Feminist reflections on fitness, sport, and health
Colosall tells me that”The Metropolitan Museum of Art has released a vast archive of 400,000 (mostly) hi-resolution digital images online that you can download and use for non-commercial purposes. From a 12-megapixel scan of Rembrandt’s 1660 self-portrait to over 18,000 photos spanning almost two centuries.”
And of course I searched for “bicycles.”
Here’s a few images:
Bicycling, from the Games and Sports series (N165) for Old Judge Cigarettes
Rambling/tramping/walking is beautiful, fun, and good for you.
I’ve visited two cultures and countries recently with strong outdoor walking cultures. No surprise there’s a connection between them.
Both England and New Zealand have rolling green hills, pastoral landscapes, an abundance of sheep, and lots of recreational walkers. They also share mild climates and lots rain.
While away at a conference in Sheffield, I did a fair bit of walking in the Yorkshire Dales and in the Peak District National Park. In one case we were able to get to the start of the trail by train (no cars required!) and we did a three and half hour walk along a ridge (up to the ridge too of course) followed by dinner at a country pub. “Muddy boots, dogs, and children welcome.” Thanks Shannon–not quite the massive undertaking that was your Spinoza walk– but lots of fun nonetheless.
It’s terrific exercise. I love that it combines socializing, snacks, beautiful scenery, and outdoor adventure. You see a real range of ages and fitness levels out on these walks, judging by speed. It’s an English tradition, not just for the elite athlete. No problem keeping up with the David Suzuki 30 X 30 challenge here, see Play outdoors in May!
See The Advantages of Walking Up Hills to Exercise and Rambling: A good walk lets you enjoy fresh air, exercise and landscape.
Over dinner we chatted about how much we loved this kind of walking and why it’s less accessible in Canada. The negative answer is all about out of shape North Americans, we’re into fast food, strip malls, and highways. No trains into parks here. The more neutral answer is our geography, more forests and either flat or mountains, fewer green rolling hills.
But it’s also true, of course, that the landscape we admire in New Zealand and England isn’t “natural” either.
A friend confessed she used to wonder how the grass was kept short. Um, sheep. Lots of sheep.
But it also used to be forested. In many places in both England and New Zealand it’s suited to human walking because we chopped down all the trees. I love canoeing in Algonquin National Park but that kind of wilderness offers a different set of challenges than the Yorkshire Dales.
I’m not sure how much of England was once forested but I know it’s true in New Zealand that forests were used for fuel, ship building, and cleared for sheep. (See England’s forests: a brief history of trees We had lots of trees, then came selfish kings and war. But now our forests are resurgent again.)
So I’m back to in the big country–we don’t offer walking tours of Canada, that’s another key difference–and looking forward to what we have close at hand, paved country roads with wide shoulders for cycling. See you out there!
And keep an eye out here for a post on fell running, or mountain running, in the near future.
I’ve long been an advocate for cycling infrastructure. Bike lanes, give us bike lanes. And bike boxes at intersections. And cycle paths that connect towns that don’t follow the road, that meander through fields and forests instead. I’ve thought “build it and they will come.” I’ve thought that women are key to cycling safety and that we care a lot about safety. Guess I still think all that.
But it was interesting this week in Northern England, Yorkshire to be precise, home of the Tour de France start for 2014, to see attitude overcome a lack of infrastructure. There are no bike lanes and very narrow roads, twisty and winding over hill and around dale. And not just no bike lane, no shoulder, paved or unpaved. And yet, and yet, lots of bikes.
In Sheffield this Sunday morning I watched loads of road cyclists out to play, some singly, others in large groups. There was no room for cars to pass and they seemed to wait patiently behind them. I’ve got two thoughts about how cycling culture thrives despite these roads.
First, the roads and their challenges (sheep crossing, anyone? ) mean that no one expects to go fast. Even without bikes traffic moves slowly on the back roads here. That’s different from North America where even in the city traffic can move very quickly.
Second, there seems to be more appreciation here in England for the sport of cycling. Lots of people are keen about the Tour de France start in Yorkshire.
So maybe a good attitude can overcome a lack infrastructure if the other conditions are right.
I’m still thinking about this.
Now 47 days to go!
Do you have a cycling related tattoo? Considering one?
