You Go Girl(s)!

I’m not sure if there is some sort of agist tunnel vision or something, but lately it seems that all the women I see around me are in their late thirties, early forties or, maybe even not so early forties. I could chalk it up to the fact that most of the time since I run into other women at the Gaffer’s summer programmes that it stands to reason that most of us are in the same age category, but it is also happening quite a bit when I am out on my own, especially when I am exercising.

I am rather spoiled in that I am spending the month at my family’s summer cottage in southern Northern Ontario (true Northern Ontarians get offended when you refer to anything south of North Bay as north). I have dedicated the month to me. I figure a more relaxed, healthier me can only benefit everyone around me. I am finally taking to heart that analogy of a mom’s life like the oxygen mask in those pre-flight safety videos. It always reminds the passengers to put on their masks first so they will be able to help others. as part of my commitment to taking better care of myself, I have started running more.

I am out on the cottage roads 4 times a week, usually first thing in the morning, which is closer to 9 in the summer than the 6 am of the rest of the year. The first couple of weeks all I saw was pavement as I huffed and puffed and stared down at the tar melting under my feet. But last week I started to lift my head and actually smile and some of the other runners passing me by. That’s when I noticed that most of them were women…and most of them were of a certain age. Now one could argue that there are more women in cottage country during the week than men and that would explain everything, but I would then have to tell you that on the weekend, the numbers where higher, but the gender the same. Panting and sweating alongside me, on their bikes or feet, most of my compatriots tackling the not so rolling hills of the Canadian Shield also shared the requisite sports bra and wagging pony tails under the sun  hat.

We are of all shapes and sizes out on the hot dusty road and it seems like whenever I am lagging the exercise gods send another woman by to re-energize me and remind me that I need to keep up my end of the balance. Sunday was an especially great day for me and my new found discovery.  I had the best run I have had in over a year. I ran 10k, very slowly, to the marina where Mr. Husband picked me up in the boat. Later we went for a daylong boat trip and it seemed that every boat we passed had a woman, a real woman, in a bikini top. There were a few rolls exposed and some saggy underarms kept waving long after the flick of the wrist had stopped, but my fellow mamas were out in their glory.

In the late afternoon we stopped for a snack at a lakeside cafe on the edge of a golf course where quite a few women were having drinks at the bar. To my untrained eye, it seemed like some of them may have had some help maintaining their figures at some point or another but I was still pleased to see one woman in a bikini top and shorts low enough to reveal an old-fashioned c-section scar.

The one thing I did notice that most of these women had in common was an aura of confidence. They seemed comfortable in what they were wearing. They all had an energy around them, even the ones running uphill. They make this 40-something club one worth joining.