Short is the New Long

Once upon a time, in a distant last life I can only sort of foggily remember, I used to go on three-hour mountain bike rides. I would actually sit on my bike and spin the pedals for many hours in a row, as though that were the only possible thing a sane person would choose to do with their Saturday.

She's one of the reasons I run

I had the luxury of time and fitness. Some might say I had nothing better to do. Oh, but I could have weeded the garden or written my novel or learned how to cook or volunteered at the homeless shelter. But I didn’t. I played instead.

Life is different now. Of course it is. Now I go to Sunday morning gospel yoga and sneak out half an hour early because it’s Maisy’s first time at yoga daycare and I'm distracted, wondering if the R&B version of U2’s “One” is drowning out her hysterical wailing (nope). I blitz out on before-dinner bike rides, 40 minutes tops, because I have to get home to nurse the baby. Sometimes after the girls go to sleep, I retreat to the back patio for a 20-minute emergency yoga session in the graying dusk. In a weird way, it’s kind of liberating—being so off your game that a six-mile ride feels like an epic physical feat. Who needs three hours in the saddle when you want to amputate your ass after only 45 minutes? It’s so much more efficient, really.

And it’s actually more worthwhile than I thought. Back in 1996, the Surgeon General issued a report finding that the benefits of exercise are cumulative. At the time, I was kid-less and 24 and too busy riding my bike to pay attention. Plus I’d grown up doing the Jane Fonda workout on the beige wall-to-wall in our den, on a TV so old and boxy it had an on/off switch. My limber, frosty-lipsticked guru, in her striped lavender unitard, beat it into my impressionable head that I had to “feel the burn” in order to see results. I was flat-chested and skinny as a stick. I was 12. What kind of results did I think I was going to get?

I kept upping the ante anyway. Thirty minutes of leg lifts became an hour. I ran 10Ks and did three sports at school. My step-dad irked me by calling me a jock. I preferred “athlete.” I got older, and I went longer and got stronger. I had the luxury of fitness and time, and though I couldn’t put it into words, I’d begun, somewhere in the deep recesses of my cells and bones, to realize that why I exercised had more to do about how I felt while I was doing it than what I might look like when I was done. I just felt better, clearer, brighter, more full of breath and life. I kept going, figuring the longer I went, the better I’d feel until the opposite began to be true: Moving my body became more like an obligation, less like the original, pure joy of shooting hoops in the driveway for hours at a time or riding my bike around the neighborhood, making up elaborate stories in my head, becoming a writer as I played.

Last week, reporting a story for a wellness magazine about the mistakes healthy people make, I interviewed Michelle Segar, an exercise and behavioral scientist at the University of Michigan, who reminded me of this fact: Exercise is cumulative. You don’t have to hammer it out all in one go to reap the heath benefits. Short is the new long. (If you don't believe me, check Tim Ferriss's new book, The Four Minute Body.) Excuse me while my world is rocked.

Michelle intentionally parks a couple miles away from her meetings and walks across campus to squeeze in a 30-minute walk. During the last two weeks, I’ve changed my behavior, too. Instead of wasting time whining about my lack of time to ride, I’ll get on my bike and pedal for as long as I can. For the first time in my life, I finally get it: Something, anything, is better than nothing. And just like that, the old, unencumbered joy returns.

My motivations are changing, too. I used to ride and run to improve stamina, to know that when I did have the time to ride for three hours on a Saturday, I’d be ready. That was always the unspoken benchmark. Why ride long? Because I can! I was multitasking: building endurance and feeding my ego.

Now, if I’m honest with myself, I can see that maybe I’ve outgrown that goal. Letting it go isn’t easy—I miss my 24-year-old self with the freckled nose and no obligations—but life is different now. I’m different. Maybe my real goal these days is to simply stretch my legs, let the fresh air whoosh through my brain and unleash a flood of ideas, and feel strong in my body so I can feel good, and grounded, in my life and my writing.

Goodbye, I'm going out to play!