Here are some great galleries:
And here’s mine. I love it. Thanks Anthony Veilleux at True Love in London.
It’s a silhouette of a vintage chainring, from this collection here.
Recently I wrote a post for this blog about my daily running routine, which I think of not as training but rather as a non-negotiable, necessary, therapeutic part of my life that allows me to function well. The minute I see exercise as training it becomes an added stress, which is the last thing I need.
In light of these strong anti-training convictions, it struck me as odd that toward the end of my first pregnancy, I thought that somehow I could successfully train for labour. As an athlete, this made perfect sense to me: labour is a physical activity, one improves at physical activity by training (physically and mentally), therefore, by training for labour, I would be able to improve my performance during labour.
This light bulb went off for me about five weeks before I was due. I was at the gym on the elliptical machine and the television was showing the Giro d’Italia, a three-week annual bicycle race through the Alps. As I watched these world-class bikers perform athletic feats of Herculean measure, I was struck by their focus, their stamina, and the fact that they didn’t seem to be flinching even while performing the most grueling (and no doubt, painful) of climbs. I began to draw certain parallels in my mind between what these bikers seemed to be experiencing in terms of pain and perseverance and what I thought labour might be like.
(Note: in keeping with my very hands-off approach to pregnancy and childbirth, I read virtually nothing about either so I had no expert testimonies against which to compare my own intuitions about what I thought it would be like).
What I did know was that I was in excellent physical shape for labour since throughout my pregnancy I continued my daily running and yoga routine, but with my due date quickly approaching, I realized that I had done nothing to prepare myself mentally for the pain. In order to prepare for this part, my doula recommended that I put myself in very uncomfortable positions (like sitting in a semi-squat position against a wall and holding it). But this and her other recommendations did not seem sufficiently challenging or painful to me (I like holding that position). As a marathon runner and as someone who is accustomed to pushing myself physically, I wasn’t worried about the physical pain as much as the mental side of things.
So my idea was this: for the month leading up to the birth, while at the gym doing my physical workouts, I would also begin to prepare myself mentally by watching world-class bikers pedal through grueling terrain. I thought that somehow by attuning myself to their focus, stamina, and perseverance, I could train myself to focus through pain.
Now for anyone who has experienced the pain of labour, you are probably laughing right now. And rightfully so.
But for a neophyte who had read nothing about ‘what it is like’, this reasoning made sense to me. And my dear partner, doula, and midwives were all so supportive of me in every way that when, very excitedly, I told them about my plan, they encouraged me and told me that they thought this was a fantastic idea. With all of my enthusiasm, I don’t think that any of them had the heart to tell me that training (or, “training”) for labour doesn’t quite work that way.
And so not only did I get my daily dose of Giro for three weeks (my son arrived a week early), but I also solicited videos (“bike porn” as one of my biker friends called it) of impossible climbs and unimaginable races to help build my mental stamina even more.
The one person who vociferously objected to my training regime was my osteopath. After having told him about what I had been doing and planned to continue to do he laughed to himself and responded with four simple words that flew in the face of my strategy and that also turned out, in during labour, to be the most helpful advice I received.
“Surrender to the pain,” he said.
He continued: “In the moment, that is all you can really do. If you try to fight it, you will be fighting against your body. Just surrender to the pain and let your body do the work.”
My osteopath – who specializes in pregnancy and birth issues – is a wise man, both in issues of the body and also in reading characters. He knew me well enough to know that I thrive when I am in control of physical situations and he had the foresight to warn me that this would not be the case in labour. When we spoke about labour and birth, and even leading up to these events, I did not want to believe him. I could not conceive of a physical situation that would so completely overtake me.
But during labour, I very quickly learned that he was right.
All I could do was surrender to the pain.
No amount of mental training could have prepared me for the pain I was to experience (I gave birth at a birthing centre where medical interventions and medication were not options). There was no sense in trying to “fight” or “power” through it, for my body was in control, not I.
(Here I realize that I am making a false distinction between “body” and “self” but there is a real sense in which during labour and birth, I felt a split between my “body” and my “self” in that my body was doing work that my self was in no way willing).
In the end, surrendering to the pain was what I did. It was the best advice that I received.
