elliptical machine or a treadmill at least three times a week. Twice a week I attended a class that incorporated cardio with strength training. Every day I would walk the whole building and the outside before getting my first cup of coffee. I got at least 10,000 steps in a day and always took the stairs. Now, the only time I’m taking stairs is to the basement to do laundry. I kind of let the whole idea of doing a cardio exercise slide while we were building our retaining wall. Digging and hauling dirt is a cardio strength class all on it’s own, but the wall is done and I’m still sitting on my ass most of a day. The dog walks have become inconsistent due to weather and meetings and I have even stopped pacing around the house. I have to do something before my heart seizes in my chest.

Since advertisers now have the ability to read your mind, I kept seeing an ad for a streaming fitness channel that offers an Xtend Barre class (as well as ads for onesies because they know I have a thing for them). Every day I would see this perky blond woman, cheerfully doing ballet inspired exercises and it completely sucked me in. It doesn’t really require equipment and I don’t have to wear shoes. There’s a cardio aspect and most of the classes are thirty minutes. Plus, I can pretend to be a ballerina. One thing I noticed was that this class doesn’t require a large space. I can probably do these exercises in my cubicle. This is important because when I go back to work, things are going to be a lot different. The gym will probably stay closed and I will be restricted to my floor. No moving between floors or running up and down stairs. I can still walk outside but again, this is limited by weather. I had been considering signing up for Disney+, but decided that my $8 a month would be better spent on a channel that encourages me to adapt to the changing landscape. There are fitness classes other than Barre that Michael can do or would be willing to do, so we can all benefit here.

So, every morning for the last two weeks, I get up and do thirty minutes of Xtend Barre, a mix of ballet with light weights. I do not have a chair that is tall enough to be my barre. Instead I use the heavy tamper we purchased for the wall construction. If I need to prop my foot up on a barre, I use the TV credenza. The women on the screen are all using one or two pound weights. All I have are five and ten pounders. I use the fives until my arms feel like their going to burst into flames and then I set the weights aside and just move my arms around. Sometimes in the middle of my hundredth pleat, I start to have flashbacks to my days in dance class. I am no more gracefully suited to the ballet barre today than I was at age three, but I persist. I do feel like my thighs and arms are getting stronger and if I use the wide angle lens when I take a selfie, my legs look really slim. The other thing that I really like about this class is the diversity of women taking the class in each video. There are all shapes, sizes, colors, and fitness levels represented, which is so not often the case in workout videos or gyms or yoga studios. This diversity creates a more welcoming environment and makes it easier to show up to class.

I may not be the Prima Dona on the stage, but I think I could probably bench press the Prima Dona. And I did go ahead and sign us up for Disney+.

I THINK I'M BREAKING UP WITH MY FITNESS TRACKER

Rushing

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It started with a button falling off on my Up band. Not my pants. First, the button that lets me switch between modes fell off and then the band had trouble syncing to my phone. For the last few months I've just been arguing with my fitness tracker over the number of steps I've taken in a day. I'd look at my Up app on my phone and see that it had only tracked me at five thousand steps for the day. I'd literally yell "...the fuck!?" at the screen because I knew that I had walked so many more steps than that. There was no way that all those loops outside, thirty minutes of treadmill time and the evening dog walk came out to a measly five thousand and something steps. All of that is at least a sixteen thousand step kind of day. 

So I got mad and I stayed mad at the Up band, at myself, and at the injustice of all those lost steps I wasn't getting credit for. Which is ridiculous. The whole point of that particular fitness tracker was for me to track my movement without becoming obsessed with tracking my movement. Then I got obsessed with tracking my movement. Oh, I tried to pretend on those days when I'd only done about eleven thousands steps that this was good, this was enough, but really I was always a little disappointed in myself for walking only eleven thousand steps. My fitness tracker just became yet another thing that made me feel inadequate. What's worse, is that the whole time I was tracking my steps and my sleep and sometimes my food, I wasn't losing any weight. I weigh the same as I did when I started. 

A few weeks ago I was having one of those days where I felt skinny. I would catch my reflection in a window and shake my head while thinking "damn, girl! you look T.H.I.N." Maybe I did and maybe I didn't. The point is I felt good about myself. That was also the same day I had a doctor's appointment to see if my cholesterol medicine was working. The first thing they made me do when I got there was to stand on the scale. At first I was really excited to stand on that scale, until I did. The scale said 175 and I shouted "you're a fucking liar, Scale!" Except I didn't really shout that out loud because then my doctor would have probably started prescribing me even more meds. But that's when it hit me. I had gotten caught up in numbers instead of just being. 

I don't need to track my daily activity. I stand the same amount of time as I sit during the day. I walk. I get on my yoga mat daily. My meals require me to chop up fresh vegetables and cook them. The most my can opener has been used this week is to open a can of black beans. I don't need a $100 bracelet to keep me accountable. I'm pretty good at doing that on my own. I'm pretty good at being my own worst judgmental critic too. The Up band was like that one mean judgmental girlfriend you had in high school. She'd say terrible catty things about others and you knew it was wrong, but you stayed friends with her because you were afraid she'd be mean to you if you didn't. I didn't really have that kind of friend in high school because I was good at politics and I don't see why I need that kind of so called friend now.

Sorry, but not sorry Up band.