Feminist reflections on fitness, sport, and health
Here’s my favourite cycling inspired cake:
And here’s a birthday selfie for good measure!
It’s a good thing we changed the name of the blog–thanks Tracy–now she’s almost 50 still but I’m already there.
Had an easy 50 km ride Saturday, will do 100 on Monday, but today I’ll be eating cake, dancing, and splashing about in the hot tub.
Today is Sam’s birthday. Happy 50th Sam! Have a fabulous day and an even better year. You are truly inspiring. I can only dream of cycling as fast as you do by the time I’m 50!
Love,
Tracy
Last year at the end of the season, I purchased a Swift Algonquin 16 Kevlar Fusion canoe with carbon Kevlar trim. It comes in at a whopping 35lbs and I love it. I have christened her “The Catnoe” for #reasons and this year I took her on her maiden trip with Sam for three days and two nights in back country Algonquin Park.
First, a pop quiz. . .how many other canoes do you think we encountered with two women identified people in them? Don’t just jump to the first conclusion, think for a minute. . .naw, I’m just kidding. Your first conclusion is likely totally correct. The answer is none. It was just us. We saw two male gendered people, we saw male and female (male in the stern of course) but there were no other women tripping partners to be seen. This is consistent with my 6 years of annual trips to the park. I am almost always in the only two woman canoe, with the exception of a group of 5 women (2 canoes and one kayak) we saw two years ago.
I’ve been thinking about why this is for all 6 years I’ve been doing it so I’d like to share some of those musings here, in light of the spectacularly successful Catnoe excursion.
I first tripped when I was at overnight camp about 32 years ago. It was awful. My shoes got wet. I didn’t have a sleeping pad for the ground. The mosquitoes were in the tent and I didn’t like doing my business in the woods. Yet somehow, I went back to it as a staff about 5 years later. I think it was because it seemed to me that the cool kids were volunteering for trips. It may also have had to do with that Israeli, gymnast, ex-paratrooper person who was on the trip but we won’t pay any mind to that now. My most vivid memory of the trip was of my unit head grasping the yolk of the canoe, yanking it up to sit on her thighs and then magically hoisting it over her head. I had never seen a woman do that before. This was not made of Kevlar either. It was aluminum. It was on this trip that I learned about multiple pairs of socks and the necessity of drying your footwear as much as possible between soakings. I had hiking boots instead of sneakers. I think I may have had a pad to sleep on in the tent too. I played with camp cooking and I sterned my own boat. I came back to camp dirty and stinky and proud of myself. Over all, a total success.
It was not until 20 years later that I finally went out again on a portaging canoe trip. There are some things you have to accept when agreeing to go on a back country trip. You will get dirty and stay kinda dirty. You will use every part of your body to its maximum at various points in the trip. You will struggle. You will occasionally feel some pain. You will get bug bites and at some point, you will be alone at night in the forest sitting on a wooden box with a hole in it doing your business.
Let’s face facts, none of these things are the kind of things most girls are brought up to expect to enjoy. I was certainly not brought up with the idea that this was a fun thing to do. I got the idea because of who I hang out with (and I’m so grateful for that). However, I have learned to love them. Surprisingly, sitting on the aforementioned box (a privy) is one of the more pleasant things about camping in Algonquin. It’s far better than sitting in an enclosed space doing the equivalent activity. Even in a light mist, it’s quite refreshing.
I love the challenge of getting from one place to another. I love figuring out how to cook yummy things with my camp burner. I love the little comforts, a good sleeping bag, mat and tent, a book, a cup of coffee, dry socks. I love swimming in wicked cold water I would normally not bother to swim in. I love not looking in the mirror for 3 days. Of course there is the actual place, so beautiful and further in, so serene you can feel like you are the only human for kilometers, even if you are not really.
But back to the canoe. The one limiting factor for me has always been that extraordinary act of flipping that sucker on my head. My customary tripping partner (Sarah) is a life-long athlete whose physical strength and attitude have always leaned toward “of course I can do that”. And so, she does. In all years past, she has been chief canoe-flipper-upper. I have carried it occasionally (either the 45 lb version or, one time her 60 lb canoe) but always with her help to get it up and only for the shorter distances (200m). It meant I always had to have a person with me who could carry the canoe. That meant her or someone else, maybe a man. I know there are other women in my larger friend circle who can do it but they aren’t close enough to be going on trips with me. Like I said, not a lot of two women canoe partners in the park or available generally, even when most of my women friends are queer identified.
Enter the Catnoe. She is so eminently flip-up-able. She allowed me to master the technique without being afraid I’d accidentally take my head off. She allowed me to say, when Sarah couldn’t go, “Hey, Sam! Will you let me take you into the back woods for a trip?” and know that no matter what, even if Sam couldn’t carry the canoe, I could! If something bad happened and I had to go get help, I could. I had the capacity to fill any role on the excursion and let me tell you, that is power. A whole world opened up to me.