It’s been almost a year since I guest-blogged in this space about my experience preparing for and riding Scope’s London-to-Paris-in-24-hours challenge, and a lot has happened in that time. I’ve become a stronger, more focused road cyclist. I’ve engaged a terrific female cycling coach, Jo McCrae, and she’s helped me to train my tempo zone and grow my climbing capacity. I’ve chalked up some serious personal bests, achieving a current PB of 7 minutes 51 seconds on Box Hill, the famous climb in the middle of the London 2012 Olympic road races. I knocked 24 minutes off my 2013 time in this year’s early-season “Puncheur” sportif in East Sussex, placing 6th out of 30 female riders. And just last weekend I kicked some serious ass on a cycling holiday in Tuscany.
Some of you may remember that, as part of our L2P24 training last summer, my husband Jarret and I rode the Morzine Cyclosportif in the French Alps, making the trip with the touring company RPM90. Run by Nick Miles and his team, RPM90 create cycling trips for serious riders: there’s usually about 300km of road in the plan for a weekend getaway, with lots of gorgeous but arduous hills in the mix. There’s plenty of excellent food and company, too, but the riding is front and centre on these journeys. Having really enjoyed Morzine, Jarret and I eagerly signed up for Nick’s spring Tuscany trip, which took place on the first weekend in May. At the centre of this trip lay the Strada Bianchi – the white gravel roads that connect the Tuscan hilltops, that frame the famous Eroica race, and that afford stunning views of the Chianti countryside – along with lots of rain, and a pounding 14,000 feet of climbing. That’s a hell of a lot, even for really strong riders, and all nine of us were totally cooked by the Sunday afternoon.
Last year’s journey in France featured a few pretty big egos in the group, and I was hugely intimidated by them; it didn’t help, of course, that I had never been on a cycling holiday before and was absolutely terrified at the prospect of the race on the final day. This year’s group was very different: while there were, once more, only two women (including me) on the trip, the men were on the whole pretty class acts, and included an enormously talented but also hugely supportive amateur racer (who should really turn pro!), a couple of very able triathletes (including an Ironman competitor), a fellow academic, and a pair of friends who, while blowsy and confident, were also really kind and lots of fun to ride alongside. And this year, of course, I was also much more ready for the roads ahead, more confident in my own abilities, and more familiar with the RPM90 set-up and with riding alongside the RPM90 crew. In short, we were almost immediately a happy team.
That did not mean we weren’t competitive, though. And it didn’t mean we were always humble. I, for one, was out to ride my very best, and to hold my own against even the strongest men in the group. And for the most part I did. While I’m not a confident descender (and in fact I crashed on a descent on day one, making things trickier for me emotionally as we approached the challenging Strada surfaces), I am a really strong climber, and I made my mark on the many rolling hills we attacked. I was up near the front on almost all the big climbs, and I cruised past quite a few of the men a couple of times. At the end of the last day, as we pushed out the final 20 of a gruelling 120km before getting ready for our flight home, I hung onto the lead group (which included my coach, Jo, the massively talented tall guy, and one of the other strong male riders), rotating tightly as we pushed over 30kph up to the final 6km climb (where they dropped me, and I’m totally ok with that). I finished ahead of all but two of the men, and I felt just amazing.
I am also aware, though, that a number of the men who finished behind me may have felt less amazing – both for themselves, because all strong athletes have personal goals that it sucks to miss, and because getting passed by a woman (what the cycling community calls “getting chicked“) can be disheartening.
Now, I absolutely hate the term “getting chicked”, and like many of my fellow feminist athletes (including Caitlin at Fit and Feminist, and Sam here) I consider it to be a significant indicator of cycling’s (and sport in general’s) gender problem, which stretches for us riders from the lack of a women’s Tour de France all the way down to the disrespect female riders sometimes get out on the road when male riders insist on passing us even if we are (and demonstrate ourselves over and over again to be) stronger and faster than they are. But I want here to advocate for some compassion for those male riders who are, in fact, on balance really respectful and generous, yet may feel like crap anyway when it turns out one of the women in their group is a better cyclist. Those feelings are real, and managing those feelings is part of the challenge of growing as a male athlete (and as a person).
