The big health and fitness headline this past week concerned the release of results of two studies of senior citizen cyclists. For those of us preaching the health benefits of exercise, it was amazing news.
The NYT piece begins by noting that our understanding of aging might be radically mistaken because so few older adults get any exercise at all.
“Exercise among middle-aged and older adults in the Western world is rare. By most estimates, only about 10 percent of people past the age of 65 work out regularly. So, our expectations about what is normal during aging are based on how growing older affects sedentary people.”
Again from the NYT story: “The two sets of scientists then dove into their data and both concluded that older cyclists are not like most of the rest of us. They are healthier. They are, biologically, younger. Their muscles generally retained their size, fiber composition and other markers of good health across the decades, with those riders who covered the most mileage each month displaying the healthiest muscles, whatever their age.”
Wow.
I’ve had lots of thoughts about these studies and about the good health of these elderly riders.
My first thought was that I’m really happy that I love to ride my bike.
Second thought, should people who don’t like cycling take it up? Should I be urging friends and family whose health I care about to get on their bikes? That’s not so clear. These aren’t studies that took people and assigned them to one of two groups, those who ride a lot and those who sit at home. Instead, it’s a study of those older adults who choose to ride. They’re a special group who chose not to stop riding big distances. Did their good health make their riding possible or did their riding cause their good health? We don’t know which direction the causation goes–maybe it’s a bit of both, a kind of virtuous circle, where one supports the other– but the results are pretty remarkable regardless.
Third thought, this is so not a moderate message. These cyclists were averaging 100 miles a week. That’s a lot of riding. At my best I aim for 5000 km a year. They’re averaging 5200 miles! Further, the benefits depended on dose. The riders who covered the most mileage each month displayed the healthiest muscles. You see them setting out for a 5 1/2 hour ride in the video above. This isn’t like the health messaging that says to go for a walk everyday. These guys are working super hard for hours at a time. They’re riding big distances year round.
Aged just 64, Jim Woods, is a comparative youngster in the group. He averages 100 miles a week on his bike, with more during the summer. He said: “I cycle for a sense of wellbeing and to enjoy our wonderful countryside.”
Fourth thought, we don’t know if this holds true for other forms of exercise. Maybe it’s riding bikes that’s magic and nothing else matters? Seems unlikely. It’s true though that cycling is something you can keep doing as you get older. Lots of older adults move from running to cycling at a certain point.
So lots of questions, but still, remarkable good news. The Fit is a Feminist Issue cyclists–hi Susan, Catherine, Cate, Kim, Nat!–should start planning riding trips for the big birthdays, 60, 70, 80, 90 etc. And maybe we should move somewhere warm for the winters. A fit feminist roving commune with lots and lots of bike riding. I’m in!
We’re a few months into the new year now but you still might want a challenge. It’s almost time for a spring challenge and I like the sounds of this one.
Lots of people want to exercise more and use their phones less. Why not combine those two goals?
Make a deal with yourself to spend more time on the bike (at the gym, or whatever) than you do on your phone. There are lots of apps now that track the time you spend on your phone and what you’re doing while you’re there.
Here’s Bobby Lea on how his #morebikelessphone challenge began:
” It was a crisp Sunday in November, and despite being a week after the foliage peaked, the bright sun and bluebird sky gave the fading leaves one last shot of color. I hadn’t been able to ride much the week before so I grabbed my mountain bike and headed for out a day on the trails. After four hours of cruising around the woods I came home tired, happy, and feeling good about my week. That glow lasted until the following day when my new screen time-tracking app gave me my weekly report: a whopping 16 hours on my phone over the course of seven days! I had read that the national average is around three hours a day, so I while I gloated for a minute, I was brought back down by the unavoidable comparison to the only other metric I track by hours: my time on a bike. While I’d spent 16 hours staring at and scrolling through my phone, I’d only managed to spend 10 hours in the saddle “
Despite that I like having my picture taken, I have always had an uncomfortable relationship with selfies. Even back in 2015 when Sam posted “Sam embraces her title as the selfie queen #feministselfie” I remember my skepticism. I still had that voice in my head that told me it’s just narcissistic, and I have always worried about my own narcissistic streak.
Some have gone further, as Erin Gloria Ryan did, claiming that far from being empowering, selfies are a cry for help. She says the women who take selfies and post them on social media are still seeking validation outside of themselves, and for their looks alone.
But Sam, and the thousands of others who have embraced the #feministselfie hashtag, beg to differ. Sam quotes our friend and colleague Alison Rheiheld, who says, ““When a beauty norm is tinged with ageism and promotes making oneself appear young, posting a picture of oneself as unabashedly oneself, comfortable at one’s own actual age and in one’s own actual experienced body, is a bold and subjectifying act of self-representation.”
Sam and Alison both think that selfies are especially important for women in mid-life because in presenting ourselves “as we really are” we bash ageist stereotypes. Sam ends her post with a series of sport selfies of herself, defying ageist stereotypes of inactive older women. She looks happy, healthy, and active in all of her shots.
So, remember this is about me (narcissistic moi!) and my discomfort with selfies. I always feel a bit embarrassed if I take one by myself. I’m much happier taking group selfies with friends, mostly to mark occasions (they don’t have to be big occasions — just “that we got together” occasions are worth depicting). Like here I am with Sam, when I took her to dinner just before she moved away from London to take her big new job:
Image Description: Tracy (left) and Sam (right) heads together, smiling, window with “Plant Matter Kitchen” in reverse in the background.
I love sport selfies and especially the ones when I’ve done sports with others. Like here I am with Anita after a half marathon training run last spring:
Image description: Tracy (left) with short hair and in sunglasses, ballcap, and tank top, and Anita (right) with short hair and a red t-shirt, both smiling, green grass and asphalt in the background. Shot taken from above.
