Bikini Strong

Last week I found an old drive full of photos from my first digital camera. There were files full of pictures from 2005 to 2009, years in my mid-30s when we were taking a lot of tropical vacations and going on ski trips with large groups of friends who were just taking off in their careers and thinking about starting families. As I clicked through the images, they took me right back to those times and places, and also back to faces with fewer wrinkles and hair with fewer grays.

There was one photo that has lingered in my mind since that day. I remember when my husband took it. We were staying at an all-inclusive resort in Cozumel, Mexico. It was early December – a time we liked to travel because it was relentlessly rainy back home in Seattle and families weren’t yet traveling for the holidays. We were swimming and hanging out at the resort’s pool when a rainbow appeared in the cloudy sky. My husband grabbed the small digital camera and snapped the picture. I remember thinking something like, “no, don’t take my photo in a swimsuit!”

Less than a week before the photo was taken, I had run the Seattle Half Marathon. Running it had become a bit of a tradition for me – something to keep me motivated to run through the short Pacific Northwest days. We left for the Caribbean island a few days after the race, which is always held the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I decided to take a break from running while we were on vacation and we celebrated our break from work with flavorful Mexican meals and bottomless cocktails. When that image in the swimsuit was taken, I was feeling bloated and unfit for the striped bikini that clung to my body.

Today, my 52-year-old body weighs about the same as it did in the photo, but it is different in so many ways. It has more cellulite and sagginess despite my regular running and strength training routine. I have more freckles and moles and wrinkles than I did in my 30s. My body requires a little more thought and care when it comes to nutrition and hydration, and it needs more sleep.

The body in that picture also hadn’t accomplished much of anything yet. While I had run a few marathons and half marathons and completed a few sprint triathlons, I hadn’t climbed Mt. Rainier or the Grand Teton yet. I hadn’t run three ultramarathons through the Rocky Mountains or ridden my bike from Seattle, WA to Portland, OR. I hadn’t yet learned to backcountry ski, to ride my mountain bike on Moab, UT’s slickrock, and had not yet trail run around multiple mountains in Oregon’s Three Sisters Wilderness or through the Grand Canyon.

The biggest difference between the body in that photo and the body I’m in today, is that it’s now appreciated for where it has taken me and the strength it maintains as I age. It keeps allowing me to push myself on big adventures and take me to places most people never get to experience. While I still don’t love to have my picture taken in a bikini, I continue to wear one because I am proud of what my body can do, even if it’s a little softer around the edges.