Month: December 2014

cycling · Guest Post

Meet Ethel, my new bike! (Guest Post)

natalieh (she/her)

My beloved and Randonneur Dave colluded to persuade me to get a new bicycle for Christmas this year. I hemmed and hawed. After my longest ride this year I found out my 1964 bike had a bent frame and I knew I needed to replace it. I did a bit of information gathering about the kind of bicycle I should go for. It’s not an easy choice. I do an occasional triathlon but racing is not my main goal with my bike, time in the saddle is. So after chatting with friends and even trying out Sam’s outgoing bike I settled on a sport touring.

I looked for an entry level bike and I thought $1,000-$1,500 CDN was a reasonable budget and, honestly, what I could, in good conscience, sink into something only for me. I knew I should get as light a bike as I can afford thanks to Sam’s post Why should a fat girl care about riding a light bike? My weight is changing and so is my cycling performance but the biggest thing for me is comfort so a carbon fibre bike was what I hoped for. The idea is the frame flexes to make for a better ride and since I’m all about comfort carbon fibre it is!

I looked at what I could afford and I got the cheapest carbon fibre frame I could find, a 2014 green Giant Avail Composite 3. It was just outside my price point but after having some serious chats with my support network I knew if it fit I was taking it home.

I flirted with it first, doing a quick drop by the shop to get the range of bikes. There were 4 serious players but only the Giant had the kind frame I was looking for. I had forgotten my shoes but we put flat pedals on and I jumped on the bike, the frame looked so tiny…surely I’m too big a woman for this tiny thing? I actually felt super comfortable despite my misgivings of lumps that Sam mentioned in her Big women on bikes post earlier this year. I worry my butt looks like a tomato impaled by a pencil. It is silly, I know that, but it is the image that comes to mind when I jump on a tiny saddle.

So I put a down payment on the bike that day and promised to return on the Friday with shorts & shoes for a full fitting and my beloved would pay the balance.

Friday took FOREVER to arrive, I was excited and feeling a bit guilty about spending a lot of money on myself. My colleague had asked me when the last time I had done something like this just for me and I couldn’t remember the last time I had seriously invested in something I wanted, that was for my use only. That’s a theme I’ve been thinking about, the idea we either take care of others before ourselves or put ourselves first. Surely this is a false choice. I’m pretty sure I can assert my needs and still take care of my family. It doesn’t always feel balanced but it is getting there.

Friday at 5:15pm I waltzed into the same shop where I had sworn I would never go back after trying to buy rollers and bought the perfect bike for me, including clip-less pedals.

Why did I go back? Friendship. I had met the owner socially and thought I need to support this independent shop that is close to my work. I also had asked where I could get the best bike I could afford, the same shop. So I eat some crow, because being a grown up means you get to change your mind. Also, I did it for love, for my new bike Ethel. I was this happy:

image
Happy!
Uncategorized

Lovely Christmas Day Present

Sam B

On Christmas morning, here in Canada, I got an email informing me that a new person was following the blog. She’s our 3000th follower on WordPress. It’s not that long ago, just a few months, that we hit 2000. So, yay!

Thanks everyone for reading our posts and sharing the blog with your friends.

Happy holidays!

 

fitness

Santa Claus and Other Holiday Myths

Tracy I9 Comments

santa-claus-and-reindeerA few days ago a bunch of us were out for lunch and talking about whether learning that Santa wasn’t real traumatized us as children.  Did we mind that we’d been lied to?  Did the meaning of Christmas change for us?  Did the fervent belief in Santa just sort of fizzle or was there a dramatic moment of truth?

I recalled Christmas Eves where we listened to the radio reports of Santa’s progress. We convinced ourselves, looking up at what was probably an airplane’s blinking lights, that we could see Rudolph’s nose.

For at least a few years I heard Santa land his sleigh on the roof of our house. And I spent quite a bit of time as a kid worrying about the chimney and whether it was the right kind of chimney for Santa.

That magic falls away for all of us at some point. But we can resist it for a time.  For a little while, for example, I chalked it up to coincidence that Santa’s handwriting so resembled my mother’s.

But you can only cling to a myth for so long. Christmas and the impending “fresh start” of the new year carries a lot of other myths, too.

The worst of it is the myth that this time, THIS TIME, it will be different.  We will go on that diet after the holidays and lose that weight and keep it off. This time, this time.

The magic promise of dieting is kind of like the magical Christmas’ of our childhood, when the belief in Santa made anything seem possible.

