HEALTH & FITNESS

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough — Peak Performing Women

by Jennifer Raiser

Back in the day when an Amazon was a mythical female warrior and not a box filled with sedentary pastimes, women were expected to attend mass, not develop it in their muscles. Since then we’ve certainly improved our expectations of female athletic prowess, but have made less progress in getting ourselves up and at ’em.

Sure, FloJo could run 100 meters in 10.49 seconds, the Stanford Women’s Basketball team knocks our tube socks off, but what about the rest of us, the underachieving Amazons? The normal women with normal bodies and normal time constraints…and normal reasons why we might be more likely to run 100 meters in 10.49 minutes? How do we incorporate some form of regular physical activity into our lives and learn to love it? How do we find our inner mythical warrior?

To gain some insight (and lose some body mass), we tracked down a group of remarkable female athletes ranging from 30-something to 70-something who started out just like us. Normal, overscheduled, under-motivated women who had somehow found their way to peak physical performance. And we learned that they weren’t always motivated or particularly physically gifted. In each case, they were smart and determined and strategic about their life goals, and fitness became a result of seeking those goals. And they shared a common perspective about doing a little each day to stay on track.

Arlene Blum, 63, has made a career out of encouraging people to climb mountains. (This in addition to her career as a noted biochemist working to ban toxic chemicals that enter the bloodstream.) The East Bay resiident and leader of the famous all-female expedition to Annapurna I, widely considered one of the world’s most diffiuclt mountains, and author of two widely appreciated books, Breaking Trail and Annapurna, A Woman’s Place, Blum is candid about her challenging childhood and personal struggles with self-doubt and leadership.

Self-described as “a cautious woman from the Midwest who was out of shape, overweight, not very adventurous,” Blum says she was “very unlikely to be considered a success” in mountain climbing. Attributing her accomplishments to determination rather than ability, she says the most important decision to make is to focus your mind. “Figure out something you want to achieve,” she says. “Then find someone who wants to do it with you. There’s nothing like social pressure to make you keep a promise.”

And Blum insists that exercise has to be fun to be sustainable. “If it’s a burden or a discipline you’re not likely to stick with it. I don’t like exercising indoors and I’m a very social person, so I do steep hilly walks with friends every day.” Her advice for the physically reluctant? “Make fitness a priority every day: for health, to be outdoors, to be happy. It’s much more than just body conditioning.”

Yoga teacher Margaret Kramer belies her decades with a degree of physical flexibility that would be astounding for an 18 year old, much less a gorgeous grandmother. As a young bride with a busy household of five children, Kramer was too busy, and athletic endeavors were not considered ladylike in her native Germany. Taking up yoga in her mid-30s, Kramer discovered a practice that was not traditionally considered a sport, but resonated as something she felt she could do with consistency.

A few decades later, Kramer has an avid following of Iyengar yoga students on the Peninsula, some of whom have studied with her for years, many of whom are just beginners. Kramer often teaches with her friend Lilias Folan, whose new book Yoga Gets Better With Age is mindful of the older body. Students of all ages cite Kramer’s consistently gentle enthusiasm as remarkable as her ability to still do the splits, something she didn’t achieve until her 40s. She believes in repetitive building of the practice without force or strain. Breathing, she emphasizes, is the basis of all exercise. “Be in tune with your breath. Learn to feel and sense. Challenge yourself, but do not hurt yourself. Little by little,” she says, ”You’ll get there.”

From her current perch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Roz Savage understands the notion of “little by little” all too well. At age 40 she is rowing to Hawaii, the first leg of what she hopes will be the first woman’s solo row of the Pacific, 7,268 statute miles from San Francisco to Australia. Savage is first woman to complete the Atlantic Rowing Race alone, over 103 challenging days, during which she broke all four oars and lost her camping stove, stereo, navigation equipment and satellite phone, but not her sense of humor.

