Turns out that the truth sometimes isn’t what’s obvious or comfortable to believe. Some thing can seem true while being false, in fact. For example, I’ve long favoured approaches to nutrition that focus on the positive. Instead, of telling ourselves to eat less junk, we should instead focus on making sure we eat enough fruits and vegetable. And it’s true that eating enough fruits and vegetables is good for you, no matter what.
But here’s the rub. Sometimes it’s offered as an approach to weight loss. Don’t count calories or ban carbs (or whatever) just focus on making sure you eat enough of the good stuff. And you’ll lose weight. The idea is displacement. The thought is that carrots will take the place of cookies, arugula will be your go-to instead of apples, and you’ll eat fresh veggies before your meal instead of bread. That sounds right, doesn’t it?
“Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have found that increasing fruit and vegetable intake does not lead to weight loss, despite decades-old popular belief.
A team of investigators performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of data of more than 1,200 subjects in seven randomized, controlled trials to explore the weight loss effects of increasing fruit and vegetable consumption.
“Across the board, all studies we reviewed showed a near-zero effect on weight loss,” says study leader Kathryn Kaiser, Ph.D.,”
The displacement theory seems to be false, at least when it comes to fruits and vegetables. Randomized controlled trials are pretty much the gold standard when it comes to evidence.
“In the overall context of a healthy diet, energy reduction is the way to help lose weight, so to reduce weight you have to reduce caloric intake,” Kaiser said. “People make the assumption that higher-fiber foods like fruits and vegetables will displace the less healthy foods, and that’s a mechanism to lose weight; but our findings from the best available evidence show that effect doesn’t seem to be present among people simply instructed to increase fruit and vegetable intake.”
Three further things of note:
First, displacement seemed more effective when it comes to high protein foods. Simply adding two eggs for breakfast did reduce subjects’ overall calorie intake.
Second, the Precision Nutrition version of this theory comes with an additional tool, the idea that you only ever eat to 80% full. I wonder if that would make a difference.
Third, it’s still super healthy and good for you to eat the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables, even if doing so doesn’t lead to weight loss.
The saying “Once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget” Is true. The physical part of that saying is a given, and the one most people think of when they hear it, but what about the mental part? The freedom while riding a bike might be momentarily forgotten, but it comes flooding back once you mount up and ride, especially after a long absence.
I had forgotten how much fun riding a bike is. Much of my childhood was spent on a bike that had no gears. To break you peddled backwards. It had high rise handlebars and a banana seat. It remains to this day my favourite bike, even though it no longer exists. Many a weekend was spent racing down my grandparents laneway (they lived on a farm with a very long gravel drive) performing skids, doughnuts (or as complete as I could get them) and attempted wheelies. As you can imagine many a scraped knee and elbow were acquired and I wore those scabs like badges of pride. But it was the sensation of flying and the freedom it gave I enjoyed the most.
Currently, I’m in the process of restructuring parts of my life and want to start a fitness routine. I’m a chronic migraine sufferer and finally have them under control enough to have a somewhat regular life. (At this writing, however, I’ve just come through a six day migraine). I’m hoping some regular exercise will help with them.
It wasn’t until I started looking around recently and started noticing people cycling, that I started to seriously think about riding again. Inspired by a friend, I took the plunge and purchased a Diadora Modena city bike (ironically from a guy named Sam!)
With my recent purchase came the anticipation of the freedom of flying. The first couple of meters were wobbly, but then that familiar feeling returned. Oddly, another set of feelings sprang from flying – those of serenity and peace. There is a freedom like no other when riding a bike. The stress and concerns of everyday life disappear as the wind rushes over your face and coaxes your mind into a much better place. Call it the Zen of Cycling if you will.
For someone who used to game into the wee hours of the morning, I now look forward to the early morning and my ride around the neighbourhood before most people are awake – my secret flight before my day has to start (Although my parents happily report to me that they heard me leave and return). Eventually I would like to build up some distance and be able to ride to and from home and work. At least that is the goal I’m working on for next summer. (Building up some speed would make me very happy as well.)
My foray back into the world of cycling has also lead to an unexpected revelation – how complex but refined bicycles have become. I would spend time taking my old banana seat bike apart. I wanted to know how it worked, and as a result, I got pretty good at fixing and maintaining it. I would not even begin to dream of doing that with my current bike. Although, I don’t think I’ve lost all of my old touch as on my second ride out, while shifting gears, my chain jumped off the front set of gears. I did manage to get it back on the smallest gear. I took it back to the shop where they checked the bike over and thankfully nothing was wrong. The head technician was kind enough to show me not only how to shift gears properly, but what exactly happens to the chain while the gears are shifting, what cross-chain is (and why it’s bad) and why the chain can jump off the rails, sort of speak. What’s that old saying? Knowledge is power.
