Welcome to Coach Maria’s Monday Minute. This is your one minute read (with a little thinking thrown in). I’ve been around the sun 48 times so far. As a younger person, I didn’t necessarily recognize what changed over time. There are several birthdays that stand out because strange things happened. For example:
11: I can run kind of fast for short distances - who needs to run longer than a lap around the track?
18: What is this PT stuff that I’m doing? Apparently, people DO run longer than a lap around the track and way faster than I do.
22: I’m going to do daily runs. I’m going to jump out of airplanes. I’m going to ignore the folks that tell me I’m crazy for doing that and that my knees and ankles will hurt later in your life.
30: My entire body composition changed, and not for the better.
34: My entire body composition changed again - definitely for the better and with a lot of help from my coach and trainer and a lot of dedicated, hard work by me.
39: Easy recovery from training, regardless of what I consumed after a long training session. IRONMAN training seemed long, but simple. My body didn’t hurt - except my feet. They felt like cement blocks most mornings.
42: Oh my - IRONMAN training is much tougher. I added in massage, chiropractic care, physical therapy, targeted strength and dialed in nutrition and I still had plenty of aches and pains in recovery. And the statements from the ‘adults’ after my 22nd birthday are now getting some validation. The knees and ankles aren’t what they used to be.
44: My body says middle-aged woman (thankfully, my brain says, “bull”).
48: I have aches and pains - sometimes training is easier, sometimes I wonder why I jumped out of airplanes. Sometimes, also, why do I feel the need to do all of this endurance stuff?
During all these years and changes in my body and how training feels, my mind has adapted and I’m hoping, gotten a bit wiser and smarter.
There are things that I have to do now that I haven’t always had to do. For example, a really good warmup before I run. I’m talking 25 minutes of waking up the joints and feet and legs. The joy in all of this is that I still don’t have to wake up my BRAIN to do the training. It’s happy to get out and exercise and experience the rush of endorphins once I’m moving.
Has your training changed as you’ve aged? Are there any particular moments that stick out - where you realized training changed or there were things that weren’t so easy anymore? Tell me in the comments!