An Ironwoman of a summer

Or what a whirlwind 90 days looks like, and what that 2019 season taught me about myself.

Sep 18, 2024

One of my most treasured coffee mugs. Sipping from it reminds me of my strength.

I sometimes wonder how many people, like me, think back to 2019 and hardly recognize the life they were living. Or, at least, are surprised by how different their life today is compared to that final pre-pandemic year, before everything changed for all of us.

Five years on, I’m guessing most of us are living in entirely new ways, whether this looks like having a better-fit job and renewed or altogether different personal relationships, or uprooting and relocating to a new place or making some other kind of major life change. Maybe a mixture of all these things occurred in your life.

I’ve contemplated the words I’m about to share in this essay over the past few days, as my social media feeds have filled with photos of friends exuberantly holding finisher medals from this past weekend’s IRONMAN 70.3 Michigan, a race I finished in 2019 and that remains my last big endurance event to date.

Seeing these race images has led to a range of emotions—happy, sad, grateful, wistful—and I’ve realized it’s more than just the fanfare around this race that’s pierced my heart a bit. It’s being a little astounded about 2019 being five years ago already, and it’s feeling curious about how our life can shift so dramatically.

It’s also having enough distance from something to see things more clearly. To have some perspective. To carefully consider what I want for myself today, and what the things I threw myself into in the past have taught me.

I wanted to think back, and share some of my 2019 experience with you all, and I wanted to hear from others—from you!—about similar life-changing experiences that took place just before (and during) the pandemic. I know I can’t be alone in pondering the changes, for better and for worse, that have come about particularly in the last few years.

The summer of 2019 was indeed a big one for me, and for my business. Beginning in January of that year I had a feeling — a genuine, not-pie-in-the-sky hope — that the next 12 months were going to be a game-changer; this would be a year when I’d reach a new level with Michigan Runner Girl, the healthy lifestyle/travel site I’d been growing slowly and steadily since 2010.

I realized ideas and efforts were coming together; these were plans that felt solid and promising, like maybe just maybe I could really, finally turn this side hustle of a business into an actual pursuit that contributed meaningfully to our family’s livelihood.

Take for example the women’s winter retreat I’d created and hosted with a longtime friend. By late 2018, registration was underway for this mid-winter gathering, then in its second year, and the number of interested women signing up kept climbing. It was becoming an actual profitable event and we had dreams for speakers and sponsors that felt attainable.

Meanwhile, my weekly podcast, which I started in 2015, continued to gain traction. Sure, it remained a passion project (i.e. I was making just enough to cover my production costs, and I was only somewhat successfully juggling recording time with a day job in healthcare marketing and communications), but I was having so much fun talking with so many fantastic people and helping tell compelling and informative stories that prompted countless listeners to share—over email, on my social media pages, at races in real life—how much the episodes were making a difference in their life.

It had taken me awhile to feel fully comfortable behind a microphone—I was a longtime print journalist, after all, used to the written word rather than the spoken one—but around this time I felt truly in a groove with my audio interviewing skills. I was getting high-profile guests, while also staying true to my love of talking with everyday people doing interesting and inspiring things, and I could feel my show’s reach growing, most notably when I was asked to speak at an upcoming podcast summit that featured a number of well-known podcasters.

Other speaking engagements—a keynote in the spring for one of Michigan’s largest running clubs, a guest host gig for a series of “Centennial storytelling events” at state parks that summer—also had cropped up and filled my 2019 calendar.

For a number of years, I’d been traveling around the state to race expos, where I got my cup filled by connecting in person with readers and listeners and race directors while selling my line of Michigan Runner Girl merchandise (and sometimes jumping into the next-day race myself, often with my daughter Emma). And in 2019, I traveled to the most expos yet, zigzagging around the state, often with Joe and sometimes Emma, to events in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Muskegon and Marquette. I absolutely loved this part of Michigan Runner Girl!