But just as eventually the evidence all around me — the handwriting, my friends telling me there is no Santa, the confusion I experienced when someone talked to me about the impossible logistics of Santa’s task on Christmas Eve — forced me to face up to the lie that was Santa Claus, so it is with that post-holiday diet.

We’ve talked so many times on the blog about how diets don’t work.  It’s depressing but true.  It may be that the prospect of a post-holiday diet frees people up to enjoy the delicious food that’s on the table at this time of year.

But chances are that the diet mentality leads instead to binging and overeating instead of truly enjoyable experiences of special holiday foods.

When we approach the festive table with the idea, even when it’s lurking in the back of our minds, that “I really shouldn’t,” and we add to that the idea that “I’ll diet when this is over,” we are more likely to rebel.  Faced with the prospect of deprivation (an impending famine), we go for the feast.

There is also the related idea that we can “work it off.” Significant lifestyle changes can, indeed, change our bodies. But the idea that we can literally “work off” a meal is not the best way to inspire us to find activities that we enjoy.  And if we don’t enjoy it, we’re not likely to stick with it.

So what’s the alternative?  For me, once I grasped the reality of the situation, I couldn’t cling to diets and unreasonable workout commitments as magic solutions to holiday indulgence.  Instead, I’ve made it my objective this year to achieve just one thing at every meal:  to leave the table without feeling uncomfortably full.

This is the same goal I have all of the time, not just during the holidays.

Setting that as my main goal for each meal means I can think about what I want to eat and eat it. But when I start to feel I’ve reached capacity, or even just before that, it’s time to stop. For me, that takes a lot of awareness and sometimes a fair bit of effort.  It’s not yet second nature to me. But that’s where I need to go if I want to live in reality.

So forget about post-holiday diets and dramatic changes to my workouts. They have their allure, as all magical things do. But they’re no more real than Santa. And I don’t believe in them anymore.

 

 

 

 

cycling

My new bike!

Sam B4 Comments

Merry Christmas to me! (Thanks Santa Spouse.) I have a new (to me) bike. It’s a 2013 Cannondale Super Six Evo Ultegra Di2.

The shifting is lovely, very smooth, but I haven’t had it out on the road yet just the trainer. There’s a review of the shifting here. Reviews of the bike are here and here (women’s version).

It’s my first non-red bike! The red Cannondale Super Six is for sale here.

I’ve written about wanting a new bike before. See New bike lust and How many bikes is too many? and My dream fleet but now I’ve got my new bike what I want is spring. Actually, February and March will do as I’ve got trips south planned to ride. February is a touring holiday in Arizona and March is training camp in South Carolina.

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When Precision Nutrition’s Lean Eating Program Lost Me

Tracy I10 Comments

I’m coming to the end of Precision Nutrition’s Lean Eating for Women coaching program. It ends next week.  But they lost me just over a month ago.  I blogged about my decision not to go for the professional photo shoot.  And Sam blogged about the whole photo thing in her post “Precision Nutrition, Why the Photo Contest?”

This week the photo contest started. See the before and after pics of the 61 women’s finalists here. The women in the pics look happy and confident, which is great. I even know a couple of them from my team, every member of whom I hold in the highest esteem.

But I can’t bring myself to vote.

As Sam said in her open letter to Precision Nutrition:

First, judging results based on appearance is inconsistent with your messaging throughout the program that what matters is health, strength, and physical and emotional wellness.

Second, isn’t it all about habits not results? Or I have missed something?

Third, throughout the program we were coached not to compare ourselves to others. People progress towards their goals at different rates. It’s your own journey. But then it ends with a giant exercise in comparison.

Finally, I thought it was about lifetime lifestyle changes, not end of a year eyeballing. I liked the emphasis on internal versus external transformations and thought PN’s lean eating program was about the former, not the latter.

As a participant in your program the photo shoot felt like a high school beauty pageant and figure competition, neither of which I’ve ever had any interest in participating in.

I echo pretty much all of that.  What I loved most about the program was that the messaging was about shifting the focus to internal changes. So judging “the winners” on the basis of photos is just not consistent with that.  Would I rather no one get prize money?  I’m not sure. Sometimes I think that unless they can reward people for internalizing the healthy habits and learning to shift their attention to more meaningful measures than a photo can reveal then they should just not have a contest at all.

But the contest just started last week. So why did they lose me over a month ago?

The Precision Nutrition Lean Eating program is all about developing healthy habits. Every two weeks, we were given a new habit to work on. They were things like “eat slowly” and “eat to 80% full” and then later “eat lean protein with every meal” and “make smart carb choices.”  There were tons of different healthy habits.