(Just to be clear. . .Sam could carry the canoe, I just didn’t let her.)
I could have done more overhead presses and heavier squats. Then I could have a hope of working with the 45 lb canoe. But, my Catnoe has let me have access to this entire experience now, without my usual fears. It has also likely given me the muscle memory to flip that 45 pounder up there if I had to and so launched me on a path to even more freedom.
Isn’t this the reason why we struggle to acquire fitness and if it isn’t, shouldn’t it be? I’m 46 years old and next summer, as long as my 71 year old mom can get up and get down from a sitting position on the ground, I’m taking her in to the park with me. I will set her up on a chair at the end of the portage and I will bring the pack and the canoe. I will feel powerful and happy and free. What else can you ask for?
Two pieces of news with interesting connections.
First, there’s a class account lawsuit by American parents against Fifa over concussion risk to young soccer players. See http://m.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28961233
A group of young American footballers and their parents have sued Fifa and US football groups over the risks from concussions.
The California class-action lawsuit accuses the sport’s governing bodies of acting “carelessly and negligently” and failing to protect young players.
The filing also calls for new safety rules, including limiting the number of headers for young players
Second, there have also been reports about the higher concussion risk for girls playing soccer. See the Wall Street Journal.
Researchers aren’t sure why girls are more likely to suffer concussions, but theorize it’s because girls’ neck muscles are not as strong or because they are more likely to report their injuries. Most concussions result from collisions with another player, not from heading the ball, says Matthew Grady, a pediatric sports medicine specialist at the Children Hospital of Philadelphia.
Most leagues require players who show symptoms of concussions (such as loss of consciousness, headache, dizziness, confusion or balance problems) to be cleared by a medical professional before returning to the field. The practice became an official rule of the NFHS this past school year.
And also the Washington Post.
Since 2008, high school girls’ soccer players have reported an average of 14 concussions per 10,000 games played (a game is equal to one game played by one player). The figure is nearly twice the average for boys’ soccer (7.30), and only football (27) and boys’ hockey (18) have reported more concussions than girls’ soccer.
I’m not sure why I find this shocking. But I do. I think I’m making the same mistake I’ve accused others of making. See Dangerous Sports and Assumptions and Gender and Risk.
I guest blogged over at Impact Ethics about the ice bucket challenge:
“I haven’t done the ice bucket challenge, though my son, my sister-in-law, and lots of my friends have done it. I come pretty close to being the perfect subject for the challenge: I like charity challenges (I recently took part in the Friends for Life Bike Rally); and, in this case, the cause is close to home for my family. We lost my children’s grandmother, my husband’s mother, to ALS this winter. More recently, a good friend of mine has been diagnosed with ALS. I’ve learned a lot about ALS and death doesn’t seem to be the worst thing about it. Rather, it’s living with ALS that’s tough. ALS is an awful disease.”
Read the rest here:
I was standing watching the children’s class, waiting for my adult aikido class to begin, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was my aikido sensei (teacher).
“I saw your name in the paper.”
I winced. The organization that I work for had recently had some bad press. I handle PR for the company, and had been quoted in one of the news stories.
“It’s just like on the mat,” Sensei said, and made a sweeping motion with his hands, as if stepping out of the way of an attack and throwing off an invisible assailant.
I held my breath as my mind processed this idea. I had fallen in love with aikido the very first class I’d attended, but it wasn’t until Sensei suggested that aikido was more than just a fun physical activity with a practical purpose (self-defence) that I began to understand its deeper value.
I’ve never been interested in sports, and until I started aikido in March of this year, my physical activity had consisted of exclusively solitary pursuits – walking, hiking, yoga, bodyweight exercises. Sam had been encouraging me to come out to aikido for years, but there was always something else going on in my life, and the beginner classes on Tuesday evenings or Saturday mornings never seemed to fit into my schedule.
Then suddenly I’d run out of excuses, and realized that I really did want to try aikido. I already had a sense that I would like the people – I had engaged some of the volunteer black belts from the school to come give a presentation on self-defence at my workplace a few years earlier, and they looked like they were having a lot of fun “hurting” each other. It remains one of my company’s highest-rated staff development presentations.
Other than that, however, I had no clue what I was going to experience. I went to my first class in yoga pants and a t-shirt like the club’s website suggested, and asked one of the brown belts what I should do. Thankfully Sam showed up before class started, and shepherded me around for most of the hour.
