A Decade Examined - Part 8

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash

February 28, 2025

By far the most significant event in my life between the spring of 2021 and the following spring happened as a result of a trip I took in the fall to visit my Dear Son M, in Flagstaff, and my Dear Daughter R, in Los Angeles. Of course, visiting the kids was significant in itself: I got to spend several days with each of them, tag along for parts of their daily lives, meet some of their friends, have long talks over lattes or pizza, and at the end of the time celebrate R’s birthday.

What turned out to be the life-changing event seemed ordinary at the time. R offered to take me to a Pure Barre class, an exercise regimen she’d been doing lately. I eagerly accepted. I wrote a blog post about that first class, which I’ll quote a bit:

I first encountered Pure Barre in some of R’s Instagram posts. I recognized the term “barre” from ballet, and photos showed a barre in a classroom, but what the people were doing looked more like strength training than dance. …

My memory of that first class is a blur: friendly, encouraging teacher, mysterious equipment, watching R and trying to mirror her, lots of strength work and aerobics, too. I left the class feeling energized and eager to check out my local Pure Barre studio.

I’d known for some time that I needed to build muscle strength in addition to my running. Strength training becomes more important as we get older and lose muscle mass and bone density. But before I would do the work, I had to find a way that would work for me.

During the pandemic lockdown I was doing some lifting with light hand weights, using an app for guidance, but I did this for only 5 to 10 minutes a couple of times per week. That’s because the work was boring as well as hard, and I wasn’t sure what I was doing or whether it was doing me any good.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

1960s fitness

A little background: In 1961, the year I entered first grade, President Kennedy declared physical fitness to be a national priority and urged all schools to develop fitness programs. These were being rolled out during my school years by enthusiastic P.E. teachers, to the acclaim of energetic kids, except me. My family had modeled no interest in sports or any outdoor activities, and I followed their example.

The new fitness programs included units each year for what in those days passed for strength training. We practiced sit-ups, though the form we were taught was rather primitive—you rolled up by exerting a bit of muscle control and letting the momentum carry your body the rest of the way.

Every spring we played softball, followed by track and field. I had no talent for sports, no strength or speed, and no desire to develop those virtues. I was the last to be chosen for any team, not chosen actually, just the losing straw for the unfortunate grade-school captain who had to take me.

The track and field unit was similarly not fun because of the emphasis on speed and strength. However, there was one event in which I came in not dead last, and that was the long run, called the “600-yard dash.” That’s only about a third of a mile, but the kids who sped through the sprint distances struggled with the long run, while I ran it at a decent pace without suffering much. It was the first hint of my future as an endurance athlete.

Photo by Marea Wellness on Unsplash

Another bright spot came with middle school P.E., a unit of “movement education,” which involved stretching and some dance-like moves. There was also a unit of modern dance, which I loved. Before this, the P.E. teacher’s instructions made no sense to me. The assumption seemed to be, for instance, that I just had to throw a ball hard and it would go far, and if that didn’t happen it was because there was something wrong with me. But with movement and dance, the teacher told me what to do with my body in a way that I could understand and follow.

I had a similar experience taking my first yoga class, around 2008. The teacher gave continuous, precise instructions, which made me feel safe and cared for, and the poses challenged my strength, which felt worthwhile.

So, it made sense that Pure Barre became my workout space and community. Described as “a fusion of Pilates, yoga, and ballet,” the 50-minute classes gave me detailed instructions plus the encouragement I needed. When I joined my local studio in October 2021, I was running every day and no longer enjoying it. Over the next several months I shifted most of my exercise time to Pure Barre plus walking, which made me happier as well as stronger, with greater flexibility, balance, and energy.