Each day, at the end of the day, we had to check of three things. 1. Did I do the workout? 2. Did I read the assignment? and 3. Did I practice the healthy habit?

Back in the summer, one of the assignments was to schedule our final photo shoot, with a professional if possible (because professional “after” pics always look better–see my cynical view of this assignment here). We were to schedule it for Saturday, November 22nd.

So two weeks prior to that, guess what the “healthy habit” was, for two whole weeks?  “Prepare for the final photo shoot.” Yep. For two whole weeks the healthy habit we were supposed to focus our attention on (while of course keeping the others in place) was to prepare for the final photo shoot.

Not planning a final photo shoot, I couldn’t really prep for one. I did, however, plan to put together a photo book of my race history since the fittest by 50 challenge began. And planning that was kind of rewarding, but I somehow started to feel detached from the program.

Then November 22nd came and went.  Next up: “Recover from final photo shoot week.” Two weeks of that took me into December. I didn’t have a photo shoot, so I had nothing to recover from.  Again, I slipped a bit away from PN’s Lean Nutrition program.  I focused on my own most challenging habits, eating slowly and to 80% full.

Finally, just recently, we got over our month of focusing on the photo shoot and got to a habit that means something to me: Pay it forward.  Here, we are sharing our experience with those who might benefit from it.

I love this idea.  It’s much more inspiring than a focus on photos and external appearances. In many ways, paying it forward is what Sam and I try to do on the blog regularly by suggesting that there may be a different way to do this thing. Precision Nutrition’s Lean Eating program gets some of it right. But by making the photo shoot and contest the big finale, it ended on a fizzle for me, not with a bang.

On a positive note: I have already moved on, so the separation won’t be such a big deal.

 

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Not enough fitness and feminism in your life?

Sam B1 Comment

You can like us on Facebook. See https://www.facebook.com/feministfitness.

You can follow us on Twitter. See https://twitter.com/FitFeminists

And on Pinterest too! http://www.pinterest.com/samjabre/fit-is-a-feminist-issue/

We share a lot of content there that’s relevant to the lives of feminists interests in fitness. And our Facebook page has a great community and some excellent discussions.

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Hate exercise and just want the health benefits?

Sam B2 Comments

In an older post called What’s love got to do with it? I addressed the plight of the person who doesn’t like exercise.

Usually around here we’re all about finding fitness things that you love, but we get that not everybody likes physical activity or makes a choice to make it part of their lives.

It’s tough making choices. Yet our lives are finite and make choices we must. I don’t read as much fiction as I’d like and right now there’s a giant stack of books by my bedside and a fully loaded kindle but usually by the time bed time rolls around I flop into bed exhausted.

I’ve also got a long list of movies I’d like to see. There are movies I want to see that leave town before I get a chance because I’m too busy running, biking, lifting, and throwing people around in the dojo.

And that’s just the stuff I like. There’s a whole bunch of activities that other people do that I don’t do very much of at all. There isn’t a crafty gene in my body. Not even knitting which is a hugely popular feminist pastime. Everyone else in my family sings or plays a musical instrument. Not me. I’m in the audience.

I like the idea of cooking and baking. I read cookbooks with pleasure but actual cooking, no, not so much. Pretty much holidays only. The rest of the time I prepare meals but to call it cooking is to overstate the case.

And then there’s my house. I pay some one to clean it..Thanks Margaret! …and home decorating isn’t something I’m good at. Really with all the teenagers and dogs it’s a good thing I don’t care too much.

All of this is just to say, that I don’t lead a particularly well rounded life. I play games, I spend time with friends and family, I read, write and teach philosophy, I blog, but there’s an awful lot I don’t do. No big regrets. I do want to dance more and wear more party dresses, get into the big city more often, but that’s about it.

So I can see how someone might make other choices. Not everyone chooses to spend their time doing physical things. Now some people don’t care about health very much and that’s okay too. As Patricia Marino points out not everyone prioritizes living longer.

But if you want the health benefits but still hate exercise, what then?

In the older post, I recommended treating it like medicine.

If you care about your health but hate physical activity, then treat it like medicine. No one expects you to enjoy your flu shot. I sometimes eat vegetables I don’t enjoy because they’re good for me. I get that it can feel doubly coercive to both be told your have to do something and told you have to love it. You don’t have to do it and you don’t have to love it. But you can do it without loving it too. If I were just exercising for its benefits, I’d go for high intensity interval training. It’s short, time efficient and brutally effective. See Gretchen Reynolds’ column on minimalist workouts.

