Month: August 2013

competition · cycling

How not to get faster

Sam B11 Comments

There’s a very well known cycling quote, posted to the Facebook walls, Pinterest boards and tumblrs of cyclists (my own included) that goes like this, “It doesn’t get any easier; you just go faster.”  It’s by Greg LeMond. (Born in 1961, LeMond is, according to Wikipedia, “an American former professional road racing cyclist, entrepreneur, and anti-doping advocate. He was World Champion in 1983 and 1989, and is a three-time winner of the Tour de France.” So he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to getting fast.

But today I want to talk about the other side of the easier-faster coin. It’s much less celebrated and and likely wouldn’t be a fave quote on Facebook walls. It goes like this, “If it is just getting easier, you’re not getting faster.” Let me explain.

I’m often asked by beginning cyclist friends what they need to do to get faster. My glib response is, ride faster. And though that might sound obvious, it’s also true.

The advice I’m about to dish out here goes beyond my tips for beginning riders who want to go faster. And it’s advice that I know to be true and sometimes need to follow myself!

The thing is I’ve known lots of cyclists, me included, who when left to their own devices go out and ride 20-40 km at a speed that feels good to them several times a week. They then wonder why after months of doing this they aren’t getting faster.  The answer is that what you’re training by doing that is your ability to go out and ride 20-40 km at a comfortable speed. You won’t get faster but it will get easier. And easier doesn’t translate into speed gains.

Because really it shouldn’t get easier. You should keep pushing yourself. You need to push yourself. You need subsequent rides to be as hard as the first.

That’s a bit of an overstatement but the basic idea is right. Don’t spend too much time enjoying your new found comfortable speed/distance. Push on.

This is something that puzzled me back when I was a beginning runner. I spent awhile at a plateau where running got easier (my heart rate slowed down, I was less wiped out afterwards) but I wasn’t getting any faster. The thing is I didn’t want to go “back” to that out of breath, exhausted feeling of my early days as a runner.

It was humbling to learn that that was exactly what I needed to do (some of the time at least) if I wanted to make speed gains.

How do you do that? Here’s two ideas:

1. By adding fast intervals. Step out of your “ride for coffee with friends” mode and engage in bike specific speed training. There isn’t anything wrong with riding at a comfortable speed. We all do it lots when we ride socially but it isn’t training.

2. Don’t spend all your time riding with friends who ride at your pace or who are nice to you! Spend some of the time riding with people faster than you. Guest blogger Catherine Womack wrote about conquering her fear of returning to group rides and I’ve written about riding with friends of different speeds as one way to mix it up.

I need to do both of these things and rejoining a bike club with group rides and doing some bike specific speed training are on my agenda for next year.

Uncategorized

On Surprising Ourselves

Tracy I2 Comments

image

I’ve been living on our sailboat up in the North Channel (that’s Lake Huron, north of Manitoulin Island) for nearly a month. The weather is changeable and when you are on the water all the time you need to have your wits about you. It’s a big lake known for heavy weather, even in the relative shelter of the North Channel.

The other night we’d just finished a late dinner in a beautiful anchorage and were about to nestle in with my step-daughter and her friend to watch a movie. We looked out the window and saw very dark clouds making their way towards us. I checked the weather and sure enough there was a squall watch and warning for the area, with winds gusting to about 40 knots. That’s big wind, especially in a crowded anchorage (there were probably about 25 boats that night) that is not all that protected from the direction of the squall.

So we went up into to cockpit and secured a few things, turned on the radio, and waited it out. The squall descended quickly and fiercely, with pelting rain and extraordinarily high winds. We’d been concerned earlier about a boat that had anchored a little bit too close behind us. While we kept an eye on that, my step-daughter, Ashley, noticed that another sailboat in front of us appeared to be loose and was flying all over the place.

It skated by very close to our bow and then doubled back towards our port side, about midship. While Renald hollered at them to stay away from our anchor, I, not even thinking, ran out of the sheltered cockpit with my gloves on and got there just in time for the boat to T-bone us. I managed to hold it off so that the impact and damage was minimal. And then as the other boat pivoted and came towards us broadside, I saw that their cockpit was empty. I pushed the boat away and off it went. Renald hollered again, this time telling them to get into their cockpit. They were down below playing cribbage (she was winning, we learned the next day).