As I tiptoe into the cycling culture, I’m discovering a whole new set of terms and lingo (the linguist in me is performing cartwheels): cadence, crankshafts and derailleurs (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) are terms new to me. Being the dedicated student I am I’ve thrown myself into research to educate myself. I hope the friend who inspired me is ready for a barrage of questions.
Of course, along with the terms comes a whole barrage of apps (why am I not surprised) such as cadence and gear calculators and ride trackers. I enjoy a ride tracker called Exclo. It’s for the Android platform, gives me my time, distance (I was surprised to find my “little rides” are actually 2 km – much further than I thought I could go), speed, calories (although that I’m not much interested in), target pace and interval distance. It will show me a map of the route I took that ride and let me save each one. It also keeps a running total of all of my rides as well as letting me access each individual one. Not bad for a free app.
Although my Diadora is one of the best riding bikes I’ve ever owned, I am already eyeing my next bicycle (a Cannondale Quick CX 3) but I have to work up to that one. (I have a feeling that a certain n+1 formula is going to get me into trouble!)
For now, though, I’m enjoying the serenity of my early morning flying time. I think the saying “Once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget” should be amended to “Once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget, and you’re welcome back anytime.”
I’m a 47 year old feminist who’s currently back in school to finish my degree in anthropology. I’m a geekette gamer who’s recently rediscovered the joy of cycling. I’m also a chronic migraine sufferer who’s trying to steal back the first half of a stolen life.
In less than 10 days, I’m going to be running my first triathlon (sprint distance)! In preparation for the cycling portion of the race, I decided to give clipless pedals a try. As I’m sure pretty much everyone who reads this blog is aware by now, clipless pedals are a bit of a misnomer. Clipless pedals are actually pedals which involve you, yes, clipping in your shoes so that they stay on the pedal. The benefit is supposed to be more efficient power transfer. The drawback, of course, is that you are literally stuck to your bicycle.
Because I wasn’t sure if they were going to be for me, I searched online to see if I could find an inexpensive used pair rather than sinking a good deal of money into what is already a gear-heavy sport. As luck would have it, I found someone selling a pair of pedals and women’s cycling shoes with cleats in just my size at a great discount. I met up with her and asked why she was selling. She told me that bought them for her first triathlon. They put the pedals on in the shop and she went to test them out in the parking lot – and promptly fell over and broke her wrist. She said she didn’t want to use them after that, and she just wanted to get rid of them. Yikes! Still, I bought them, reminding myself of all the people I know who ride clipless all the time and haven’t broken bones (at least not that I know of).
My partner, Kevin, is a much more experienced cyclist. I recruited him to help me get the hang of the cleats and pedals in a dirt parking lot next to our apartment. The first thing he had me do was lean against a wall and practice clipping in and unclipping with one foot – then switch and try the other foot. Once I was confident I knew the motion of unclipping, I could try it in motion.
“The key thing,” he said, “is to make sure you clip one foot in, then pedal a bit to get up some speed. Then you clip in the other foot – once you’re moving.”
Right. Got it. Makes perfect sense. Don’t clip in the other foot until I’m moving.
I clipped in my first foot… and then promptly (instinctively!) plonked my other foot down on the other pedal.
As if in slow motion, I fell into Kevin, who was, of course, still standing right next to me. You know, since I hadn’t moved. D’oh!
Well, lesson learned – the next try went better. I got going, clipped both feet in, unclipped, and came to a stop. Victory! I wondered, though – what would happen if I needed to stop very suddenly? Would I be able to stop and unclip at the same time? Let’s try it in the parking lot! The answer is no. No, I cannot come to an abrupt stop and unclip at the same time. Once again I tipped over onto Kevin.
After my practice session I was determined to get some real experience. My first outing or two into Toronto traffic actually went fine. I unclipped well ahead of any lights and pedaled one-legged when I needed to.
But, I was warned, everyone falls with clipless pedals. Everyone.
