Happy Mother’s Day. Not that I’m a great supporter of such days. Just another commercially driven celebration. But it is an opportunity to post two photos of my daughter and I six years apart. The first is at her 18th birthday party and the second at a night out just before Christmas. I look different and I feel different. I may now have a lump of titanium in my heart but I am fitter and hopefully healthier than I was six years ago. It is a good place to be as I enter the last week on my 59th year and my sixth decade. 

I kicked off Mother’s Day not with breakfast in bed but a visit to the gym. I was determined to tick off a 30kg push press. In the scheme of things it is not a great achievement but it has proven to be my nemesis. My lower body strength is much greater than my upper body. But the good news is that I did it. It wasn’t particularly graceful but I got that bar above my head with my arms extended. 

I love weight training. I discovered this five years ago when I started training with my personal trainer. I particularly love training for strength as opposed to aesthetics which probably wouldn’t have been the case when I was younger. Even so strength training has given me a butt not associated with middle age. It being rather roundish not flat.

Feeling strong is empowering. It gives me a confidence that I would be lacking without it. What I am sad about is that so few women of my age share my passion. The one group of people that would benefit from strength training the most is post menopausal women. Strength training protects bone density and slows the progress of sarcopenia (muscle loss due to ageing). Back to my butt again. But what group are you least likely to see in the weights section of a gym? Post menopausal women. And I do get it. The weights area of a gym can be intimidating. And most gyms are targeting the transformation market not osteoporosis prevention. The latter doesn’t make a good Instagram post nor is it commercially viable. But if money was no option I would open a gym for the over 50s and play music I recognise.

With less than one week to go before my sixtieth birthday I have 49 ticks on my 60 for 60 (see about) with little chance of ticking off all 60 at least for another few weeks. The main area of failure is in my reading. I just don’t seem to find the time to read as much as I would like. And maybe that won’t change until I step down from full time working. But in the main I’m fairly happy in how the last year has progressed. And I’m looking forward to eating a lot of birthday cake and drinking copious amounts fizzy stuff. Now to get back to my Mother’s Day chocolates.