Whew! When I got back into the cockpit, everyone stared at me in amazement. How in the heck did I manage to hold them off and push them away even? I have no idea. I didn’t even think, I just acted. And yes, I surprised myself. Big time.

Our friend, David, who rode the 160 km MS Bike Tour from London to Grand Bend and back with Sam posted this comment afterwards: “I need to stop being surprised about how well I do.” I’m assuming he meant that he surprised himself for his performance on the long bike ride.

His comment made me think about all the different ways in which we surprise ourselves and what that means.

One thing it means is that we haven’t got real high expectations to begin with. In that sense, perhaps it’s a comment on our confidence level.

But on the other, more positive side, we can only surprise ourselves if we give ourselves opportunities to do it. Though I can’t of course plan for a squall that disrupts a peaceful evening on the water, the only other way to surprise myself is by embarking on challenges that push me.

For example, when I decided to join that learn-to-run group in June, that challenged me. The first few weeks weren’t a problem, but before the end of it, my group was doing runs that were longer than I’d ever run non-stop before. I approached them with dread. But I kept up and wasn’t even the slowest person in the group. I totally surprised myself.

When I was training for the triathlon and joined the Y to work on my swimming, I could hardly manage 2 lengths of the 25m pool without taking a break to catch my breath. After a few months of regular training, I increased my speed and endurance, easily doing 50 pool lengths (that’s 1.25 km) in less than half an hour. Even as I write this, that surprises me. What surprises me more is that I know I can do better than that because that’s at an easy, do-able pace. When I’m finished those lengths I feel as if I could keep going indefinitely. I like it when I can wow myself like that.

When I became vegan a couple of years ago, I thought it would be almost impossible. I had been a vegetarian for a long time, and the ethical basis of all of my arguments extended naturally and clearly to cutting all animal products out of my diet.

I’d hesitated for years and finally made the decision to do some research, not to convince me that it was the right thing for me to do, but to teach myself how vegans eat a nutritionally balanced diet. My research showed me it wasn’t actually all that challenging. I was going to go into gradually and then, before I knew it, I was vegan. And it hasn’t been difficult for me. That surprised the heck out of me. What used to seem like an extreme diet is now routine. Other than baked goods and ice cream, nothing tempts me anymore. That is not what I expected at all.

Since Sam and I started blogging, I’ve lots of occasion to reflect on my physical capacities, what I’m good at (yoga and swimming), what I struggle with (running and any amount of burpees in a day beyond 35), what scares me (Crossfit!), what I enjoyed more than I thought I would (the bike leg of the duathlon), and what I want to work harder at (regular resistance training).

The success of the blog itself has been a surprise. Last September when we started, we thought our friends and family might follow along on occasion, but somehow hadn’t really planned for much more than that. We’ve been surprised in the most pleasant way imaginable by what the blog has brought into our lives: a community of like-minded people, rich discussion of feminist issues that we care about, all sorts of new projects, many opportunities to challenge ourselves with new commitments and activities, just to name a few things.

I’m almost fifty. Maybe, like David, it’s time I stopped “being surprised at how well I do.” But I like surprises, and I like challenging myself in ways that surprise me.

How have you surprised yourself lately? Please leave us a reply sharing your own stories of self-surprise!

Work-Family Balance and Participation in Sports
accessibility · family · fitness · Guest Post · health · inclusiveness · team sports

Work-Family Balance and Participation in Sports

avivashiller4 Comments

Attention directed at the inequalities between men and women has tended to focus on the realms of politics and economics. What percentage of CEOs are women? How many members of parliament? How much do women earn on average compared to men?

Feminist work in political philosophy shifted the focus a bit to the home, to the gendered division of work in the home, both in terms of housework and dependent care. Feminist political philosophers think this matters for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons. It’s a good thing in and of itself if work in the home is shared. But there are also spill over effects. the unequal division of work in the home is part of what explains why women do less well in political and economic terms.

The family is also where children learn about equality and justice and in terms of raising and educating future citizens, justice in the home matters.

So economics matters, politics matters, and sharing work in the home matters too.