Let’s think for a minute about how men and women are socialised in our culture. As a feminist scholar of theatre and performance, I’ve done a lot of reading in gender theory and cultural studies over the years, and I know that while men’s and women’s bodies are, of course, materially different in a number of ways (there are clear physiological reasons why men are on balance physically stronger than many women), the way we are socialised to experience our sexed and gendered bodies has a huge impact on the way we see our strengths and weaknesses relative to one another. Lots of women don’t imagine they can be as strong as men – they have always been told they should endeavour to be smaller, to be less muscular, in order to be pretty and attractive to men and in order to seem “normal” among other women. In the very same way, lots of men imagine that they should be stronger than the women around them, because “real” men are the stronger ones. This does not mean these same men haven’t been socialised also to respect women, or to treat their fellow women athletes fairly or celebrate their achievements; it does mean, however, that part of their self-image is based on being part of the “strong” and powerful gender, and when a woman shakes that image up out on the road or track or in the pool, it can have a powerful, destabilising emotional impact.
Are there lots of problems with these ingrained assumptions about what men and women “should be”? ABSOLUTELY. But they are nevertheless a social and emotional reality for many men and women, myself included. I’ve made a real push to become a strong climber in large part because I don’t look like one: I’m not a small person, and for a climber I’m fairly heavy. When I was a kid, I was reminded constantly that I lacked daintiness, and the knock-on insinuation was that I wasn’t “girlish” enough. For a long time that made me feel like less of a woman. Now, knowing better where those feelings came from, I insist that what I lack in daintiness I make up for in power, and that I’d much rather be powerful. And I’m proud of that.
The men who rode with us in Tuscany were all really good, very strong guys, and they were really generous in sharing tips and conversation as we covered the countryside. But I know it irked a bit when I rode by. On the last day, as we packed up our bikes, one asked me if I’d beaten any of the guys back to the hotel on our final climb; he may well have meant of the guys in the lead group, but the fact that he asked in the non-specific way he did made me wonder if he’d conveniently forgotten that I’d beaten him back by rather a good margin. Another made a point of telling me that the riders who had had to climb into the van for various reasons on the home stretch were remarking on how strong I was; this was a kind and supportive statement, but I also wondered if he made it because he thought I might warrant special praise for my strength, being a woman and all. (Am I imagining this? Possibly. The not-girl-enough woman who still lives in the back of my brain can’t help but ask.)
I want to be clear that none of these comments was made in a way I perceived as disrespectful, even as they bothered me a little – and in many ways that’s my point. If my fellow male riders were troubled that I “chicked” them a good few times, they never showed it to me. If they were managing anxiety about being passed by two strong women (and Jo!) on the Tuscan hills they did it well. In return, I want them to know that I have huge sympathy for any feelings of inadequacy they might experience as a woman passes them. After all, I have a lot of experience feeling inadequate as a woman, too.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do, in a mixed group of riders, is be open and free both with our praise for one another’s skills, and with our compassion for how one another might be feeling. When it comes to the perils of gendered expectation, after all, men and women are in this thing together.
Three of our amazing male riders – too strong for me to pass!
As I said in my post about fitness tourism, I’m trying my best not to stress about missing the usual workouts and instead to enjoy the opportunities that travel affords for doing different things.
One of the amazing things about Zurich, and Switzerland more generally, is how great the infrastructure is for cyclists. What this means is that lots and lots of people ride bikes–to the station, to their workplaces, to schools, to shopping.
There’s loads of bike parking all over the place. And most of the time, though the bikes are locked, they are not locked to anything. People feel generally comfortable leaving their bicycle untethered (though locked) outside of the main station in the middle of the busiest part of the city.
And what’s more, tourists (or anyone really) can borrow bikes for free through an initiative called “Zurirollt.”
Still and all, Zurich is a busy city not all that familiar to me, so my friend Diane and I opted for a guided cycling tour. This was high on my to-do list, and I’ve been watching the weather daily to see when a good time would be for it. Every day so far there’s been substantial rain in the forecast.
Our lucky break came on Monday morning. I heard from our guide, Bruno, from Toptrek Tours, the night before. We arranged to meet him at 9 a.m. on Monday by the cube clock in the Zurich Haufbanhof (main train station). He sent me this picture so we would know exactly where:
He assured us that the weather radar looked good, and also that he would have “emergency ponchos” for us if we ended up in heavier than a drizzle. We did encounter a little bit of rain, but for most of the four hours on the bikes we were in the clear. A bit chilly, not exactly a fine sunny day, but very little rain.
