Kicking and Screaming into the Forties

In aging, I tend to put more faith in biology than chronology. It's not how old you are, but how old you feel. But how I'm feeling reveals that I'm fighting an uphill battle the very day I turned 40.

I don't recover from a glass of wine as well as I did 20 years ago from a bottle of vodka. Looking in the mirror first thing in the morning can ruin the rest of the day, so now I avoid the mirror until at least after lunch, when I check for broccoli in my teeth. Food no longer takes the same route through my body anymore, going to mostly the wrong places. And I now require several triple espressos to make it to lunch. Exercise is not as easy and recovery not as quick.

I still try to take care of my body in the hopes that my biological age doesn't reflect my chronological age, but diet and exercise are a bear when I already have a full-time job, a marriage and a mortgage. Still I pinch my love handle every morning and am reminded that it can easily grow if I'm not careful, so I eat a breakfast of egg whites and fresh strawberries and wash it down with a triple espresso with a splash of low-fat milk. Then I head to the gym and inevitably pull a muscle in my neck so for two days I look decrepit every time I turn my head to the left.

But, what can I do? I keep at it, eating healthfully for the body, lift some iron for the muscles, and do some cycling for the heart.

I workout hard, lifting weight mostly. In fact, lifting weight is now my sport -- particularly Olympic-style Weightlifting. The snatch, and the clean and jerk. These two lifts have been around as an Olympic sport for over one hundred years. It's not terribly popular in America and doesn't bring its athletes much money, fame or clout. But it's a fun sport for those who, one way or another, gravitate toward it. It is nearly a cult, which sounds bad but really isn't; it's just that, compared to more popular American sports, Olympic-style weightlifting has so few participants that those involved tend to feel a greater level of familial understanding and camaraderie.

But I don't really care about that shit because I just like the lifts: The snatch is considered the world's fastest lift and the clean and jerk the world's most powerful. The snatch is so lightning fast that, if you blink, you'd miss the artistic and skillful interplay of body and barbell. The clean and jerk is so powerful that you'd think every major bone in the body is one quiver away from shattering.

And so I started training at the age of 39 for my first weightlifting competition that would fall on the same month as my 40th birthday. I was fully aware of the psychological hang-up behind my effort with this competition. It wasn't so much an effort to hang onto the quickly disappearing 30s as it was to deny the fast-approaching 40s.

When I first became conscious of my parents' age, they were in their 40s. That, to a child, was old. Now the 40s are staring at me in my own face. How had this happened? I can at any instance conjure glimpses of memories, replay bits of childhood, youth and young-adult life, but it all seems to fit too neatly into a little jar that can't possibly hold four decades of life. I know that a lot has happened to me, but there is a sense that not enough has happened and I haven't really lived. Of course, this is where the insidious symptoms of middle-age crisis emerge and I should want to bunjee-rope jump off a cliff in Brazil with my new Brazilian girlfriend who would be 20 years my junior, while blowing what little savings I have on exotic drinks and a rental Ferarri. Red.

But even a middle-age crisis cannot battle reality and a wife and mortgage.

So, when the weightlifting meet came around, I had been fiercely prepared, to the point that one more minute of training would have destroyed my body. I was on the brink. My only wish then was to beat those younger than me. I would have broken every bone and tear every tendon to beat those half my age.

And I beat everyone in my body weight category, without injury. I went home with a first-place medal, my badge for surviving my first middle-age crisis. Since then I have not trained consistently, not because I lost motivation but because my body just couldn't keep up. The competition was my Hail Mary. And that, physically, was all I had. I was left with tendonitis in both knees and left elbow from the desperately intense training.

But it hasn't escaped me the physical feat that I had achieved at an age when most people began to face health issues far worse than tendonitis. Also I have not been lost to the blessings of my life. I am married to a wonderful wife, I have a decent steady profession, possess a higher education, and I have basic health and fitness. I cannot say the same of the batch of friends from which I sprung. My friend back on the East Coast, who graduated high school one year in front of me, had died of a massive heart attack at the age of 41. Another friend, 3 years my senior, is preparing for a double by-pass. Most of the rest of my friends are sedentary and barely have room to breathe because their children are taking every breath and minute of their time. These people have no room for a middle-age crisis. At least I do, and at least I have the luxury to do something about it. And the weightlifting competition marks my response to my first and, hopefully, my last middle-age crisis.