My first fall came when I was turning right at a red light. The car ahead of me was stopped, right turn signal on. There were no pedestrians crossing. No sign announcing “no rights on red.” I slowed, wondering why the car wasn’t turning. I didn’t want to turn right and then have the car turn right over top of me. As I was wondering what to do, I slowly came to a stop – a stop I hadn’t planned on, of course.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” I cried as I fell in slow-motion to the curb, helpless to stop myself. Some people at the curb gave me concerned and puzzled expressions. I pulled myself up and confided to the guy standing with his bike beside me, “You see, that’s why I’m riding clipless right now! To get used to them. Like this.” As if it were all part of my master plan. He smiled politely and I rode away, nursing a tender bruise on the knee.
My second fall wasn’t quite a fall, but it scared me anyways. I was filtering by some cars and came across a white sports car that was very close to the curb. I decided that there wasn’t enough space to pass, so I slowed to a stop without thinking much about it… and again, started to fall. This was shortly after reading a comment someone had written on Sam’s facebook about how they fell into a car and had to pay for damages. Realizing I didn’t have any insurance, all I could think was to fall AWAY from the fancy white sports car! I managed to get a foot out in time, so no damage was done, to me or the car, thankfully.
After I shared that experience with Kevin, he commented how resilient I was being, riding clipless in the city. I was proud. Yes, I was being resilient. I was conquering the clipless!
The third fall was perhaps the most embarrassing. It’s a situation that has been blogged about here before. I had unclipped one foot in advance of coming to a stop, just as I’m supposed to. And then I put my weight down on the side that was still clipped in. Down I went. Sigh.
After that I decided I wasn’t really that resilient after all. I came up with a new plan. My bike has a rack and I have a pannier. In the city, I use regular running shoes. Once I get down to the trail where everything is less stop-and-go, out come the cleats from my pannier and I go clipless. It may look silly, but for now it’s been a great compromise, and I have to say, it really is great fun when I can get going fast with the clipless pedals without worrying about traffic. And I haven’t fallen since. (Knock on wood!)
Stephanie is a PhD candidate in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. She is also a runner, photographer, drinker of craft beer, and a newbie triathlete-in-training.
Sam wrote about “Nipple Phobia and Padded Sports Bras” way back in the early days of the blog. There she lamented the ubiquity of the padded sports bra (indeed, the padded bra more generally). Where we used to be able to find lots of unpadded bras and sports bras, nowadays it’s a real search.
Part of the reason for this, hypothesized Sam, is that we are caught in the grips of nipple phobia. We don’t want to see them or show them. As Sam said, they’ve become what the visible panty-line used to be — an unsightly reminder of the natural bodies that actually live under our clothing.
Enter the Tata top. This bikini top got a lot of press last week on-line. From a distance, if you’re a white woman with an average sized chest wearing the light-tone Tata, it looks from afar as if you’re going topless.
Tata bikini top for light skin and pink nipples.
I say if you’re a white woman because the medium tone and dark tone Tatas are not yet available. They are expected to ship in mid-August. I say if you’re “average sized” because at present the tops are only available in small (A-B) and medium sizes (B-C). Anything larger than a C-cup is also on backorder, with this apology to larger women from the creators: “LARGE CHESTED LADIES…WE UNDERESTIMATED YOU BUT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!”
The Tata top is supposed to help fight breast stigma, topless inequality, and nipple phobia. According to this Daily Beast article, it’s meant to help fight gender inequality. That makes it sound like a feminist statement if there ever was one. The article continues:
The underlying goal of the bikini, however, is meant to desexualize the idea of female nipples and eliminate gendered double standards. Why should it be laughable, or even uncomfortable, for a woman to bare her breasts in public?
“By censoring an image of a woman’s chest and not a man’s it doesn’t end with removing that image from your platform,” Graves and Lytle conclude. “Whether you like it or not you are confirming that YES, a woman’s nipples are indecent and are something that need to be kept covered. You are endorsing that train of thought. You take yourself out of the business of providing a forum for free thinking and place yourself in the position of deciding what is immoral and what isn’t.”
So why, then, is there such an outcry among some feminists about this top? Well, there are a number of reasons. The most common is that the first iteration — marketed to and for women with bodies that are white and slight — sends an unmistakable message about normative bodies.
The Jezebel article ends with this remark: “Like many aspects of modern-day feminism, right now, this one’s only available to women with light skin and disposable income. But the inventors of the Ta Ta Top promise that more colors are coming soon.”
The medium tone Tata top, available in mid-August.
