Just a Number, Right? - Martha

So my question for all you bloggers out there is this: why must I enter my age every time I climb on that stupid treadmill at the gym? Shouldn't I be getting some kind of nice reward for hauling myself on instead of an instant reminder staring back at me from the screen of HOW OLD I AM?! Like maybe a little piece of chocolate should drop out at the end of the workout! Thanks to our surprise Nor’easter last Friday, I found myself at the gym for the first time in ages trying to make up for lost time outdoors. And my annoyance at always having to put in my age is especially poignant this week because in less than 72 hours, I will no longer be able to enter a digit beginning with a 4! I know this may sound trivial in the big scheme of things, but I am really sensitive to turning 50. Maybe it was the AARP envelope that arrived yesterday. Maybe it was the story in Newsweek today that said EVEN if you start exercising at the age of 50, SOME positive effect on maintaining cognitive functions could be found. Is 50 the end of the line for trying to keep my brain intact?

So I'm going to do something really defiant the next time I go to the gym. I'm not going to enter my age. That will show them! I hope it makes smoke pour out the bottom of the treadmill. Actually, I hope that doesn't happen because then they'll just raise my membership fee. But seriously, we're on a need-to-know basis and unless joules are calculated differently than when I was in school, I really think the machine doesn't need to know.

Instead, I'm going to focus on running my race. After all, striving for this goal instead of filling out my AARP card was the reason I wanted to run the marathon this year in the first place. This week I was browsing in a college bookstore while taking my daughter to visit colleges and I found some great thoughts on the shelves. Being a refrigerator magnet junkie, I can never have enough of those short but powerful statements staring back at me. I will leave you with the two I purchased yesterday in “honor” of this special week of mine:

young. old.
just words.
(george burns)
and:
How old would you be
if you didn't know
how old you are ?

Hmmmmmmmmm, perhaps I’ll try surfing for 60?!