But what about physical activity? Does it matter that inequality between men and women extends to the time one has available for sports and physical leisure?

Here are some of the relevant facts: A study by the government of Canada published in 2013 reports that Canadians are less active in sport than they were in previous iterations of the same study and that participation rates have declined across age and gender but that women continue to participate at much lower rates than men in every age bracket.

Moreover, participation rates correlate with household income.  The more money in your household the more likely you and your children are to participate regularly in sports.  The report also describes the benefits of participation in sports and these range from relaxation and fun to improved mental and physical health as well as increased life satisfaction.  One of the main barriers to participating is lack of leisure time.[1]

Given that women still do the bulk of household tasks even when they are engaged in paid labour outside the home it is not at all surprising that they participate in sports at roughly half the rate of their male counterparts.   Hirschmann reports: According to … data from an ongoing National Science Foundation study, married women still do two to three times more childcare and housework than men (17-28 hours per week for women, versus 7-10 hours for men).  Indeed having a husband apparently creates about seven additional weekly hours of housework for women.[2]

The data on sports participation mirrors data on public health and is related to increased risk of morbidity and mortality for women, especially those from poorer households.  Reduced access to health services through lack of income but also through lack of time disproportionately affects women because they are more likely than men to be poor.[3]  If we look at health in the broadest terms possible then surely this outlook must include leisure time, and access to recreational facilities given the impact on well being and the maintenance of health.  The younger a person is the more likely it is that they will participate in sports.  The lack of participation of older segments of the population is related less to lack of interest than to lack of time due to family and work responsibilities.

There are a number of ways to engage the problem of unequal participation in sports including community initiatives, subsidies for sports, access to equipment and facilities, etc.  What the research demonstrates is that people are interested in sports and that as soon as they have enough time and money they prioritize sports.  As a society we should be actively encouraging programs that support families in achieving their goals.  Women place a high value on creating social bonds through sport so this should figure into strategies for public policy formation.

What kinds of activities do you find easy or more challenging to incorporate into your lifestyle and does this have to do with the intrinsic features of the sport or other external factors like cost or having to travel long distances to participate?  I find it is much easier to be involved regularly in an activity when it is located very close to home and has a social aspect.  I spend most of my days alone so I crave a sense of community at my activities.  Also, the schedule of the activity has to be convenient and it has to be relatively budget friendly.  Some of Samantha’s recent posts deal with some of the challenges of having to travel and the costs associated with certain activities.

Let’s just remind ourselves of the some of the reasons inequalities in time available for physical activities matter:

1. It’s good for women’s health and well being.
2. It’s good for children to see their mothers as physically active and competent.
3. I also think it’s good for women’s agency for women to experience ourselves as embodied and competent.

See earlier posts on role models and family fitness for more on this.

Hirschmann, Nancy J. “Mothers Who Care Too Much: What Feminists Get Wrong About Family, Work, and Equality.” Boston Review 35, no. 4 (2010).

Rogers, W. A. “Feminism and Public Health Ethics.” Journal of Medical Ethics 32, no. 6 (2006).

“Sport Participation 2010: Research Paper.” Statistics Canada, February 2013.

[1] “Sport Participation 2010: Research Paper,”  (Statistics Canada, February 2013).

[2] Nancy J. Hirschmann, “Mothers Who Care Too Much: What Feminists Get Wrong About Family, Work, and Equality,” Boston Review 35, no. 4 (2010): 3.

[3] W. A. Rogers, “Feminism and Public Health Ethics,” Journal of Medical Ethics 32, no. 6 (2006).

Uncategorized

Arguments about fitness and fatness

Sam B19 Comments

If you’re fit, then you’re thin

You’re not thin

So you aren’t fit.

That’s usually the way it goes. It’s a pretty good argument as arguments go. It’s valid. The reasoning works just fine.

The truth of premise one is questionable but that’s been the subject of a few posts. See here and here and here and here.

And so when people recognize that I’m not thin they think I’m new at the fitness activity in question. People mistake me for a beginner, someone who is out of shape etc. While I’m not an elite athlete and I’m always trying to get fitter, faster, stronger, I’m far from a beginner.

