Old fart, fine, but please not old FAT fart

Around the time that I stepped into my forties, I passively reverted to my genetic destiny of being a sedentary knitter, descended from thousands of years of Nordic fishermen who sat around mending nets, accumulating body fat while they waited for the sea ice to melt. Of course I still love to drop an offhand mention of my former status as a TRIATHLETE who RACED in TRIATHLONS and actually COMPLETED SEVERAL. (I think I did six.) But the last one was in 2004. And now I think my fitness level, specifically my lack of one, is my biggest current obstacle as I face the debilitating rigors of medical school, six short months from now.

If you've known me a while, you might remember what I was like in 2002, after my first fiance dumped me, when I got all thin, and I could run for miles, and I bought a bunch of small trampy clothes that showed off my tiny little newly-detectable waist.

I could sum that year up quite succinctly for those of you who missed it:

"Why aren't you talking about how great I look?"

My outsides looked all fabulous:

But my insides didn't. Kind of like this:
I was a total nutjob. For months the only food I could eat was my mother's cooking. Pretty soon I'd found myself a rebound fiance, I was on heavy antidpressants, and I got good & crazy. There are about a hundred women who kept me sober that year, who had to put up with me constantly talking about how thin I was and how great it was to be thin and how in love I was with whatever total disaster of a guy I was currently stalking on match.com.

(It's depressing to recall this, but I look forward to not being flummoxed by, and potentially being somewhat helpful to, my future patients who have fallen into a hole and don't know how to get out.)

Back to fitness and how I might need to have some pretty soon: I've been riding my bike. I recently became obsessed with the possibility of doing some bicycle camping. I'd like to try it, and I'd like it to not suck because I'm huge and weak. So I got on my bike a couple weeks ago and found out I can't really go very far. Got back on the bike a couple days later and went twice as far. I'm not wanting to jinx this by talking about it, but today I did about 25 miles. I went in search of hills. I can still climb like I always could - relentlessly - but I don't have the hand or arm strength to go downhill fast yet. Having gotten outside on my bike today feels fantastic.

What I've never known how to do is just want to do a thing and enjoy doing the thing while I'm doing it, no big deal. I'm not wired to be all stable and rational like that. I'm much more likely to get obsessed with an activity, buy expensive equipment for it, talk about it to everybody I meet, become an expert on its finer points, and then lose interest before I ever even try it. I know how to redefine myself and identify as a cyclist, but not really how to just like riding my bike. I exhaust myself.

But I'm trying stuff differently lately. My insides look more like this lately. And I'm getting out there a lot, trying to JUST RIDE my damned bike.