What’s great about a cycling tour of a new city is that you get to cover so much more ground than you otherwise would. Bruno was an excellent guide, with lots of local knowledge and a background in politics that made him more interesting than your average guide.
When I asked about good running spots, he showed me exactly where I should go for my morning run the next day.
There’s a paved path that runs through what used to be “needle park” (but has since been cleaned up) and along the river, past the public swimming baths (there are many in Zurich), and just generally out of the busy tourist and business districts and into a quieter part of town. I had an excellent run the next morning before the rain set in for the day again.
Running is another good way to see a place because, like cycling, you can cover a lot more ground than if you’re just walking. But walking has its place too. When I got back from my 5K run, Diane and I grabbed breakfast at the hotel and then wandered around the old part of town for the next few hours. By far, even with the cycling and the running, the majority of my vacation in Switzerland has been spent walking (with eating taking a close second).
The weather this week has been a bit of a let-down. We spent a very rainy day in Lucerne today, but since it was the only day we had we explored it on foot in the rain until we just couldn’t go another step.
Tomorrow, another run along the river, some more exploring across on the other side, one more lunch at Hiltl, the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Europe (established in 1898). Then it’s time to pack and head home. I look forward to getting my routine back, but I can truly say that this has been one of the more successful breaks from routine that I’ve ever spent in terms of integrating activity into my trip.
There’s a saying in alternative sex communities that’s getting wider airplay. It’s acronym is YKINMKBYKIOK. Your kink is not my kink but your kink is okay. It’s a big tent. I might like women with glasses. You might like men in rubber. Whatever. We don’t have to agree. It’s a matter of taste. Let many flowers bloom.
But not in the Maoist sense of letting flowers bloom. I found out last week that the complete version of that sentence is more like, let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend. The idea is that the truth will out and false flowers will wither. Or in the case of Mao’s regime the false flowers will be taken away to prison camps. But now I’m digressing.
There’s a version of this we taught our kids regarding food. Try new things but if you don’t like it you don’t have to eat it. When they were little, they would say, “Thank you but it’s not to my taste.”
And I recently read the same sentiment expressed by knitter and writer extraordinaire Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. In her Meditations for Women who knit too much she writes,
“As long as there has been knitting, there have been battles about it. There are self-described “yarn snobs” who from on using anything but natural fibers; “gauge snobs” who wouldn’t be caught dead with chunky yarn; and “experience snobs” who claim you can’t call yourself a real knitter until you abandon novelty yarn. The truth is that the knitting world is a tiny metaphor for the real world. It takes all kinds.” p. 111
(Although I’m not a knitter I love Stephanie’s blog The Yarn Harlot and I’m thrilled that I’m on her team for the Friends for Life bike rally.)
My mother even has a version of this saying: “It wouldn’t do if we all liked the same.”
What’s any of this got to do with cycling? Well, cycling is also a big tent with many tribes. See The Bike Snob’s Guide to Cycling Tribes.
There are the track cyclists, the fashionable cruising commuters, the fixed gear hipsters, the cyclocross fanatics, the mountain bikers, trick bikers, the road cyclists…
And where there are differences, then you can get conflict about who counts. Who is the real cyclist? What’s the one best way to ride a bike? As if there’s an answer.
Road cyclists are the fussiest. I asked in a previous blog post whether Road cyclists are to bike riding as analytic philosophers are to philosophy.
Road cyclists don’t just think road cycling is real cycling. They also think there is a right way to do it. For any variable–Where do the arms of your sunglasses go? Water bottles or camel back? Sock colour?–there’s just one way to get it right.
Road cycling’s rules would be funny, except some people take them seriously. A Facebook friend and fellow philosopher cyclist Tim Kenyon proposed an alternative set of rules.
