After more than five decades of training non-stop season after season for one sort of endurance event or another, the Pandemic brought an enforced pause for me, as it may have for many of you. Little did I know that when I abandoned my late-winter self-contained tour in Tupelo, heading up the Natchez Trace from New Orleans and drove back to NYC for quarantine, it would be the best thing I could have done for this tired bod.

Each year, since I was in my teens, there was always a track meet, marathon, 10k, triathlon, century ride, road race, or bicycle tour to prepare for. Yes, I’ve been a serial masochist since running track at Berkeley High back in the 60s. Season rolled into off-season and back into a new season, broken only by the occasional unplanned injury, hernia repair, or cycling accident, which kept me off the bike or running path only long enough to recover but no longer. That damn lower back thing, and that damn shoulder thing and those ever tightening damn hip flexors just turned into lingering aches and pains that we have all lived with as a consequence of leading a wonderfully active life.

Outdoor cycling in NYC, while possible during March, April and May, was risky with 20k people dying in and around the Bronx. And, the last thing I figured an ER doc wanted to see was an old GOMER with a busted collarbone or something worse, if I could find an ambulance that would scrape me off the road. However, my favorite neighborhood yoga studio was offering online classes and I signed up for a package, thinking that it couldn’t hurt to spend some time on the mat. My new job as a bicycle tour leader wouldn’t start for a month or so and, if I couldn’t ride and since running had gotten too painful over the last few years, I could at least work on my flexibility.

After arranging the furniture, and setting up the camera and monitor, my den was transformed into an online yoga studio. Don’t worry.. no scented candles or eye pillows… just yoga blocks and a strap to help me reach my feet while bending. Day after day, as bodies were being stored in refrigerated trucks and waves of horrible news oozed from the TV, I retreated into one and often two daily yoga, stretch or strength classes online. Maybe it was the mindfulness, maybe it was the lithe bendy bodies on the screen, but I kept at it for one hundred days from mid-March through the last week in June.

An amazing thing happened. Week after week, my nose kept getting closer to my knees. That assortment of knots at various places along my spine (rhomboids and lats mostly) melted away. Spending time in twists, I could feel those extensors, obliques, flexors, and connecting tissues that had been in some form of spasm for years starting to relax and lengthen. Off the mat, ambling around the house trying to stay out of my wife’s way while she was finishing her most recent book, those nagging lower back pains were gone. Little things, like emptying the dishwasher or even rolling over in bed, were no longer an opportunity for agony. I’m not sure of the anatomical parts, but the visible step-down on the top of my shoulder, the result of a shoulder separation, went away as the acromion (I’m guessing) found its way home in my AC joint.

The aging body is still very plastic, it seems. We don’t own our injuries, but have only been renting them. With time, patience and persistence, it is possible to home PT yourself back to a much younger body. Now, I’m not saying that all parts work as they used it. (We can wish!) I won’t ever be able to hold 300 watts on a long hill or convince my mitochondria that they should be Krebs cycling like they did in my prime, but I am sure that the lingering aches and pains that I thought I would live with for the rest of my days could be given an eviction notice.

That tour leading job has been pushed back, but hopefully the outfitter will survive until roaming groups of cyclists are no longer considered two-wheeled disease vectors coming to infect small towns in beautiful places. For the time being, I’ve set up the Tacx Neo 2 with the Pinarello and am growing mitochondria at home using TrainerRoad. Who knows, with this factory-refurbished body I might strap on the Brooks and facemask to see if I can get in a pain-free run someday.

Bottom line: If I could tell my skinny-ass 16 year-old self one thing, it wouldn’t be to buy Apple or whether to take the red pill or the blue pill, it would be, “Don’t forget to stretch.”