Five months later, I’ve graduated to a yellow belt (one step above absolute beginner), and I’m regularly attending four classes per week. Aikido is one of the very best things in my life, and I’m a blissfully obsessed with, addicted to, and entranced by this Japanese martial art. A big piece of that obsession is trying to figure out the lesson Sensei was trying to teach me all those weeks ago – how could I use aikido in every moment of my life, not just on the mat?
Six things I love about aikido:
Six things I’m not so keen about:
As awful as the above may sound, I do love aikido. I don’t want to give it up. I’ve been reading about several famous black belts’ experiences with aikido, and many of them talk about taking one class and being hooked. That’s what it was like for me – aikido was beautiful and mysterious, and I wanted to keep learning it. My sensei talks about being drawn to aikido and not quite knowing why you’re drawn to it. As woo-woo as that sounds, it’s true for me. I keep practising on the mat so that I can take aikido’s lessons off the mat, into my everyday life.
Six things Sam likes about and struggles with in aikido
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Michelle Lynne Goodfellow works in nonprofit and small business communications by day, and also enjoys writing, taking photographs, making art and doing aikido. You can find more of her work at michellelynnegoodfellow.com. Michelle has also written about her breast cancer journey on her blog, Kitchen Sink Wisdom.
I don’t know about your summer, but mine – most of which was spent on a lake north of Toronto, Canada – was not much of a summer at all, weather-wise. For the last part of June, all of July, and most of August the temperature did not rise above 30 degrees Celsius (86F) and many days, it barely hit 20 (68F). Most of July was spent under dark clouds and rain. Not ideal conditions for outdoor running (or outdoor anything, for that matter). Compounded with this was the rampant mosquito problem. This year they were positively vicious. Not only were they out in dense swarms, they were also quadruple the size much hungrier than other years.
But I was determined not to let this weather hiccup prevent me from doing one of the things that I love most, namely, running on long, winding, hilly, tree-lined country roads. The problem, however, was that I had to deal with these hungry little beasts. Rummaging through a closet, I found a full body bug suit, which included a zip-up over-the-face hood (see photo). The only part of my body that was not shielded by a dense screen of net were my hands, but the suit was large enough that I could fit my hands up into the sleeves, put the excess material into my fists, and be entirely covered. Zipped up, zipped in, and protected from the vicious pests, I was ready to go.
And off I ran.
Now indeed, the bug suit protected me from actually getting bitten. But even combined with some good old bug spray, it didn’t keep the bugs away. Few things are more irritating than the sound of mosquitoes buzzing in your ears and all around you. That high pitched sound is enough to drive anyone batty. So at my usual pace, I found myself running and at the same time flailing my arms around to keep the bugs out of my path. I must have been quite the sight. What I found, however, was that the faster I ran, the less the bugs bothered me. Apparently mosquitoes either don’t like, or can’t keep up with speed (probably the former since I’m not that fast).
I set out to go for regular, relaxed-paced runs where my goal was simply to avoid getting gorged by mosquitoes. But my July runs turned into impromptu interval training sessions, not in order to increase my speed or endurance, but really just to keep the bugs away. And it was a success (in terms of keeping them away, and maybe even on both fronts, but as I’ve written here before, I don’t track my speed).
What came to mind while performing this act was the last time I was forced to sprint against my will. In that case, the context was quite different. I was living in Cambridge, MA and it was winter. The temperature was sub-zero and I was dressed accordingly in my winter running pants, an over-sized windbreaker, a neck warmer that covered most of my face, and a large, warm hat. I was on my daily morning run along Mt. Auburn Street, en route to the river. I saw a man walking toward me. As I passed him, he gave me a penetrating stare and told me what he wanted to do with/to my body.
My heart started to race. I was horrified, petrified, and so taken aback that I just kept running, faster and faster, to get away from him as quickly as I could. As the pit in my stomach grew, I thought of all sorts of witty comebacks that I could have said, but of course, they came too late (as they always do).
As my heart returned to normal, I came to the point in my run where I turn around and head home. And on my way back, I saw him again: again, walking toward me. There was no side street onto which to turn and nowhere to cross the busy street, so I sped up, heart racing, all of the witticisms escaping from my mind. My goal was to pass him as quickly as possible without making eye contact. A part of me wanted to shout, but that would have required giving him a response (which is clearly one of the things he wanted) and more attention than he deserved, so I started to sprint, which I guess he liked because again, he repeated what he wanted to do to/with my body.
I sprinted home and never saw him again.
Alone on a quiet Canadian country road sprinting to escape the bugs brought this other involuntary sprinting exercise to mind. Both were obviously unpleasant, though while one is manageable and tolerable, the other is not.
One thing goes without saying: if ever I’m forced to sprint, I’ll take sprinting from bugs any day over sprinting from predators.