“The Real Rules of Cycling
The Primary Rule
1. Ride your bike, because it is amazingly fun, and good for you, and good for others, and good for the environment. Just ride.
i. Ride your bike lots.
ii. Ride your bike safely and legally.
a. Make efforts to learn more about riding well.Secondary Rules
2. Do not act in ways that tend to obstruct other people’s satisfaction of Rule (1).
i. The sole and strict exception to Rule (2) concerns violations of (1.ii), which are to be discouraged even if this leads to modest short-term reductions in the satisfaction of (1.i).
ii. The usual considerations associated with treating persons as persons apply also in cycling. Rule (2) enjoins reasonable reflection on how other cyclists are apt to dispose themselves with respect to Rule (1) if they encounter aggressiveness, unkindness and assholery as part of their cycling experience.
iii. Rule (2) extends to actions and utterances that involve shaming, ridicule, or pretense to illusory superior knowledge on any matter not strongly empirically connected to the satisfaction of Rule (1). Such matters shall be known as BIKE HOMEOPATHY, and shall be understood as including, but not limited to: leg-shaving; sock length; whether a cyclist’s clothes “match”; the use of helmet visors or helmet mirrors; choices of hydration equipment; the use of seat bags, frame pumps, racks, or fenders; combinations of stem risers and stem orientation; perceived mismatches between equipment choices of various “seriousness”; and whether helmet straps overlap sunglasses.3. Help other people follow Rule (1) through sound advice, mentorship, example, and encouragement.
i. Give of your time and expertise off-bike to educate and support other riders, including but not limited to their efforts to follow (1.ii.a).
ii. At least occasionally make other people’s satisfaction of Rule (1) your primary aim while riding.
iii. Act in a way that minimizes violations of Rule (2) by others.
a. Do not respond to violations of Rule (2) in ways that themselves violate Rules (2) or (3), while understanding that violators of Rule (2) are apt to be heavily invested in cycling and may be reasonably engaged on their conduct without being dissuaded from cycling.
iv. Violations of (2.ii) and (2.iii) are to be met by bystanders with friendly but unmistakable responses, preferably on par with “We’re here for a fun time!” (for Rule 2.ii), or “Why don’t we teach about real things instead?” (for 2.iii); and in any case not to exceed the penalty of baptism, for a period of not longer than 1 (one) ride and post-ride discussion, with the title of “Crankypants” (Rule 2.ii) or “Doctor of Bike Homeopathy” (Rule 2.iii).”
And even among the community of road cyclists there are differences. I have friends who like the long haul, serious endurance athletes for whom 200 km is a short ride. There are others who crave speed and race up hills, sprint for town signs, any excuse for that competitive urge. All carbon fibre suffer fests, a friend dubbed those rides. Some of my road cyclist friends like riding in tight formation at a good steady clip. With those friends sprinting ahead is bad form. We ride as a unit.
I’m pretty much okay with all of this though my preference is for riding in a nice, tight group, with some regrouping at the tops of hills (Wait for me!) and well designated sprints.
This is a plea for tolerance. We don’t all have to like the same thing. But if we ride bikes, we’re all real cyclists.
I mentioned the other day that next on my fitness tourism list was a trip to Alpa Mare. It’s a place that I first visited when I was a teenager traveling in Europe after high school and before university. My aunt has always lived in Switzerland. When I spent about eighteen months backpacking around Europe, one of my favourite things to do was make periodic pitstops to spend time with her in Rapperswil, on the lake near Zurich.
She of course was always trying to find ways to keep me busy and new places to show me. One rainy day thirty years ago she first took me to Alpa Mare, a water spa on the other side of Lake Zurich in Pfifikon. For one ticket price, you had access to an indoor wave pool, and then you could swim from inside to outside through a little corridor with underwater music (which at the time I thought was unbelievably amazing) to an outdoor hotspring. Beside that is an even hotter pool, the iodine bath.
Both had bubble jets in seating areas at one end, and others that bubbled up from the bottom of the pool to massage your feet or, if you positioned yourself properly, your back. Both pools overlooked the lake on one side, the Alps on the other.
In the past, we used to go from there back inside and wander into the quiet solarium–loungers in a warm room with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the lake. If we felt like it, we could take a hot sauna followed by an icy plunge into a freezing cold water tank.
But the reality of Alpa Mare today doesn’t live up to the idyllic memory. For one thing, it’s re-purposed itself as a “family water park.” The wave pool has now been joined by a few water slides and a pool called Rio Mare. Rio Mare is a current pool shaped like a circular river. At regular intervals, the current starts up in a light, medium, or strong version and carries you away, as if you’re being taken down a river.
