The 6 sport of my 60th year is …. boxing!

With one week to spare, I completed my challenge to learn six new sports in celebration of my 60th birthday.

My final sport was boxing.

Fittingly, I wrapped up my challenge exactly as I had begun it — with a whole lot of sweat, and with my good and game-for-anything friend Jill.

I was too intimidated to take photos or video of our first endeavor — rowing. But, I did manage to capture all the rest. In between rowing and boxing, I learned rock climbing, hurling, ice hockey and pickleball. I use the word “learned” very generously here. In some cases I survived, happily neither incurring nor inflicting injury (though that rowing situation came close.)

I really enjoyed all six sports and I’m going to continue to participate in several.

It took some digging and then some convincing to find a boxing coach willing to run a couple of seasoned ladies through drills, but we found a good one in Crosby Walker. As a bonus, he’s also an artist and videographer, so he cheerfully recorded segments of our workout for us.

We met up Wednesday at the Culture in Appleton, a roomy workout facility with plenty of space for our drills. I mentioned that I’d like to learn boxing with actually hitting anyone or getting hit. Crosby laughed and complied. He ran us through some drills, taught us some punching techniques and whacked us with a pool noodle to keep us in line.

Like so many other sports, boxing offered us a whole range of benefits — cardiovascular, muscular, intellectual and emotional. I almost want to hang a punching bag in my kitchen for random stress relief. We learned four punches and keeping track of those swings proved to be an excellent brain teaser, particularly as our arms got tired.

I really enjoyed my afternoon in the ring.

I’m not going to pull on an old school gray sweatsuit, drink a glass full of raw eggs and head out for a long morning jog, culminating in a run up the Lawrence Chapel stairs, but I did learn a little something,

“If you’re willing to go through all the battling you got to go through to get where you want to get, who’s got the right to stop you? I mean maybe some of you guys got something you never finished, something you really want to do, something you never said to someone, something… and you’re told no, even after you paid your dues? Who’s got the right to tell you that, who? Nobody! It’s your right to listen to your gut, it ain’t nobody’s right to say no after you earned the right to be where you want to be and do what you want to do!” 

I’m really glad I set out on this little journey and I’m grateful for all the people I met along the way.

I’m so thrilled to discover that 60 is not old and that those of us who have arrived in our seventh decade still have plenty of challenges to set for ourselves, and goals to achieve.

Let’s go!