My Story of Cross-Country Skiing

I write this because I am extremely thankful.

My daily winter exercise of taking a walk didn't happen this year. I only did it once and here's why.

It started with a suggestion at a meeting with my nutritionist eighteen months ago. I was pondering the first winter of the new me and the anxiety I felt about how I would stay active during the cold months. I was confounded by the suggestion that I take up cross country skiing. I thought, "Me? Wasn't skiing for the very fit and very dedicated?"

I thought back to grade five when our class took cross country skiing lessons. At first it was tedious, but after a few sessions and some downhill thrills, I loved it and vowed very sincerely that I would do it again one day, even if I had to wait until I was an adult.

I always intended to, I didn't forget. However, the years of descending deeper and deeper into obesity eroded any ambitions I had to keep past promises.

I still remembered the promise to myself 35 years ago and the fond memory when the idea of cross country skiing was suggested to me as a middle-aged adult. I tried to picture how it would work, where I would do it, and what it would look and feel like. I was told there is an annual ski swap where used equipment could be purchased and that there were groomed ski trails in some central city parks.

I still couldn't imagine it. It wouldn't come together in my mind.

Skiing couldn't be for me. Not for now, anyway. It was a misguided idea, I concluded.

One Year Later

Winter was approaching once again and my last gasps of cycling season were taking place on cold, barren trails alone, without my son or my wife. During my previous fitness quests/weight loss periods, winter was always the time when I failed. I couldn't stay active and I struggled to maintain my summer weight while my physical conditioning reversed. Winter was a period of remorse. I impatiently waited for another summer to restart my physical activity and, thereby, my success and well-being.

Cycling was big for me last summer and I wanted something fun more than ever to replace it for winter. I saw a poster for the ski swap and took the family to check it out. We realized that we actually had ski equipment in the shed and remembered the many times we almost threw it out. The staff was helpful and I left with skis for my son and a determination that I was going to try skiing this year, one way or another.

The snow came early and heavy. I decided to test out my equipment by the light of the moon so I wouldn't be seen. I can barely remember what that was like. I took one timid, wobbly step at a time and formed a straight line between my back gate and a group of trees off in the distance. I'd turn around and return, slowly. I wasn't skiing as much as snowshoeing with skis and trying desperately just not to fall over.

It wasn't coming to me after several days of attempts and I couldn't shake my tentativeness. I was determined to keep trying and trying until I got it. Night after night I'd go out and make tracks. After a week or so my son came out with me and we made a triangle track that was longer. And then, like so many other pivotal points in my fitness quest, my nine year-old son showed me the way.

We went to a quiet novice ski trail at a small city park. His first times skiing were nothing to him. My top-heavy body struggled. My knees buckled slightly under my weight when flexing my knees. But I had to keep up with the boy so I endured until, after a couple outings at the public trail, something clicked and I found myself more or less...skiing. I knew that day that I could do it, that I was capable of it, if not now than soon. That realization changed everything.

My boy and I started making 1/3 KM trails on the pipeline easement behind our home. After a few passes we realized that we had made a pretty usable cross country ski trail. It wasn't as perfect as a groomed trail in the city parks but it was good enough, especially because it was just out our back gate. No fifteen minute drives and stuffing skis into the car to get there. In fact, it was incredible.

We built something that we enjoyed and had all to ourselves. It was there to use anytime we wanted. That was a tremendous feeling for our whole family. It was like our very own winter amusement park. The kids were happy, my wife was giddy, and I had figured out a way to stay active and have fun all winter.

We've often lamented how our home is many busy city streets away from bike trails but it makes up for it by having this winter wonderland right at our doorstep.

Letting Go

So I began skiing by loading up the car and taking a fifteen minute drive to an unfamiliar park. Then, suddenly, I was doing it out my back gate. No drives, no loading and we were never far from the water tap or the bathroom. We even started leaving our young kids at home alone on days they didn't want to come. We were always within earshot if they had a problem.

But sometimes they'd join us and we spend a weekend afternoon gliding down hills and making new trails. My son would produce maps of our current trails and copy them for the family. More often than not we'd spend an hour and a half or two hours at play. Other than cycling, there's no activity where I can let go and have fun like that--not realizing that I'm exercising. You wouldn't find me on a treadmill for two hours, or even going for a walk in the city for that long.

• Watch a video of my family skiing

A book on skiing that my wife brought home from the library advises you to let go and just play, the same approach a child would have. Children don't worry about technique they just have fun.

Letting go started to happen with me when I was out enjoying the fresh crystalline air with my family. (SO much better than a stuffy gym.) I'd just let go and play. I'd worry about what my next objective of fun was instead of thinking about how I was doing. Without realizing it, skiing got easier for me.

My Long Torso

But it's still a challenge. I'm still very overweight and I'm top-heavy because of that and because of the proportions of my legs and torso. Either I have short legs or a long torso. I like to think I have a long torso (I have to buy tall-sized shirts even though I'm barely 6'0".)

I was finding that when I bent my knees, as you do when you ski, my left knee was a bit wobbly. My legs were strong but just not in a specific skiing way. I approached my exercise counselor to help me address that shortcoming at the gym (two days a week at my clinic still.) I started using the vibration trainer. I basically maintained the ski stance on it and then I also incorporated balancing on one leg at a time. This quickly got me into the condition necessary to ski. This problem may be unique to me. Nevertheless, spending time skiing would have also strengthened my knees as well.

Fat People Don't Ski

I had a hard time finding out online if an overweight person can ski. There's hardly any mention of it on the internet. I certainly didn't see any overweight people skiing on the public trails. Everyone is tall and lanky, like competitive cyclists, it seems.