But the relaxing quiet stuff is now behind a pay wall. You can’t get to the saunas or solarium without paying a surcharge. The original price is already as steep as the hills all around town, and it just seemed wrong to pay extra for anything when we’d already paid close to $70 for the two of us to spend a few hours there.
We braved the waterslide if for no reason other than that we paid for it! I hope I have the same adventurous spirit as my aunt when I’m in my seventies. We each grabbed an inner tube and headed down the first chute, slammed with a face full of water at the bottom. I got stuck in one of the pools between chutes when I tried to regroup, and just went round and round and couldn’t get back into the downward current. Really, I just wanted it to be over. On the next level, the same thing happened to my aunt.
Okay. Off to Rio Mare. On the way there, she said to me, “Next time you want to come to Alpa Mare, I’m not coming with you.” Fair enough. But there isn’t going to be a next time.
Besides how it’s now marketed more for “family fun,” I think the main thing that lacked from my perspective was that it was all too passive. You go from one pool to the other and just sit there. You sit in the bubbles, you soak in the iodine, you let the river current take you away in Rio Mare, you hang onto your inner tube for dear life on the water slides. Even the sauna and the solarium, which we liked for their quiet, weren’t all that appealing anymore?
Why not? Because when I think of pools I think of swimming! I want to laps and drills and time trials. I like to watch the clock and track my pace. What I like about this trip to Alpa Mare is how it showed me how much I’ve changed in my attitude about physical health and what makes me feel good since I was a teen.
Back then, I sought leisure and relaxation. Now, I like to be active. When we left Alpa Mare, I still craved physical activity. Upon arrival at home, I grabbed my resistance bands and my workout sheet and improvised a resistance training session. After dinner that night, I talked my aunt into going for a walk with me (she lives in the most picturesque setting).
So I’m not really saying there is anything wrong with Alpa Mare. It’s still an impressive facility, well-maintained and attractive to many. It’s just not *my* style anymore. So my aunt doesn’t need to worry about disappointing her niece the next time I visit. She’s not the only one who is done with the waterpark.
Do you remember Beautiful Crissy the doll? (Warning: Answering this may date you.)
“Everyone knows that beautiful hair makes a girl look beautiful.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qubKoGIhzGU
1969. I was five years old.
It struck me as a terrific idea, still does. Long hair that you pull out when it’s useful, store away when it’s not.
Today this, 26 Badass Short Haircuts To Inspire Your Summer Look, came across my Facebook newsfeed and I was tempted to go shorter for the summer. But the thing is, I like my curls, and I only really get to appreciate them during the summer.
Here’s the winter problem: I’m at the gym, I workout and shower, and then there’s a polar vortex going on outside, and if I leave with wet hair, it freezes. I hate icicle head. So I blow dry it and then it’s straight. I don’t have the patience for marathon hair drying sessions so in the winter I keep my hair straight and short.
In the summer I have the luxury of letting it dry naturally curly, though I haven’t done the full on “curly girl” thing. So I tend to let it grow long and shaggy in the summer months, which kind of fits my not teaching, few meetings, some camping, lots of time on the bike summer program. Yes, I get lots of writing done but I can do that wearing summer dresses at work (see Riding bikes in skirts and dresses, totally fine if that’s your thing, here’s how) or shorts and tank tops at home. Not much of a dress code.
I tend not to stress over helmet hair. I’m not one of those people who is too cool to wear a helmet. But if you do worry about helmet hair there’s a great series of articles on the Total Women’s Cycling page about helmet appropriate hair styles. See http://totalwomenscycling.com/lifestyle/hairstyles-for-helmets-half-up-hair-tuck-22206/.
There’s also lots of very funky bike helmets out there. These from from the giggle guide are pretty cool.
But I’m still looking at the short hair pictures (though I know there atre advantages to pony tails they’re not my thing) and wondering how short I could go and still have curls….
Oh and I have complicated views about helmets. I’m opposed to laws requiring them for adults and in London I generally wear one. I don’t need a law to force me. But I rent bixi bikes happily in Montreal and go helmet free, ditto Amsterdam etc. I’ll blog about this issue sometime.
What’s your solution for combining an active lifestyle and summer time hair?