The various attempts on the website to apologize, first to the “large-chested ladies” whom they “underestimated,” and then to women with “medium” or “dark” skintones don’t really succeed in overcoming the oversight. To the women with different skintones, they offered not so much an apology as a promise that the medium and dark tops will arrive and an excuse as to why they aren’t yet available:
Will you have other skin tones?
Absolutely but first we need to prove a market! Investing money and ending up with one TaTa Top is funny. Investing money in three tones and ending up with 2,000 TaTa’s is slightly less so. The more we sell the more tones and more styles we will able to offer. Take our TaTa Top poll to help us decide which direction to take next.
The “What’s Next?” poll on the Tata website focuses on extra small and extra large sizing and the turns to fashion, with four different piercing choices.
I also heard some people raising the usual questions about initiatives that raise their profile by aligning themselves with charities to support the already over-supported cause of breast cancer research. It might sound callous to roll one’s eyes whenever yet another thing promotes itself by raising money for breast cancer research, but the pink ribbon thing has many detractors, who complain about “pinkwashing”:
The term “pinkwashing” was coined by Breast Cancer Action in reference to companies that either promote breast cancer awareness without donating at all, are deceptive or not transparent about where any funds raised go, or put a pink ribbon on a product with known or suspected links to cancer.
By far the most interesting comment came to my from fellow feminist philosopher Kristin Rodier, who took issue with the claim that linked body exposure to freedom, and who very quickly asked about the range of sizes available. In order to further elaborate the point about exposure as freedom, she sent me Kelly Oliver’s paper, “Sexual Freedom as Global Freedom.”
The paper focuses on the Western “rhetoric of liberating ‘women of cover.” Oliver argues that we in the west have reduced women’s freedom “to freedom to to dress (especially in revealing clothes for the eyes of others), governed by market forces of fashion and consumerism.” She further claims that “this view of women’s freedom is used to justify military action elsewhere, and to reassure Western women of their own freedom at home. The rhetoric of liberating women elsewhere conceals women’s oppression here at home while at the same time reassuring us that we are liberated.”
How does the Tata top fit into this picture? By purporting to address the issue of women’s oppression through a top that mimics maximum exposure of women’s upper bodies. We may not (yet) have a achieved full gender equality because men can go topless while (for the most part) women cannot, but the Tata top is here to save the day.
I think the original limited offerings of this item only to light skinned women with pink nipples and A-C sized breasts demonstrates well whose nipple freedom “we” as a society will tolerate. Not everyone’s exposed skin is equally welcome, and when non-normative bodies are exposed, there is a different social meaning, a different kind of statement being made. It’s not just “fun.”
I get the impression from the website and different articles I’ve read that the company is not quite sure how to market the top. The equality card is one angle. But they also claim to be wanting to normalize the breast and nipple so that they’re de-sexualized. Somewhere on the site it talks about normalizing the sight of women breast-feeding in public, which certainly is a worthwhile cause.
But the website isn’t wholly on board with the desexualization of the breast, and in fact when I first went to the website last week it included a “warning” that said: ““Disclaimer: Wearers are cautioned to be prepared for the onslaught of pick up lines it is sure to elicit.” That message, which seems to celebrate the top as an expression of sexuality, has since been removed (or at least I couldn’t find it when I went back).
I also think that the top is likely to have more applications as a novelty item than as an item that plays a huge role in achieving gender equality. I think the size and skintone gaffes, as well as the more pointed perspective expressed in Oliver’s paper about how Westernized this idea of freedom through revealing clothing, raise serious questions about the top’s capacity to promote an inclusive feminist agenda.
By nature I’m an introverted person. I don’t dislike strangers but usually I’m happy to smile at them from a distance.
For some reason, it’s different when I’m on my bike. People approach me to chat about my bike. What kind is it? (Cannondale, Super Six, Hi Mod) How fast does it go? How far did I ride?
So the other day I was just back from a ride sitting outside the Convent Garden Market eating my favourite soup, sweet potato chowder, and waiting for my flat white (a down under espresso drink we’ve taught the coffee shop to make). It was sunny and warm and I was with my bike, happy times.
A young woman walking with braces approached my table. “Can I look at your bike? ”
“Sure.”
“I’m a cyclist too.”
I nod.
“I ride a hand cycle.”
She explained how her bike worked which was frankly fascinating. I didn’t know about hand cycles. Did you?
Here’s the Wikipedia definition: A handcycle is a type of human-powered land vehicle powered by the arms rather than the legs, as on a bicycle.
“A one-armed man in Germany has received a full apology and refund from the police after an overzealous officer fined him for cycling using only one arm.