Ski shop staff didn't have answers on the weight issue. There's a scale you step on at the ski shops that resembles the Threat Alert system in the United States. It's basically got three colours that the needle goes to to tell you which skis to buy. Naturally, the needle went of the charts for me, implying that I was too fat to ski.

From what I gathered, they make skis for different weights (this is important to support you on the surface of the snow and to allow you to glide easily across it). The heaviest weights are up to around 200 pounds. Apparently, no one could possibly ski who's over 200 pounds. When I started, I was closer to 300 so don't let your weight stop you but I wouldn't use skiing as your first exercise because you'd risk not enjoying it. Most professionals advise to start with walking and move on to other activities you enjoy. For me, in the wintertime, it's definitely skiing.

Of course most people know skiing is a good exercise because it's gentle on your joints and it uses your upper body as well. I've actually had people gasp when I tell them I ski. "Why would you want to do all that work?" one person asked. Don't believe it. It's a myth. It's fun, not work. No one would do it if it were work. Runners don't run because it's work. They run because it feels really good to them. The sedentary often think of everything as work but it's not. The only work involved is in changing your attitude.

When I went to the ski swap in November, four months ago, I knew nothing about skiing other than what I could recall from grade five (basically how to turn was about it!) Now I'm familiar with the different kinds of bindings, wax and waxless skis and I'm a connoisseur of all the different kinds of snows that nature produces and how to wax my skis in different temperatures. It all just came to me because I enjoyed the activity so much.

Winter is Your Friend

Winter is four or five months long where I live. It's often more cold than snowy. People complain about winter endlessly here. Even many active people restrict themselves to indoor exercise. I've written extensively on how my attitude toward winter has changed. This affects more than the amount of fitness I can achieve in the winter, it affects my whole approach to life.

I'm no longer caged indoors. I've been out there on the coldest of days enjoying the fresh air without pain or suffering (other than that skiing in cold weather is more tedious because your skis don't slide easily.) People don't even want to drive to the gym on cold days but I've been able to enjoy all variations of winter weather and I've made many discoveries.

I'm more in tune with nature now. The vast, barren area behind my house is alive in winter. There's dozens of rabbits (who like to poop on my ski tracks and only on my ski tracks) as well as packs of coyotes who go shopping for the rabbits, I presume, and a crow who knows me by name. There's also snowmobilers who wreck my trails, but we've learned to live with each other. I've discovered that frigid cold howling winds will create snow drifts that are so hard I can walk on them even at my weight. I've learned that the natural world is still natural and inviting even on the most uninviting of cold winter days.

This year my family cheered when there was snow in the forecast. To the chagrin of my friends, for the first time in my life, I don't want winter to end.

Imagine that.

Now I have the unexpected challenge of trying to find a way to stay as active in the summer as I do in the winter!

Didn't see that coming.

Information

"Cross-country Skiing: Building Skills for Fun and Fitness"
by Steve Hindman  (2005)

The Regina Ski Club (Ski Swap is every November)

"The Jaw-Dropping Benefits of Cross-Country Skiing"
The Globe and Mail (News Article)

Two Years Ago I Was a Junkie Waiting for the End

Lest I forget.

I'm so immersed in what I'm doing and feeling good about it that I can seldom remember what things were like two years ago. But it's important that I do remember. It's one of the purposes of this blog.

It's been two years since I met with a nutritionist and agreed to start taking small steps to right the sinking ship that was me.

Today I cross-country skied with my wife for 90 minutes. It was fun and we didn't want to come in even though our bodies were spent. Two years ago I was just beginning to walk my daughter to the preschool around the corner. It took ten minutes each way and I was sweaty and exhausted when I got home. I spent the two and half hours that she was in school resting for the trip back. I hated winter. I hated having to walk her there. I hated that my body was so useless.

I was my body's bitch. It had total control over me. I had none over it.

Two years ago I was eating until my stomach hurt from being full. I was eating high calorie, high fat food that made me feel tired, irritable and unfulfilled.

Today I ate some of the foods that caused me so much trouble back then. I had nachos for supper and chocolate for dessert. But I did it in moderation.

I had mostly salsa instead of sour cream and I sprinkled the cheese sparsely on a plate of chips half the size of what I might have had in my previous life. I stopped eating when I was full, not when my stomach became uncomfortably stretched. When I encountered chocolate, I just had a small sample and enjoyed it instead of wondering how much of it I might have, how I could get the most possible, or if anyone was watching.

I haven't cured my eating problems, I've only begun the work, but I'm under control. Each day I gain more control and knowledge of what's going on with my eating. I'm practicing better eating habits until my mind and body finally accept the more appropriate ways of behaving.

Two years ago I was ashamed to be in public. Two years ago I had no inclination that I would ever be doing the things I now enjoy and thrive on: Cycling, jogging and cross-country skiing. Two years ago my kids barely had a father. Now they have a playmate and a dad.

Every once in a while I have a flashback. I remember not being able to climb the stairs in my house, how I used to use a shopping cart to hold myself up at the grocery store, or how I felt after using junk food as a meal.

I was a junky, eating things that made me sick and not being able to stop harming myself.

Exercise quickly helped me gain the strength to take control. It empowered me to take the reins of my disease. Far faster than the speed at which my waistline shrunk, I became more and more able-bodied.

I have years of hard work and learning ahead of me before I can claim any sort of long-term success but I'm enjoying the journey. And the way I now think about myself and my future couldn't be more different than it was two years ago.

Two years ago, I was disabled from a disease that isn't very well understood. It's complex and difficult to manage. What I do know absolutely and one hundred percent is that exercise is the fool-proof way to pin my menacing disease to the ground. Waiting for the count to ten to declare victory will take a very long time and it will present challenges that I have yet to imagine.

But I'm stronger than I've ever been in my life and I'm ready for whatever lies ahead.