She’s won a dedicated desktop following with the warm, funny, self-aware blog that she updates regularly from her solar-powered, 24-foot rowing vessel, The Brocade. Savage is eager to use her voyage to publicize the plight of the oceans, and to “show what an ordinary person can do.” A self-described “salary slave,” with a comfortable financial job in London until her mid-30s, Savage had a conventionally successful life and a strong sense that it wasn’t enough.

“I thought of the obituaries that I’d enjoyed of people I had admired. They were people who had tried lots of things, some of them spectacular failures, but at least they’d had the guts to try. I realized if I repeated today’s actions 365 times, I wouldn’t be where I wanted to be in a year — or in 10 years, or at the end of my life.”

Savage divested herself of things that were weighing her down, and, confronting her own significant reluctance, decided she’d attempt to be the first woman to row solo around the world. Her ability to cope with punishing conditions, significant setbacks, isolation and fear provide a magnifying mirror to our own familiar litany of excuses. “The ocean is scary and…most of the time I want(ed) to give up.”

A tough wind can erode miles of Savage’s progress overnight, setting her off course or pushing her back to a previous day’s position. But Savage is determined to find the positive in every situation, even if the day’s accomplishments are reduced to appreciating fresh water to drink, a friendly encounter with a seal or learning something new from the audio-books that help her pass 12 hours of rowing each day. Savage has come to understand that making progress is a matter of adopting positive habits and jettisoning negative ones.

“Most long-lasting changes are not overnight wonders — they’re the result of continued application. It really does get so much easier when it becomes a matter of habit rather than conscious effort. And the best feeling will be when you look back in a few months or a few years and see how far you’ve come from where you are today.” Savage’s affectionate anticipation of a caramel latte and bran muffin as something to look forward to after rowing to Hawaii is enough to keep our own cravings in perspective and keep our own exercise program on track.

Sunny Blende, 58, checked in after a two-week hike and paddle down the Grand Canyon. An ultra-marathoner who’s swum across the Golden Gate three times, (“without a wetsuit, that was cold!”) Bay Area resident Blende is a sports nutritionist who helps her clients improve performance and improve body mass through diet and exercise. “You can have up to a 20 percent edge in performance with the right diet. And you can get leaner by eating right, even if you eat more of the right things.” Her advice for those starting out? “Hydrate and eat mostly whole Fruits, vegetables and whole grain carbohydrates in their natural state. You let your body be the juicer for that carrot, don’t let Jamba Juice do it for you.”

Of course, some of the best exercise programs include coaches or trainers to keep us on track. Heather Glenn knows that from personal experience, having worked with world-class trainers to compete in extreme fitness competitions. While Glenn knew that most women aren’t attempting to bench press 60 percent of their body weight or run an army-style obstacle course, she believed the training skills she built could be incorporated into normal women’s lives. With a fellow exercise enthusiast, she started Bay Area Bootcamp (now renamed ALaVie Fitness) to encourage extraordinary performance from ordinary bodies.

Glenn and her team now lead sessions in eight Bay Area parks, incorporating short intervals of strength, resistance and aerobic training in an intense one-hour workout. “By keeping it women-only, we can focus on how our bodies perform. We also build camaraderie, eliminate the gym ‘fashion show’ and provide a supportive environment for a wide range of participants, from the first-time exerciser who wants to lose 50 pounds to the high-performance athlete.” Glenn cites research about this form of interval training providing “the maximum result for the minimum time.”

Which leads us to the conclusion that a successful exercise program is as much about attitude as altitude. About seizing the moment as seizing the oar. About being kind to yourself as much as being the athletic kind. Your journey to physical fitness doesn’t have to be across an ocean or up a mountain to be effective, but it does have to include your inner Amazon. And that’s something you just can’t get in the mail.
  
For more info: Arlene Blum: arleneblum.com, greensciencepolicy.org; Roz Savage: rozsavage.com; Margaret Kramer teaches at the Pacific Athletic Club and the Burlingame Recreation Center. She can be reached at Margaret_kramer@comcast.net; Sunny Blende: eat4fitness.com; Heather Glenn: heatherglenn.com, alaviefitness.com.

Jennifer Raiser is trying to transition out of the light green zone on her body mass index chart.

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