I still haven’t been on a horse, gone to gym, or done any exercise of note, for the past week. Actually, I have been to gym – to see the physio. And I did spend a while yesterday traipsing all over the farm.
Other than that, I’ve really been extremely good about trying to get my chest better.
Having to spend more time sitting still than I am usually comfortable with, I’ve found things percolating in my brain. Particularly, this 60 = old thing. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m just fighting about getting older – but that hasn’t really bugged me. I mean, when your school kids ask how old you are turning on your birthday and your own kids are present, there is no hope of any cute one-line rejoinder, such as, ‘A lady never reveals her age.’ From very young, my kids have had no problem announcing my age to anyone.
It is, in fact, my birthday on Tuesday. I will be 63. There is something quite poetic about that, I think, as I was born in ’63. Maybe it’s just special to me.
What is definitely sitting and shouting at me in my brain is the thing I saw that a test of being fit when over-60 is if you can get up out of a chair without pushing on the arms.
I have a few questions for whoever thought that was such a wonderful thing to tell someone like me.
- If I am climbing down off a rather large rock and have to navigate a sheer drop of over a metre – onto another, flatter part of the rock, so there is really no danger – is it acceptable to support myself on my arms as I negotiate the drop? Or is that a sign of unfitness?
- When climbing through a barbed wire fence, is it acceptable to hold the wire away from my thighs, bum, back and head? Or is that a sign of being unfit?
- When I get off my horse, is it okay to push on the saddle with my hands as I jump to the ground? Or am I therefore unfit?
Point is: WHAT close to 60-year-old can’t stand up on their own? Ask me when I’m 90, maybe. But, why (again I ask why) is 60 the watershed age?
Being unable to ride takes its toll on my mental health, too. Whatever happens in the hurly-burly humdrum (note the oxymoron! – I am an English teacher, after all) of life, everything just looks better from the back of a horse.
When I’m having a lesson, I forget about things like what I’m teaching the next day, or if my car is going to cost a fortune to fix, or why my knee is being annoying again. I am so busy remembering to hold with my calves and not grip with my knees; to keep my heels down and my weight square in the saddle; to keep control of the horse, but also make sure my hands are soft; and the million and one other things that go into horse riding.
Along with all of that, I am consistently doing mental maths to make sure my circles are the correct size. Andrew, my instructor, tells me to stop over-thinking it and just ride. However, look at it this way: One rides circles in dressage that are generally 10, 15 or 20 metres. (You can also do a 12 metre circle, but for purposes of this discussion, I’m going to conveniently ignore that). Okay, so a dressage arena is divided into sections, which are all labelled with letters (that themselves have no logic, but that’s another story) and these are the markers for the circles. However, the distances between the letters are either 6 or 12 metres. Now, do you understand the need for the mental maths?
In fairness to Andrew, who definitely knows what he is talking about, once I’d done the maths enough times, I can tell the size of the circle by feel. Doing the maths has another effect, though: it stops me thinking about every single little thing the various parts of my body are supposed to be doing and I just ride.
Everything, I suppose, has its advantages and drawbacks!
Maybe that’s how I must view this 60 = old thing. Being over-60 brings with it the annoying advice, platitudes and generally unwanted feedback about how to navigate being older. It also, however, allows me to look at things, take a decision and shift my stride towards where I want to be when I’m big!
Leave a Reply