Bogdan Ionescu, a theatre box office worker from Cologne, gets around the usually cycle-friendly city using a modified bicycle that allows him to operate both brakes – one with his foot.
But on 25 March he was pulled over by a police officer who, he says, told him he was breaking the law.
Under German road safety rules, bicycles are required to have to have two handlebar brakes. After a long argument at the roadside, the officer insisted that Mr Ionescu’s bike was not roadworthy and issued him with a €25 (£20) fine.”
It ends well at least. They’ve since apologized and refunded the fine. Good call.
The article asks: “Would you go on an ice-cream diet to lose weight? New cleanse prescibes FIVE PINTS a day for four days straight.”
Let’s start with my answer to the question: No.
I don’t care if it’s dairy-free. Even if it were completely vegan (it’s got honey in it, so I’m kind of surprised that they’re claiming to be a vegan ice cream shop). I would not go on an ice cream cleanse to lose weight or to “detox.” And I especially wouldn’t pay $240 for it!
Here’s are the deets:
Kippy’s, a vegan ice-cream store in Venice, is offering a $240 cleanse in which dieters eat five pints of raw coconut-based ice-cream a day for four straight days.
The cleanse, which amounts to 1,000-1,200 calories and 70 grams of fat per day and boasts 20-25 grams of sugar per ice-cream pint, is designed to help people lose weight and achieve a clearer state of mind.
What you get is four days worth of ice cream and you eat it five times a day. They’ve got a “master cleanse” flavor and a “Superfoods” flavor, as well as dark chocolate with Himalayan fire salt, coconut yogurt (for breakfast), and orange creme.
There are lots of reasons I wouldn’t do this.
First, you can’t lose weight in four days and expect to keep any of it off. The journalist who tried out the cleanse learned this first hand:
A reporter for Gizmodo, who reviewed the ice-cream cleanse with his girlfriend, revealed that despite their typical cleanse grovels (missing the feeling of chewing, salty foods, and solid foods in general), they both lost a similar amount of weight – approximately six pounds each.
But he admitted that ‘in the span of one long weekend, I managed to put all of that cleanse-weight back on (plus another pound or so).’
No surprises there.
Moving on: all this talk of “cleanses” is just ridiculous. This article on the website “Science-Based Medicine” talks about the whole “detox”/”cleanse” trend as a scam ($240 for four days of ice cream, anyone?) and gives suggestions about how to avoid it. According to the article, the premise that our bodies ingest and accumulate toxins that we need to cleanse ourselves of is just plain bad science:
Today’s version of autointoxication argues that some combination of food additives, gluten, salt, meat, fluoride, prescription drugs, smog, vaccine ingredients, GMOs, and perhaps last night’s bottle of wine are causing a buildup of “toxins” in the body. But what is the actual “toxin” causing harm? It’s nothing more than a meaningless term that sounds scientific enough to be plausible. A uniform feature of detox treatments is the failure to name the specific toxins that these rituals and kits will remove.
The colon remains ground zero for detox advocates. They argue that some sort of toxic sludge (sometimes called a mucoid plaque) is accumulating in the colon, making it a breeding ground for parasites, Candida (yeast) and other nastiness. Fortunately, science tells us otherwise: mucoid plaques and toxic sludge simply do not exist. It’s a made-up idea to sell detoxification treatments. Ask any gastroenterologist (who look inside colons for a living) if they’ve ever seen one. There isn’t a single case that’s been documented in the medical literature. Not one.
We see this vagueness about cleansing and what is to be cleansed in the claims made by Kippy’s coconut ice cream diet: “It helps us digest, repairs the gut, feeds the brain, boosts the metabolism and is a powerful agent of detoxification,” or so claim its developers and purveyors.
That the offending toxins are either unnamed or, if named, invented or falsely identified, leads to the debunking of the second assumption of cleanses: that the toxins are the root of illness.
And the final suspect claim is that these detox regimens and cleanses remove toxins. According to the article, “there is no evidence to demonstrate that detox kits do anything at all.”
Yeah so what that says to me is that the very idea of a cleanse of any kind is just a waste of time and money. My radar for that sort of thing is fairly sharp. I just have to hear the word “detox” or “cleanse” and my hackles go up.
And I think too that there’s a ton of slippage between the cleanse motive and the weight-loss motive. If you challenge someone about a detox on the grounds that they’re not going to lose weight and keep it off, they will claim that what they’re really doing is detoxing.
