Going for Goals
5 minute read
When I was a child I was a strong swimmer and a decent runner, but as an adolescent, I gave up both. I was an introvert and very self-conscious; I abhorred team sports for fear I’d be the one to miss that vital point, goal or save, and I hated the ‘eye spy’ of secondary school changing rooms – who had boobs, who wore a bra, who undressed freely, who didn’t – so I opted out of PE in fifth year; something I look back on with real sadness. I sat in the library and ‘studied’ instead.
I withdrew from swimming at an even younger age, when my body began to change shape. Dealing with it in private was tough enough; in public, it was too much for the awkward, ill-at-ease younger me to handle. In hindsight, puberty is a little like midlife in that you’re convinced these anxieties are all your own, but, in fact, they’re as commonly felt as paper cuts and period pain.
I started swimming and running again at the age of 40. The decision wasn’t born out of a go-getting, can-do, fabulous-at-40 kind of attitude, it was more like a blindfolded stab at the beginnings of midlife malaise. I was having a difficult time at work, I was sort of involved with somebody but it was going nowhere, and I felt antipathy towards my body. I have always been a great walker, but it was no longer enough to stave off the sluggishness I was beginning to feel and the middle-age spread I knew was ahead.
According to a 2019 survey in the United States, the age when most of the adults interviewed felt they were too old and without time to exercise was just 41. This is understandable to a degree. The early years of midlife can be chaotic – careers peak, earning pressures spike, children are at their most demanding and caring responsibilities extend beyond our own four walls. But in another American 2019 study, it was shown that men and women who began exercising in their 40s and continued into their 60s reduced their risk of death in the following years by about 35%.
But it wasn’t just the health benefits I was after. Midlife is a time of re-evaluation, and there were days when I felt dissatisfied, regretful, fearful and uneasy. At best, would I simply continue this pattern of waking, working and winding down for another 30 years? My life had settled into a permanent shape. It was too routine. It needed punctuation. Maybe this was my midlife crisis of sorts? If it was, I knew neither a younger man or flashier car would fix it. I was looking for a more existential solution than one which money could buy (which was lucky because I didn’t have much of that anyway).
I think I was desperate to feel part of something. I lived alone at that time, and I felt completely alienated from the women I worked with. Yes, I had my family and long-term friends, but we had a well-established pattern in how we spent our time together (dinner and drinks) and as wonderful as they are, I needed fresh faces and new perspectives for this next decade.
I had often driven by the Dun Laoghaire/Blackrock coastline and marvelled at the small community of regular swimmers there. While I’d marvelled at them, I’d never considered joining them, but on the sunny September morning of my 40th birthday, I drove to Seapoint and waded in tentatively alongside them. The welcome was as warm as the water was bitter. Everybody smiled and passed the time of day. There was an easy, unforced camaraderie, which I found fascinating as I’d never seen or spoken to any of these people before. The fact that I was there, part of this collective endeavour to be more and feel more than our 9-5 lives allowed, was enough.
Driving home from that first swim, I felt as awed as Edmund had on discovering Narnia in The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. This was a whole new world, and I’d been accepted. I loved it. That creeping sense of midlife ennui I’d experienced in the weeks before my 40th birthday had been replaced by energy – emotional, mental and physical.
That same year, I began training with a marathon-runner friend of mine. The swimming was wonderful, but it was more about the meditative feeling of being in the water and the sense of community it inspired than actually challenging my body and its strength, and I wanted to push myself. The 19th-century French writer Victor Hugo once said that “Forty is the old age of youth”. I was determined to run 10km before I turned 41. If actress Geena Davis could take up archery at the same age and be a finalist for the American Olympic team two years later, I could surely handle the challenge of a very reasonable 10km.
My friend and I would meet at 6.30 am five days a week at UCD and almost instantly we became part of that secret society of early rising runners. I won’t lie, I felt the smuggest I’ve ever felt in my life as I ran in the dark, nodding nonchalantly to the other members of this cult club – like I belonged – while everyone I knew was probably pressing the snooze button on their alarms.
Running gave me something, though, that sea-swimming hadn’t – goals. With the latter, the hurdle each time is handling the water temperature, but with running, each daily adventure is different and a week’s worth of training has a variety of mini triumphs embedded in it. In a 2018 New York Times article, a fitness trainer who works with middle-aged athletes explained, “When you are young, there are a lot of milestones. But midlife can seem to go on and on...Having goals can break up the monotony of your responsible days and give you little victories.”
Those little victories have had a transformative effect on my mental and emotional health. One of the most difficult things for me about last year was not being well enough to run (I had long Covid). Now, I’m back on the track regularly, often at 7.30 am in my local park, where I once again revel in the feeling of belonging and community that an early morning run can provide. And yes, I still feel smug.
In John Updike’s 1971 novel Rabbit Redux, he wrote, “What you haven’t done by thirty you’re not likely to do.” If this was true, it really would be cause for a midlife crisis. I’ve spoken to many women my age who’ve taken up a new form of exercise since turning 40; that includes everything from tennis and cycling to pole-dancing and pilates. Unlike Geena Davis, neither they nor I am aiming for the Olympics or anything like it.
But we all agree that even small wins in sport can have a big impact on the sometimes monotonous meandering of midlife. And who knows, I may try for a marathon yet. Sixty is the new 30 after all.
Marie Kelly, March 2021
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