I’d also do some weight training and I’d build lots of exercise into my everyday activities.

So you don’t have to love it. But we do!

 

 

 

 

 

Crossfit

Thinking about CrossFit in the New Year?

Sam B3 Comments

Of all the things I do, the one that intrigues non participants the most seems to be CrossFit. I get asked often about what it’s like and I find people have a lot of misconceptions.

As we approach the new year, I know lots of people are starting to think about beginning new programs of exercise, including CrossFit. Here’s my two cents.

 

First, what’s CrossFit all about anyway? Here’s the official line:

What is CrossFit?

CrossFit involves a series of short-interval exercises that, done day after day, will result in an overall stronger, fitter you. It is designed to improve 10 physical attributes: cardiovascular/respiratory resistance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy.

Workouts of the Day or WODs are constantly varied and are typically short (20 minutes or less) and intense, demanding all-out physical exertion. Classes consist of a warm-up, strength training, WOD and cool down with mobility. They typically last around 45 – 60 minutes and can be scaled for all fitness levels.

If you’re thinking about starting CrossFit, here’s my advice. Keep in mind that I’m me. YMMV, as they say. I’m a 50 year old reasonably physically fit woman. I’m not easily intimated. I’m a pretty large woman. And I like high intensity physical activity and thrive when presented with challenges. I’ve been doing CrossFit for a couple of years, here in London, Ontario and also in Dunedin, New Zealand, where I first started.

First, it’s not just for already fit athletes. I hear a lot of people talk about getting in shape to join CrossFit but that’s just silly. I can see how you might think that if your main exposure to CrossFit is through the CrossFit games on television but in the real world, there’s a wide range of people doing CrossFit. The slogan at the London CrossFit box might be “forging elite fitness” but there a lot of regular people there just having fun and doing their best.

In fact, the CrossFit workouts are incredibly scalable to different levels. See my post Leveling up at CrossFit: Rx versus modified workouts

And if you don’t believe me here’s someone talking about the message they heard at their level 1 CrossFit certification:

“If you think we are programming for (elite) athletes, you are dead wrong; they are but a fraction of the people working out in our gyms. What we do scales for the 70 year old grandmother as well as elite athletes.”

Second, it’s not just for twenty somethings. Yes, there are a lot of twenty somethings there but there are also a lot of people in their forties, fifties, and beyond. Here is my favorite CrossFit image, of a deadlifting grandma.

 

Third, it won’t necessarily transform the way your body looks. It will change the way your body works. You’ll get stronger, fitter, faster, and generally more powerful but not everybody ends up looking like the images you find if you Google “women and CrossFit.” See CrossFit and women’s bodies. My only positive thought is that all the beautiful strong body images help counteract the idea that lifting makes women big and bulky. Personally, I’m not afraid of big and bulky. Come visit. In the real world of CrossFit you see women of all shapes and sizes. The cool thing isn’t how they look. It’s how much they lift.

I like thinking of the slogan “strong is the new skinny” as a shift to performance from aesthetics but I know I’m in the minority. Still, CrossFit is the environment where I hear very little from other women about weight, about diets, and about percent body fat. Mostly, the women talk about their goals in terms of strength.

Fourth, there’s a lot of coaching and instruction. I hear a lot of complaints from people who do other kinds of lifting about CrossFit coaching but in my experience those worries are way off the mark. Typically people complain about the number of participants to coaches and they worry about new people trying difficult lifts without supervision. In the places I’ve attended there’s nothing further from the truth. First, there’s a structured entry program where you learn the basics. Second, there’s a lot of attention from coaches while you lift.

Usually we have about a dozen athletes and one coach. That seems just right to me.

I can’t imagine learning to deadlift by myself in the gym. CrossFit is a terrific alternative.

I think maybe these complaints come from places where CrossFit is wildly popular and there are crowded understaffed classes. But that’s never been my experience.

Okay, what’s a typical class like?

It starts with a 10 min warm up, on your own. I used to hate the “on your own” bit and wanted someone to tell me what to do but I’ve come to see its virtues. People come to CrossFit with different strengths and weaknesses and while we all need to do a bit of cardio warm up (there’s skipping ropes, rowing machines, and a bike) and some mobility work to warm up joints before lifting often we also have our own body parts that require special attention.

Next there’s the bit that I think of as skill work. It’s not timed. There’s no race. The emphasis is on getting a particular lift right. Sometimes our focus is a certain part of the lift. Other times it’s strength and going for new personal bests. But it’s focused and careful. We usually work in small groups.