Another thing worth pointing out is that there are medical applications of the term “detox.” It refers to a pretty horrible process of withdrawal that people addicted to substances like alcohol or narcotics go through when they are attempting to quit, or people who have ingested poison have to go through to literally clean out their systems. So it’s not a completely bogus idea, it’s just not the sort of thing that is covered in things like an ice cream diet or a cayenne and lemon juice drink or a “rapid cleanse” (which sounds just scary).
Here’s the conclusion of the article I’ve been referring to from the Science-Based Medicine website:
Any product or service with the words “detox” or “cleanse” in the name is only truly effective at cleansing your wallet of cash. Alternative medicine’s ideas of detoxification and cleansing have no basis in reality. There’s no published evidence to suggest that detox treatments, kits or rituals have any effect on our body’s ability to eliminate waste products effectively. They do have the ability to harm however – not only direct effects, like coffee enemas and purgatives, but the broader distraction away from the reality of how the body actually works and what we need to do to keep it healthy. “Detox” focuses attention on irrelevant issues, and gives consumers the impression that they can undo lifestyle decisions with quick fixes. Improved health isn’t found in a box of herbs, a bottle of homeopathy, or a bag of coffee pushed into your rectum. The lifestyle implications of a poor diet, lack of exercise, smoking, lack of sleep, and alcohol or drug use cannot simply be flushed or purged away. Our kidneys and liver don’t need a detox treatment. If anyone suggests a detox or cleanse to you, you’d do well to ignore the suggestion, and question any other health advice they may offer.
So I’m saving my money. I have nothing against coconut ice cream, by the way. I love it. But I’m not about to spend $240 for a four-day supply, eat it as my only meal for days in a row, and try to fool myself that I can use it to improve my health.
Thoughts from our frequent quest blogger and all around wonderful person Nat on what you can do when you can’t race. Looks like I might be joining her on the sidelines at Kincardine. Can’t think of better company. I’ll be there, if not running, cheering on Tracy, and my daughter, Mallory, and my sister in law, Susan.
It’s been just over two years now that I have been able to run 5k. Sometimes it’s a bit more, sometimes less but give me enough lead time and I can work up to run that distance without too much issue. I have run by myself, run with my dog, run with my friend and run with my 13 year old on her bike, keeping her judgemental eye on my time and the redness of my complexion. I have run in a few races and I love how they motivate me.
There is one race, however, that motivates me best, the Pride and Remembrance Run, held each year in Toronto on the last Saturday of Pride Week. It was founded in 1996, The Pride and Remembrance Run has become an annual tradition promoting and fostering community spirit, goodwill, volunteerism and sportsmanship in the LGBT community. (http://priderun.org/remembrance/)
I would like to share the things I love about this race.
First of all, it starts at 10am. This is both good and bad because if it’s going to be a 30 degree day, it’s already 25 by 10. However, asking a few thousand Queers and their friends and allies to show up any earlier than 10am on a Saturday morning of Pride is a joke so go on, sleep in until 8. Have a leisurely coffee and your pre-race snack of choice. Then, start on your hair, make up, ribbons, feathers and rainbows. I personally can’t run in this stuff but it is amazing what people are willing to put on for the show.
I love sneaking quietly out of my friends’ apartment at 9:15 and leaving a fresh pot of coffee for them as they begin to wake up. I love the walk to the starting line at Church and Wellesley, the heart of Toronto’s Gay Village. The runners converge from all corners of this unique residential and commercial neighbourhood. We line up together, teams, individuals, partners, lovers and friends. There is a giddiness to the crowd because this is a Big Gay Run and we are all here together sharing in the serious silliness, coupled with a deep knowledge of past struggle and tragic loss.
Lined up with us are a city counsellor, the Premier of Ontario and two Mayoral candidates. The shifting political sands of the city feel hopeful under our runner clad feet.
There are two start cannons (full of confetti, of course). The first is for the serious people, the under 15 minutes people, the “I’m on my second lap of Queen’s park before you even make it past Bay Street” people. After the second cannon, we are off, trying not to wipe out on multi-coloured paper littering the street and feeling like the wind.
After the first 10 minutes of elation, it’s like any other race. It is too hot and too sunny and I feel like I want to die. But I run, full of joy and of community. I run with these people, who are still too often “those people”, and they are my people.
I finished with a time of 35:30. My phone said it was a 5.5k run. If so, that was about a 6:30/km pace, which is outstanding for me. Or maybe it wasn’t that fast. It doesn’t matter. I’m full of Pride.
