WITH LOVE

To my parents,
who taught me everything I never wanted to know.

To my children,
who taught me everything I wished I had known.

To my grandson,
who’s teaching me everything I want him to know.

While cleaning my closet I came upon this photo if my grandmothers [seated]. Musing about how old they were here, and doing some chronological reminiscing, I realized that the one sitting on the left is 50 and the one on the right is 53.

Then I pulled out this picture of myself... age 53 (1996), and it hit me--age is an attitude. It's what you're taught and what you see. It's whatever you think it is.

So how does a nice Jewish girl from Flint, Michigan come to be touting fitness? Believe me, nothing could be further from fitness than the light-a-cigarette-pre-birth-control-get-married-and-have-kids 1950’s that I grew up in. Are you kidding... I didn’t even know I wasn’t fit till I was past forty... and then only after my Father died of cancer and the doctors told me I was in "the high risk group"— because my Mother had also died of cancer. And if that rude awakening hadn’t coincided with my butt sagging to the floor, I might not have gotten it even then.

That’s basically how I got into healthy eating and weight lifting—plus a dozen other fitness trends, along with numerous attempts to quit smoking—to round off the crisis.

Beginning to get fit at forty four years old. Scary.

The first six months my goal was to develop muscle tone, which began to happen, and I loved it. What I didn’t expect from weight lifting, and loved even more, was an experience of inner strength—a kind of gut level confidence that resonates from a body in "better working condition". Weight lifters have talked about this phenomenon for years. It was another awakening—subtle, but no less powerful.

Then came cycling. Forty seven years old.

Cycling started when I stopped by a new store in my neighborhood, called "Spinning", with a neon wheel in the window. I thought it was a weaving store. Uh uh... it was Johnny G.’s first indoor cycling workout. Johnny Goldberg could inspire a worm into endurance training, and I was hooked. Spinning, weight-lifting and hiking became my routine workout. Pretty soon, week-long bike rides were my idea of a great vacation.

Four years later—1994.

Chris Kostman, a racing buddy of Johnny’s and then Director of Team RAAM (Race Across AMerica* ), joined our workout group. Chatting together during a hike, he told me there had never been a 50+ women’s team in RAAM. There had been men’s teams 50+, 60+ and 70+, but no women past forty. "You should think about doing it," he said. "I’m nowhere near that kind of rider, and I’ve never competed in any sport," I told him, thinking he was crazy. "You’re better than you think", he assured me. "If you trained, you could do it. You’d set a world record. I’ll help you." What can I say, my ego had ears. How often can you be first at anything? I’d been looking desperately for something to help me quit smoking, some miraculous force that would motivate me to quit, "stay quit", and not gain weight. This was it. I was in the right place at the right time. I set my sights on RAAM ‘96.

So began my serious training program, the search for a team, and every anxiety imaginable. I had two years to pull this off.

Within a month after joining the USCF (United State Cycling Federation), I received a questionnaire regarding the "The Silver Streak", a newsletter specifically for 50+ women racers. The timing was uncanny. There I am, wondering how the hell I’m going to find three other women to form a team, when suddenly a whole list practically knocks on my door. It was a sign of divine encouragement, because that’s how I met Jo Wichary, Arnie Baker, the San Diego Cyclo-Vets and Carmen Sellers. Especially Carmen. Of the whole list, I called Carmen because she lived the closest—20 miles south.

I’d already realized that almost everything I thought about aging wasn’t true, or should I say, not necessarily true. But Carmen was proof.

On that first call she offered to help me with training routes and invited me to join her riding group. "Let’s see," she said, "you need miles. On Tuesday we do a Santa Monica loop—that should give you 53 miles. Thursdays and Sundays we do Palos Verdes Peninsula and you’ll get a 65 mile round trip. On Saturday there’s a training clinic in Torrance." She added that at this time of year, they ride easy. "Sure, sure. I’ll be there," I sputtered, picking myself up off the floor.

Carmen shocked my consciousness. She was 62 years old, recently retired and proud of it. She raced to win, but loved sports and fitness for the joy of feeling good. She radiated a mix of joie de’vivre and a gutsy "don’t mess with me" attitude. She was the #1 woman racer in her age group in California and a gold medallist in the National Senior Olympics. I was impressed.

For the next year and a half I was under Carmen’s wing. Aside from the millions of little tips she taught me and the value of a new friendship, the intense discipline of training would have been quite another story if I had done it alone.

The immediate effect was "if she can do it, I can do it". A more profound impact emerged during hundreds of hours of riding. I kept thinking about it. Why don’t we see women like this in the media? This view of women past forty, and of aging (the dreaded "a" word) in general, is totally missing in our society. The common images—a frizzle dizzle gray hair granny in a rocking chair, or the Jane Fonda/Cher glamour look— I neither relate nor aspire to. It’s an infuriating situation and I resolved to do something about it when RAAM was over.

The team came together through an article I’d written in "The Silver Streak"—three women from three different states, and sixteen crew members. It was an organizational nightmare. Endurance cyclists say getting to the starting line is harder than getting to the finish line. Maybe so, but the event itself is still a grueling test. And despite everyone saying RAAM ‘96 was the most temperate in years—the California desert was only 100 degrees, the top of Wolf Creek Pass in the Colorado Rockies was not below freezing, and the headwinds in Oklahoma didn’t knock us off our bikes—we didn’t exactly feel lucky when the Tennessee mountains tapered into an all day driving rain on Georgia’s excruciatingly deep rollers for the last 400 miles. Nevertheless, we made it, without serious causalities. On August 11, l996, seven days, seventeen hours, 31 minutes after leaving Huntington Beach, California, exhausted and joyously triumphant, we crossed the finish line in Savannah, Georgia, the first-ever 50+ women’s team to compete in RAAM.

Hallelujah!

When the dust settled, there was a huge letdown. I had to "regroup" my life—which is how I came to be cleaning out my closet!

Seeing the pictures of my grandmothers was the proverbial lightbulb experience. All my mental gyrations crystallized. I felt that anyone seeing this image—the juxtaposition of two generations—would experience the same powerful moment. I started surveying friends, to see if my realization held water. It did. Both men and women were fascinated. Surprisingly, young women were interested in the issue. One of those young women, Stephanie Waisler, age 30, a photographer I’d met at Spinning class, articulated the concern: "we need women like you to inspire us". Another divine intervention. I told her my vision and asked if she’d like to do the photography. Without missing a beat she said yes, and there I was, discussing my philosophy on aging with a 30 year old. Hmmm. I was having the conversation I needed, but the irony was, I wanted to be the kid, not the older person.

I’d been wishing for wisdom in dealing with the outrageous, humiliating, destructive negativity our society has about aging, and there it was—a collaboration confirming that age truly is an attitude.