It was also 2019 when I launched my own race—the first (and only) Michigan Runner Girl Trail 10K and 5K at a winery here in northern Michigan. That event sold out.

As if these professional activities weren’t enough for my (overflowing) plate, personally I was going through some interesting, at times worrying/contemplative, life events. Emma was heading off to Michigan Tech University in the Upper Peninsula at the end of summer (the same weekend, I learned too late, that I was racing my first IRONMAN 70.3 triathlon). I also was growing increasingly frustrated with my day job, which was becoming more toxic by the day for a variety of reasons. I desperately needed to start thinking about a job change.

As excited as I was for the potential growth of my business, and also the nervous-excited anticipation for the IRONMAN race and bittersweet joy that is that last summer before your oldest leaves for college, I was pretty overwhelmed most of the time. It all just felt like a perfect storm—a storm I had willingly created to an extent, I realized, having decided to commit myself to so many things—and I was doing my best to ride the waves as gracefully as possible.

Back to that big endurance race for a moment.

I am thrilled for my triathlon friends, and I am also emotional reading about their experience swimming 1.2 miles, biking 56 miles and running 13.1 miles—a race that was especially meaningful for me, back in 2019. It remains my most ambitious endurance race accomplishment to date.

I wouldn’t have guessed then, after crossing my own 70.3 finish line, that it would be my last triathlon for at least five years. I envisioned returning the following year—I signed up for the 2020 race not long after my race, when registration opened—but it was cancelled that year because of the pandemic. And then once 2021 rolled around, my training hadn’t kept up with my interest in keeping going with triathlon (and truthfully, my interest waned pretty significantly in those Covid years). It’s only been in recent time that my motivation for training and racing has returned.

I haven’t signed up for anything yet, but I will be doing so soon. (Something else that inspired me, just this week: this post written by the author

Jennifer Weiner

Through all the changes in the past few years, I know I continue to draw upon the strength and confidence I experienced and built up by completing that IRONMAN race—and really all the many races and training runs and business ups and downs that preceded it.

This is what’s coming around for me: I can feel nostalgic for what once was, but more importantly, I can take the very best parts—the drive I felt to push myself, the thrill of reaching a goal I wasn’t always sure I would, the absolute joy I’ve felt meeting and connecting with such incredible people—and use these to keep moving in the direction I’ve chosen. We can look back to move forward.

Sometimes I think we can momentarily forget all that we have endured—all that we are capable of—and how these accomplishments not only shape who we are, but can, if we let them, remind us of what lies ahead and what we can and will still conquer.

My dear friend Karen captured this moment just as I was about to cross the finish line of IRONMAN 70.3 Michigan in Traverse City, 2019.

Speaking of perfect storm, I can’t help thinking that another factor plays a role in my feeling disoriented when thinking about my life in 2019 vs. today: my changing body and mind, thanks to perimenopause.

I don’t talk about perimenopause or menopause here much—my kids and Joe will tell you I speak of it plenty at home with them—and I have no great reasons for this other than I am figuring it all out for myself every day, it seems, and am still processing a lot of what I am discovering.

I’m absolutely in the throes of it right now. I’m trying, and sometimes failing, to embrace this time. Interestingly, I’m making the connection that this oh-so-fun stage pretty much collided with Covid times. I think it’s only now, a few years down the line, that I am understanding the significance of this.

I know plenty of other great writers and experts for that matter are sharing wisdom on this transitional time—thankfully much more frequently, openly and honestly than ever before. I am comfortable leaving that up to them, and finding great pieces like this one on Substack, by

Christine Yu

that touch on what it can look like to be an active (or once-active) woman who is going through perimenopause and menopause.

If you’ve come across any a-ha moments about exercise in midlife, and how perimenopause and menopause affect our interest and ability to stay moving, please send along to me!

I’m interested in knowing what your 2019 looked like, and how it may differ from life for you today. What are you taking from that time into your present daily life?

An Ironwoman of a summer

Or what a whirlwind 90 days looks like, and what that 2019 season taught me about myself.

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