Today we worked on back squats, working up to 8 sets of 2 at 70% of your one rep max. I like that the groups are broken down by strength not gender and while it’s mostly women at the lighter end of the room, and mostly men at the heavier end, in the middle, where I’m often found there’s a good mix of men and women.

Then we put weights away and look at the Work Out of the Day (WOD) on the white board.

Today’s was 3 rounds of the following:
7 Push Press (Rx, or recommended, weight for women 30 kg)
30 push ups
30 air squats.

When you’re done you yell “time” and your time gets written on the board. I did it in 8:11.

I used the RX weight for the push press but I can only get out 10 push ups if I do them from the toes. So I scaled the workout and that’s okay. Possible scaling is discussed in advance. Some people lowered the weight and a woman with knee injuries substituted sit ups for the air squats.

At the end, you put away gear and stretch. I usually leave sweaty and smiling.

Come play sometime!

See also Can Feminists Find a Home in Crossfit? and Six Things I Love about CrossFit

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motivation

Doing more, doing less: Different approaches with one thing in common

Sam B2 Comments

Tracy wrote recently about the virtues of doing less.

It’s okay to scale back when things get busy, she says. Certainly, it’s a strategy that’s worked well for Tracy.

But other than times of family crisis, it’s not my preferred strategy. Moderation doesn’t come easy to me. Friends, you can start laughing at any time.

See here and here.

I am not, in many ways, a moderate person. If I want something in my life then I really want it. And if I don’t, I really don’t.Certainly this is true for exercise. I’d find it hard to maintain a three times a week, 30 min, gym experience. Much harder than what I do now. Really.

Now there’s a lot I don’t do. I talked about that when I wrote about my challenges with scheduling here.

Other people watch TV or do jigsaw puzzles, I suppose. Often the people who ask, ‘How on earth do you do all that?’ have regular commitments to non active past times I don’t share. No doubt they do more housework and have beautiful gardens. They might even iron shirts and send birthday cards.

But the stuff I do, I do a lot.

Here’s two examples: writing and exercise.

In both cases I typically take on more than I can handle. If I have a slogan it’s not “do less” it’s more like “plan 10, do 8, and don’t feel too bad about the balls that get dropped.”

There are currently 17 writing commitments on my schedule between now and next January. The first crunch is between now and February break. I’ve got a paper to revise, a book review to write, two book chapters to write with Tracy, and an encyclopedia entry to finish. Phew.

But the thing is, it’s all work I’m excited about. I’m looking forward to getting going on all of these projects.

Sometimes people wonder why academics work so hard. I have tenure after all. I don’t punch a clock but still I work long hours. What’s different it’s that these are tasks I’ve chosen to take on, for the most part. If I chose to not do any of it, declined all writing invitations, I’d get a bad performance evaluation, I suppose. (You can read more about the entrepreneurial work culture of academics here.)

Anyway, I’m much the same way with fitness. I tend to schedule two workouts a day most days of the week, knowing full well I won’t fit them all in. Often I manage eight but I don’t feel bad when I miss. I’ve got a super busy work and home life and it’s okay not to do everything. I need maximum flexibility. Sometimes I have back up workouts at hand.

So while Tracy likes the “do less” plan, I like to have more on the go. But where we agree is in the “no guilt” part of our plan.

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Why do you ride?

Sam B2 Comments

Why I ride-

I ride because I was born an athlete and will always be an athlete.

I ride because the desire to push my body is hardwired in.

Because I am addicted to the endorphins and adrenaline.

I ride because no matter where in the world I go I will always have a family and a community that I feel a part of.

I ride because it takes me new places.

I ride because it challenges me to ride further, faster, smoother, safer, smarter.

I fear failure, and to some degree success. It allows me to explore and test my fears.

I ride because of the bonds I have built with teammates and friends. We share pain, success, failure, disappointment, laughter and life.

I ride because the second my legs start turning circles I become a happier person.

I ride because I love to be outside. To feel the wind on my face and listen to the birds and bugs.

I ride because it allows me to take out my aggression and anger.

I ride because it stabilizes my life and creates balance.

I ride because going downhill at 40mph is fun.

I ride because I get to eat more pastry and crave more salad.

I ride because I can’t cry and pedal and the same time.

I ride because it makes my mind and body strong.

I ride because I can; because it is a constant reminder of the value of health.

I ride because it allows me to play with the boys.

I ride because no matter how bad my day, pedaling puts my mind at easy and a smile on my face.

I ride because I can go alone.

Because even though I have ridden the route a 1000 times, I never know what is around the next bend.

– Emily Kachorek

From Cycling Illustrated