age up

Age categories! Part of the fun of running races!

When I started running, I was 52, and I quickly learned about age categories. Mainly that some races have 10 year categories, some have 5.

Which means, a few years in, I AGED UP!

We hear SO much about the downsides of aging, don't we? The perils of little laugh lines and crow's feet. The horror of roots coming in gray. Oh the horror!

TV inundates us with commercials for anti-aging this and anti-aging that, creams and lotions and even spray on hair color to hide those grays QUICK before eek! we have to leave the house like that.

Anti-aging.

Anti.

Aging.

I'm calling bullshit.

I'm calling bullshit on ALL this bullshit.

We age.

So what?

We celebrate it when we're young, big birthday parties, balloons, streamers, pony rides, rainbow cake, candles, the works.

BUT, somewhere around 38 or so, the bright colors on cards fade to black. The decorations are all tombstones and walking canes and isn't that funny, you're over the hill, Grandma.

Who came up with this shit?

It's stupid.

And not funny.

Oh and by the way, "grandma" has traded over the hill for hill repeats, so there!

I don't know about you, but I intend to live to at least 105 (my Grandma made it to 103), so I wasn't over the hill at 40. And also, I want bright colors and rainbow cake and a pony ride dammit, not doom and gloom. I'm still wearing pigtails, for f*ck's sake.

Listen, I'm turning 58 this year.

A couple more years and I'll age up again!

Into the 60-69 category!

I'm so excited about that!

60-69! That's SO cool.

I think this is one of my favorite things running has given me: the perspective on aging up, instead of what our culture wants to sell me, which is that aging is terrible and should be hidden, covered up, colored away.

I love the lines around my eyes.

I earned every one of them.

Plus, they're cute.

And I love the adventure my hair is on right now. Gandalf the gray? Or Gandalf the white? Probably mostly Radagast (some gray, some brown, probably a bug or a bird in there somewhere!)

I stopped coloring my hair a year and a half ago. I got this HORRENDOUS haircut that could only be 'fixed" by cutting my hair SO SHORT I could be in the next remake of GI Jane. When my hair started growing back out, I thought, I'm done. No more coloring. No more fretting over gray roots.

You know what happened?

My hair said THANK YOU.

It's softer, curlier, bouncier now, like it was just waiting to be free from all that crap I've been dousing it in all those years.

(Psst...if you color your hair, and you like it, awesome! My reason for coloring my hair USED to be for fun and hey! a new color! Yay! But it got to feel like pressure to NOT go gray, like that was something awful. THAT'S what I'm rebelling against.)

I'm sick of society telling and selling us that we should not wanna look our age. F*ck that. I'm embracing my age, my gray, my wrinkles, all of it.

Why shouldn't we celebrate the WHOLE adventure that is life, not just the first half of it? Why can't gray be cool and sexy? Why have we lost that part of our culture that values experience and wisdom and knowledge that ONLY years lived provides?

I say we buck this whole anti-aging mentality!

And be proud of our years.

All of them.

Nature is all about evolving and changing, and we're part of nature, so...

Let's celebrate ourselves, lines and wrinkles and grays and all!

Let's AGE UP!