Sometimes I think that’s one of my motivations for trying to be leaner. I want people to recognize me, to see me for who I am. I actually think that’s a lousy reason but I detail some of my better reasons here.

I’m always amused when people who see that I’m fit and believe that “fit= thin” reduce the cognitive dissonace the other way, by claiming I’m not not fat/large/big whatever. This usually happens when someone is committed to the fit-thin reasoning but is forced to confront my fitness. Something has to give so it’s the belief about my size.

Recently it was a debate about competing in the Clydesdale/Athena category at a triathlon. But that’s not your category, said the acquaintance. The cut off is 150 lbs, I said. I thought this would just end the debate.

I actually think about half the women competing could be in that category if they wanted to be. Unlike rowing, it’s optional. There’s no lightweight category. It’s either the open/competitive category or Athena and so very few women use it. It’s a problem. See Why is the Athena category so useless?

The debate continued with further insistence that I wasn’t fat, big, large whatever, that I was normal sized. Fine. Sure. Depending on your definition of plus sized, I don’t wear plus sized clothing. I’m a pretty solid size 12 but I’m more than 150 lbs, lots more in fact.

I’ve got an ambivalent relationship with the term “fat” but it’s pretty clear to me that I’m a big person.

The discussion ended with the person surprised I wouldn’t take the compliment. Funny.

People want to hang on to false premise #1, the one that equates thinness and fitness so they argue with me about my size. I mostly don’t care. But it fascinates me the length people will go to to hang on to premise 1.

 

Image from http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/08/02/americas-forgotten-pin-up-girl/

Pregnancy, Postpartum and the (Somewhat) Fit Feminist (Guest Post)
Guest Post

Pregnancy, Postpartum and the (Somewhat) Fit Feminist (Guest Post)

thracianmaid8 Comments

Before I got pregnant, I was pretty active. In college I rowed and in grad school I boxed. More recently, I trained successfully for a marathon. I also swam regularly and loved playing soccer with friends and colleagues (being a vicious defender works out my aggression nicely). So when we started trying for a baby, I felt confident that I would keep moving.

There is a lot of information available about the benefits of an active pregnancy. Pregnant women are told that an active lifestyle will help keep their energy up, ease the aches and pains of a changing body, improve the experience of labour and make it easier to give birth – not to mention making it much easier to ‘bounce back’ to one’s pre-pregnancy body afterwards. Every pregnancy book and website includes a section on fitness and exercise. They do caution against starting new exercise programs, but you can definitely maintain your activity level. Many go so far as to suggest that not exercising is linked to a host of issues, from labour complications to fetal conditions like gestational diabetes.

For the most part, I think this is great. It’s a vast improvement on advice given to previous generations, when pregnant women were sequestered away and prevented from doing just about anything. The idea that pregnant women are weak is silly; making a human and carrying it around while eating, drinking, and breathing for it – not to mention pushing it out of your body – is a fairly impressive feat.

But it does create one more thing pregnant women have to monitor, besides alcohol, smoking, food, air quality, water temperature, etc. And it’s another way we can fail at being pregnant (as I would discover).

So, I was all set to have a fit pregnancy. The day we found out, I made a chart of nutrients to keep on the fridge, and bought The Runner’s World Guide to Running and Pregnancy. No problem, I thought; I’m already active, so this will be easy.

The problem was, my body had its own plans. I was hit almost immediately with searing hip, leg and lower back pain, eventually diagnosed as sciatica. By my sixth week, I had quit running. By my twelfth week, I could only walk a few blocks before I’d be in the kind of pain that left me gasping. By the fifth month, I was avoiding walking at all costs. I could still swim, but only a few lengths at a time – and walking to the pool on campus hurt too much! I’d plan my days to minimize movement and eventually stopped going out at all. I caught myself dreading stairs, long periods of standing, or any situation that made me bump into things or people.

Hoping to stretch out the tightness, I tried prenatal yoga at a downtown studio, but it didn’t work for me. The poses often made it worse, I felt restless and frustrated all at once, and after a fellow class member commented that, given my body type, no one could even tell I was pregnant, I quit.

