I started my first try powerlifting training cycle in January 2017 with a great deal of enthusiasm. After college there weren’t a lot outlets for me: Crappy co-ed soccer leagues where I could be the token woman (who’d never get the ball) so some guys could field their team. Road races that were a great option for my distance-runner teammates but that didn’t suit my sprinter body. Or just going to the gym. Those were the options. This was before Crossfit, and until I die I will mourn that Crossfit was not a thing when I got out of college.

In 2012, I had started running again, and one evening out of the blue my left knee turned into a grapefruit. I shrugged and started going to physical therapy thinking I probably had some dumb muscle imbalance. Every time my physical therapist was about to break up with me, she’d throw me on the treadmill for 8 minutes. The next day, my knee would be a grapefruit. MRIs and x-rays were inconclusive. Frustrated, I finally showed up in my orthopedic surgeon’s office. “You said you could fix it, so let’s fix it,” I told him.

Arthroscopic surgery a couple weeks later showed I had some pretty nasty damage to my cartilage, with some gashes that were down to the bone measured in centimeters. When my surgeon told me I needed to stop running because I was headed toward full knee replacement, I cried for two days. Running had been part of my life since I was in middle school. Even if it was boring stupid road races, at least there was always the kick at the end to look forward to. I loved running. I loved being able to run.

Fortunately, when I was in high school, my dad decided he was going to teach me how to lift weights. He taught me how to squat and bench, and to this day I am absolutely convinced that is why I stayed healthy while so many of my high school teammates went down in basketball and soccer with ACL tears. My quads and hamstrings were strong and stable, I could jump and sprint, and I could move in ways they could not. Research backs me up: There have been some good studies that show that squatting with proper form is protective for girls’ knees. My dad gave me a gift that allowed me to go injury-free until I was just about 40. Not too bad!

I’ve said this in previous blogs, but my heart soared when I discovered I could compete in a legitimate sport as a 44-year-old woman — a sport my body is pretty well designed for.

It started in May 2016 when Sam and I discovered our commercial gym was closing. Being only slightly intense and neurotic, I constructed stringent requirements about our next gym. Most importantly the gym needed to be no more than a mile from our home or my office; otherwise I would never go. Going to the gym without a mission is pretty dull for me, which I think it’s true for many of us. Often if we go home at the end of a long day, the chances we’ll leave again when there’s a nice bottle of wine and a couch singing gently to come and cuddle . . . yeah, that takes a level of motivation that I do not have at the end of the day. So priority number one was have a nearby gym to reduce the excuse of it being hard to get to.

There were two gyms within a mile of us. I first did a session at the Crossfit box. I was interested, albeit a bit concerned that the structure wouldn’t work for my evil knee. When the Crossfit gym owner was going to charge me extra money for scheduling mandatory introductory sessions (which I probably didn’t need, but I’m a girl so I follow rules) and wasn’t being very enthusiastic about helping me to fit them around my required work travel, I decided it was not going to mesh with my responsibilities.

By contrast, when Sam and I went to 5 Rings Fitness, we were greeted by some incredibly kind and welcoming dudes. I was a little nervous because at first blush it looked like a very testosterone-heavy vibe — a vibe I thought would not work for me or my incredibly sweet-spirited partner. But the owners’ openness and positivity stood in stark contrast to what I thought I was seeing.

We joined, and as it turned out my assumptions about the gym being bro-city were dead wrong. Not only was there a great group of strong women who were serious about powerlifting and weightlifting, but the guys at the gym — perhaps inspired by the owners’ women-positive attitude — were amazingly supportive of the female lifters. It felt like a team. The entire gym was psyched when someone hit a new PR—male or female.. There was no weirdness like at commercial gyms, like if I had 170 lbs. loaded on a bench and was between sets a parade of men would ask me if I was using the bench. (Yes, I’m lifting that. In fact I’m lifting it many times.) Everyone was respectful and no one assumed that a heavy load on a bar did not belong to me.

It was glorious. I could not believe that we found this gym.

I started attending the 5 Rings strength classes because I love being coached. At the time I was running a large analytics center for the federal government, which meant I was making decisions and bossing people around all day. Going to the gym was my down time, and I wanted the experience of just being an athlete and having someone else to sort out what I should do. Putting someone else in charge of my plan also meant that I didn’t to muster the motivation to set some challenging targets for myself — I just had to have the motivation in the moment to lift what the coach said. It was really enjoyable and I was making improvements quickly.

After two weeks of Sam observing the girl powerlifters (or more accurately Sam observing me wistfully watching them as they trained and chatted about their next competition), my sweet partner walked over with a shit-eating grin and said, “You’re going to start competing.”

I demurred. No, I was too old and injured, and there was no way I could squat to depth on my crappy knee. But my training was going well, I was enjoying it, and I was shocked at the range of motion that felt comfortable and what I could deadlift, having never attempted that before.

A month or so later after more time in the gym and more time watching the girl-lifters who were prepping for Nationals (and maybe after a couple glasses of wine), I emailed one of the coaches: “I want in!”

At 5:30 a.m. the following Monday, I was walking to the gym in the cold and dark, wondering what the hell I had been thinking with that email. I stepped into the gym to see the coach grinning at me and stroking his beard. Clearly, there was no going back.

That April I competed in my first sanctioned meet, a local competition under USA Powerlifting. It was an utter joy. In college, I was completely focused on specific outcomes: I wanted to compete at Nationals in the heptathlon. I wanted to be an All-American. If I had been less focused on the outcome and more focused on embracing the experience of the movements and the events, I bet would have been higher on the podium. I think my 800m (the final event of the heptathlon) was slower than it should have been because I was conservative in my first lap. I should have just opened up and run for the sheer joy of that being the last time I would ever run competitively on a track. I should have just run and felt the wind in my hair and the cold burn in my lungs and the hot burn building in my legs. I should have just embraced the joy of those feelings and bravely let them take me over. But I held back because I wanted the podium. I was afraid to let go and leave it all out there because sometimes in the 800m you hit the wall hard and it crushes you and your time.

Now that I’m 45, I’ve accumulated enough experience that my sense of self-worth is linked to a broader range of things. When I was younger, I needed those numbers. I needed that external validation. I still need some external validation, because I continue to battle against perfectionism and fluctuating feelings of self-worth, and I’m still pretty dedicated to being hard on myself. But I’ve got enough built up at this point in my life — I’ve achieved goals consistently, I’ve hung in there through hard stuff and haven’t quit — that I don’t hang on external reassurance the way I needed it when I was younger.

I have discovered in my 40s that I truly love the adrenaline of competition. I love it. The clear focus in the moment, the buzz in my mind, the urge to get to the bar, the sheer and pure joy of being in the moment and wanting to experience executing a movement perfectly. That bit of risk and doubt in my head that I might fail. Feeling the weight on my shoulders and making it move. Maintaining my focus through bench when I’m just a little tired and my initial adrenaline rush is not quite as high. Finishing with the deadlift that is just a simple aggressive movement. The happiness of hugging my coach and then Sam at the end of the competition.

Those moments feel amazing. Conquering the weight, shaking off a failed lift, getting right back at it. Feeling the strength in my body.

Our bodies change constantly. What I can do today may or may not be achievable tomorrow. I remember after my final meet in college standing in front of the mirror, and thinking to myself, “Well, you will never spend this many hours training for the heptathlon again in your life, and you will never look like this again. Put it in the memory banks.”

I will never run the hurdles again. I knew that was a fleeting and precious time in my life. This is as well. Experiencing the joy in the moment of competing and feeling your body do something amazing that you weren’t sure it could do is to be cherished. Let yourself experience that moment fully.