On going back to school and starting as you mean to continue
Reasons to start riding in the fall
A good reminder going into Autumn
Switching gears at the start of the school year
I’ve had an amazing experience this week. After feeling demoralized and discouraged about cycling, I’ve actually re-discovered that feeling of “whee!” on my bicycle.
It was a feeling I’d all but lost, as I approached cycling with a “go further, get faster” attitude this summer. Instead of liking it more, I faced the prospect of riding with dread. Basically, I lost the desire to ride my bike.
Thankfully, this didn’t extend to my commuter bike. I’m still enjoying the simplicity of hopping on the hybrid and riding the bike path to work. The hill at the end of the ride has gotten easier and easier to climb. I am pretty sure I’m getting there faster each week that goes by.
But this week I really started over. I’m on vacation in Nevada and Arizona, headed to Burning Man, and I bought a cheap cruiser bike. It’s got no gears and no handbrakes. There’s a cute little woven basket on the front.
It’s stylish and simple. And I love it. The other day I took it for a stunning ride along the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Renald and I slogged along on our $100 bicycles, up hills, down hills. We stopped at at least six different look-out points where we locked our bikes to the supplied racks so we could walk the paths to views so magnificent they seem unreal. It was the perfect way to see the Canyon.
I had my bottle of water and a packed lunch stuffed into the little basket. And at the end of the day, when we were worn out from the sites and the climbs and the relentless sunshine, and feeling cautious of the approaching grey skies that might bring rain, we put our bikes on the front rack of a bus and it drove us back the 15 or so km to our parked vehicle.
What a brilliant day.
And that came one day after our bicycle adventure on the Las Vegas Strip, where we found a 24 hour restaurant serving an early-morning breakfast. After that the valets at Caesar’s Palace were so taken with our cruisers that they checked them for us and wheeled them into their storage room for safe keeping while we went inside to check out enormous aquarium behind the front desk.
What I’ve discovered is that I actually LOVE riding! It makes me feel free and fast and light and like I’m flying. If I can capture that feeling on a clunky cruiser, maybe I can find it when I’m riding my road bike.
I’m a firm believer in the idea that sometimes, doing less is more likely to get me where I need to go than trying to do more.
So for the rest of this vacation I’m going to enjoy my $100 cruiser. And when I get home, here’s hoping that I can sustain the joy when I get back on the road bike.
I’ve got another Olympic distance triathlon coming up on September 14 and I so desperately want to like the bike leg! But since I need to leave my cruiser in Nevada, the road bike will have to do.
I had a bit of a shock yesterday. I was away from the internet for 3 whole days in the wilds of Algonquin Park (see the official map here) with my friend Susan and her awesome ultralight canoe, the Catnoe. So beautiful and peaceful out there. We swam and we paddled and we made camp and we watched loons and salamanders and speculated about bears. How few women do this is the subject of a whole other blog post. Past the first few portages you see very few female faces and for the whole trip no women without men. It’s like there’s a rule. But I’ll blog about that another time
The shock was when I turned on my phone back at the cottage. Okay, 94 emails. I can deal. A few hundred Facebook and Twitter notifications for me and the blog. Fine too. But BIRTHDAY GREETINGS? Lots of them on Facebook. And yes, I checked my DOB on Facebook. It’s correct.
A week early. I have no idea why. But it made me realize that I’m not at all put off by turning 50. I was happy to see birthday greetings, even early ones. I’m ready to celebrate.
I’m alive! And well! I’m doing physical activities I love. Camping and canoeing to name two. But also, of course, cycling. The day before my actual birthday, on the last day of 49, I’m riding 50 km with friends. (On the days before that I’ll ride a few hundred more for good measure.) The next day I’ll eat cake and ice cream in the backyard.
I wasn’t sure I’d feel like celebrating. I wasn’t worried about the number or the significance of a new decade. Rather, after a year of sadness and struggle I wasn’t sure I’d feel like a party.
It’s been a rough year. See Rough times, tough choices and On counting almonds, searching for Devil’s Claw, and remembering Avis and Death changes everything.
Short story: I lost both of my partner’s parents and I’ve been close to them since I was a teenager. A friend in her early 40s died of melanoma, leaving two very young children behind. And over the winter our dog fell through the ice on the river and drowned. For awhile it felt like one horrible bad event another.
But even among the sad moments, we need opportunities to celebrate what’s good. Turning 50 is a good thing. I’m very happy with where I am in my life. I love my work and the people who surround me. My life is full of wonderful people and wild, active, outdoor adventures.
What’s not to celebrate? I’ll see you at the party! I’ll be the one in the pink party dress dancing barefoot to the music of my youth.
There’s a great line in the song Sailor, by Evalyn Parry, “every day I wake up on the right side of the grass is a good day, I reckon.”
I’m feeling a bit that way these days. Very happy to be here.