It started to seem like I was going to have a very unfit pregnancy. This was demoralizing, and also made me feel vulnerable. I felt like I was failing at pregnancy, worried non-stop about how it might affect the fetus, and got frustrated at everyone’s warnings about what this would mean for my labour and their well-meaning advice about how such-and-such exercise would fix my sciatica – I just had to try harder.

All the advice I’d found so liberating, in theory (Be active! Keep running!) now felt like just another norm governing women’s bodies, telling me I couldn’t measure up.

(By the way, don’t feel too much pity for my sob story. I still had a great pregnancy! My partner was amazing, my workplace was accommodating, and my morning sickness was pretty limited. Lucky, lucky me! But I inhabit my body comfortably when I feel strong and capable, when it can live up to my expectations. This was a tough lesson in my own limits, and how to live in a body that couldn’t do what I expected it to. It was humbling.)

Then, around 30 weeks, I found the solution (for me): I tried a prenatal aquafit class (http://babyandmefitness.com/classes/aqua-bellies/). I was pretty skeptical at first. In fact, I realize now I was an unconscious exercise snob. I thought of myself as someone who did sports (rowing, boxing, running, soccer) not classes.

I think there was a gendered component to my snobbery, too: on some level, I’d decided classes were for ‘girls’. I feel pretty sheepish about that, as a woman and a feminist – and especially now that I know how hard aquafit can be!

I’d come home after each class with shaking arms and legs, a happy ache, and that particular euphoria I associate with a long run. As long as I was really careful about how I moved my hips and groin in the water, I could avoid exacerbating my sciatica, and in the meantime my abs, back, legs, and arms were getting a serious workout, using water and my now considerable weight as resistance.

I also met other pregnant women of all backgrounds, shapes, and sizes (way more diversity than in the downtown yoga class). We set up an email list and planned post-partum stroller walks.

I don’t know whether my unfit pregnancy OR my (aqua)fit third trimester made a difference, in the end, but after a really long labour (ahem – 60 hours) I had a big, strong, perfectly beautiful baby.

And I’ve learned my lesson about exercise snobbery, too. I’m not back at aquafit yet, but I’m taking all the Baby and Me (http://babyandmefitness.com/) fitness classes I can. Two or three times a week you’ll find me squatting and lunging my way through the park while pushing a stroller (http://babyandmefitness.com/classes/stroller-h-i-i-t/) or lifting weights while my baby snoozes in a carrier on my chest, then trying to rediscover my abs by doing planks and making faces at her on the mat (http://babyandmefitness.com/classes/carrier-fit-fusion/).

(By the way, if you like the idea but not the budget for postpartum fitness classes, I’ve noticed people arranging stroller fit dates on MeetUp.com and there are online suggestions for how to structure them).

I didn’t ‘bounce back’ to my pre-pregnancy body, but my sciatica vanished like magic, and I’ve even started running short-distances again. In the meantime, these classes get my daughter and me out of the apartment, structure our week, and have helped me meet some really cool women. But mostly, they’re teaching me that my conception of fitness – prenatal or postpartum – needed just about as much adjustment as my hips.

____________________________________

Alice MacLachlan lives in Toronto with her wife, Amy, and their daughter, Emmylou. When not taking aquafit classes or running around the park with a stroller, she teaches philosophy at York University.

Facing Fears of the Group Ride—One Cyclist’s Saga (Guest post)
aging · athletes · cycling · fat · fitness

Facing Fears of the Group Ride—One Cyclist’s Saga (Guest post)

catherine w13 Comments

Last weekend I went on my first long group bike ride in more than a year.  This is odd because I’m an avid cyclist, in a Boston cycling club (Northeast Bike Club), have raced on road, cyclocross and mountain bikes, own very many bikes (the exact number is available on a need-to-know basis), and am pathologically sociable (in a good way).   So why haven’t I been riding with groups?  Here’s why:

  • Insecurity about decreased FITness
  • Consciousness of increased FATness
  • Accumulation of years, recently passing FIFTY
  • Leading to one big pileup of FEAR

Fear sucks.  Fear sucks the joy out of activity.  Fear sucks away our energy.  Fear causes us to question ourselves.  Fear keeps us from doing what we want, what we can, and what we ought to do.  Fear kept me from group riding in the past year.  What was I afraid of?

1) I’m too slow to ride with other people

Cyclists think they are too slow in the same way that academics think that their articles/books/dissertations are crap.  Everyone thinks it, but it’s not based in reality.  Of course, maybe that paper really does need a major revision, and maybe you haven’t been riding much or you’re recovering from an injury or a period of overwork or a family crisis.  That’s not the point.  The point is this:  even though it’s painful to hand over that draft to someone for comments, it is one of the best ways to improve it.  Riding with others does reveal your strengths and weaknesses, but it is a great way to get feedback, support, fun, and a workout. Fear of being too slow is not a reason not to ride with others, it is a reason TO ride with others.

2) I simply won’t be able to do it

In this frame of mind, I think to myself… What?  I’ll be stuck crying on the side of the road? I’ll spontaneously combust? (insert your favorite irrational worry here.)  The activity at hand (50-mile road ride, 3–4 hour mountain bike ride, day-long tourist vacation bike jaunt) can seem too big or too hard to manage.  Again, academics often have this problem at the start of a project.  Keeping the focus narrow, breaking things down into manageable chunks, thinking about pedaling to the signpost at the crest of the hill in front of you— these are ways to stay in the moment.  And in the moment, nothing much is happening other than turning those cranks, which is sometimes heavenly, sometimes hard, and sometimes ho-hum (like life).

3) What will happen if everyone is way faster than me?

This is easy—one of two things will happen:  1) people will slow down to accommodate the slowest rider.  Agreeing to a “no-drop” ride or regrouping at the top of hills is common in social and even training rides.  2) I might get dropped.  This is only really bad if I don’t know how to get back home.  GPS or an old-fashioned cue sheet can solve this problem.  And yes, it feels embarrassing, but happens to everyone.  It can even be a badge of honor (of sorts).

With these fears in mind but also with steely resolve (sort of), I drove out to western Massachusetts with my boyfriend Dan (also a cyclist), to meet bike racer friends Rachel and Ethan for two days of country-road, sometimes-hilly cycling.  We rode 50 miles the first day and 27 miles the second day.  It was fun, hard, sweaty, exhilarating, familiar, and intensely satisfying.  Here is what happened when I faced my fears.

1) In fact I was not too slow to ride with others.  True, I was the slowest rider of the group, but it was not a race—it was fun rides with friends.  I did experience frustration going up a few hard hills, but also the thrill of screaming downhill past my friends (yay gravity!).

2) The 50-mile ride was hard at times—although we didn’t take the hilliest route, there were some climbs.  One unfortunate climb was up a super-steep road that we had to do from a dead stop.  I ended up having to get off the bike and walk because I ran out of steam.  I had company on the walk up—a swarm of mosquitoes, happy that I was going slow, joined me along the way.  This was not a fun moment, but it passed.

About eight miles from the end of the first ride, I asked if we could stop for some iced tea; I was tired and wanted a little break before the last leg.  Guess what happened?  We stopped!  And it was the best iced tea ever—a mix of Earl Grey and black currant teas with an infusion of strawberries and blueberries.  Refreshed, the last miles were not bad at all.

The second day was harder because I was a bit tired from the previous day’s ride, and fear number two was looming large.  But I realized that I can ride when tired.  I’m strong, I love this sport, I enjoy being out with friends, and more fresh iced tea is never too far away (in this case, at a nice café in Easthampton, MA).

3) Everyone on that ride was faster than I am.  Sometimes I was last in line, sometimes we all rode together, and sometimes we split into two groups and the faster group waited for the slower one.  No biggie.

So how do I feel now?  Excited, still nervous about group rides, but filled with plans for more of them.  Last Tuesday I went on my bike club’s weekly Women’s Ride.  I was a ride leader for one of the beginner groups (12—15mph average for a 20-mile ride).  It was great to be back in a group of women in motion and feel that sense of belonging, of athletic identity.  I feel more like a cyclist than I have in a year.

Hmmm– maybe I should buy another bike…

Catherine Womack is a professor of philosophy at Bridgewater State University, south of Boston.  She works on issues at the intersection of ethics and epistemology, focusing on public health, food, choice, and public policy.  She has many bikes and loves to ride them.  She also plays squash when she can get a court and a partner.