And yes, I do take sport selfies of myself too, especially but not only when traveling:
Okay, so we have that out of the way. I push through my discomfort and take sport selfies. And they do have that effect of offering an empowering self-representation. when I was 48 I couldn’t run around the block. Today, at 53, I have many kilometres under my feet, including a marathon, several half marathons, 10Ks, triathlons up to Olympic distance, and for the most part regular training. I love that about myself and I am even a little taken aback, still today, whenever I see these sporty pictures of myself.
And I’m okay with, even enjoy, selfies with others. It’s fun. Life should be fun. Getting together with friends is not just a blast but also, especially my women friends, fills me with a satisfying sense of connection and belonging. I like depicting that. It makes me feel strong and supported when I look at those memories.
But lately, I’ve ventured into what feels like slightly different territory. That’s the area of what I’ve been calling “self-portraits.” Now, Sam asked me “what’s the difference between a selfie and a self-portrait?” Well, that’s a good question. My self-portrait phase started when I got my camera. At first I took no pictures of myself with it because, unlike my smart phone, the camera doesn’t have that reverse feature that makes it easy to do. But one day when I took it to my personal training studio, that changed because the studio was full of mirrors. I blogged about personal training and my camera obsession.
When my camera got into the game, I spent more time thinking about the shots. Here’s an early mirror shot from the training studio:
Image description: head shot of tracy, short blond hair, looking through the viewfinder of a Canon EOS 80D, words reversed because of the mirror image, finger on the shutter release.
A self-portrait is “a portrait that an artist produces of themselves.” On the other hand, a selfie is “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media.”
She explores the difference on several levels, especially the idea of the artist. While I wouldn’t go so far as to consider myself an artist, I do think of my photography as a creative outlet. Those selfies, posted above, aren’t really studies in creativity. I’ve been taking an online photo course through Great Courses, and the instructor, National Geographic photography Joel Sartore, says there are three things to consider when taking a photograph: composition, light, and “is it interesting?” When I take selfies, I don’t think much about any of those. They’re snapshots of life. Empowering in their way.
But I do put thought into my self portraits. The mirror in the training studio was a start. When a friend and I did an assignment together over the holidays that involved self-portraits and reflections that looked like candids, that meant I had to consider even more carefully as I was considering my shots. I’ve continued to be attracted to mirrors in a variety of ways. But I also get a kick out of representing self-portraits through shots of only part of me, or of my shadow, and sometimes even with friends in the frame as well.
What I find exciting and satisfying about this form of self-representation is that I can capture so much more than a moment, and at least sometimes, I can create something interesting that goes beyond “a picture of Tracy.” Anyway, for now, I’m living with an intuitive distinction between “selfies” and “self-portraits.” And I like them both, even if I am at the moment finding self-portraits to be more satisfying and empowering as a creative outlet.
Here are some of what I’ve done recently. Sometimes, I don’t feel it necessary to include much of me. A foot can sometimes be enough and it lets me capture more of the scene, less of myself. A shadow is also fun to play with, particularly when it’s crisp.
Image description: Tracy’s right foot in a sandal in lower right corner of frame and her shadow from thighs down against a wood plank floor.
Image description: Tracy’s left foot in running shoe on a snow-covered portion of road with tire tracks and animal tracks.
Image description: Tracy’s left foot in a sandal on a floor with a simple painting of a six-petaled red flower in a red circle.
Here are a few more from my trip to India:
Image description: Smart phone shot in Nalli’s sari shop in Chennai, India. Tracy in a long skirt and check top taking a phone pic in the mirror with Nandi on the right (in the mirror) looking at a sari, the mirror frame visible.
Image description: Patterned silk scarf in foreground on left and slightly out of focus tattooed forearm wearing a watch on right.
Image description: Mirror shot of Tracy from the thighs up, looking through camera viewfinder, wearing a flowing patterned silk scarf, and a sleeveless blouse, a watch on tattooed left arm and silver bracelet on right arm. Plain background.
Image description: Tracy, short blond hair, head turned to the side and looking down, arm slung across body to hold up a colourful pashmina, against the background of a colourful framed painting.
And finally, no longer in India, this is me at the end of my work day last week on my self-declared “casual Friday”:
Image description: close shot of Tracy from mid-neck down to upper chest, wearing an open casual jacket with one button, a silver chain, and a ribbon once around her neck then tied and hanging.
All of these pictures make me feel good. Not just because I like the way I look in them, but because at least for me they’re a nice combination of light, composition, and interest. Maybe they’re just selfies on steroids, but whatever they are, they’re giving me pleasure and enabling me to engage in a creative form of empowering self-representation.
[I also want to sneak in one more thing today: March 20, 2009 is my “clean date,” which means I have been fully abstinent from any mood-altering substances (i.e. alcohol and drugs) for nine years, one day at a time. For that, and for the help I’ve received from others to make it this far, I am truly grateful.]
Do you think there is a difference between selfies and self-portraits? Does it matter?
*Not to be coy but I am trying to stick with words that won’t get us thrown off Facebook.
I love Bicycling magazine’s gradual move to becoming a more inclusive place. I especially like the work of Selene Yeager. She’s the best thing about Bicycling magazine. (I’m a big fan)
But, yay! The new study looked at the experiences of more than three thousand women and found only good news. Here’s this snippet from the Bicycling magazine story.
Two months after the biggest study to date assured men that, contrary to decades of misinformation, cycling won’t kill their erections, women can welcome some good news of their own. The largest study of its kind just reported that cycling had no negative impact on the sexual and urinary function of even the most active women riders. What’s more, women who clocked the highest mileage showed better sexual function than their non-cycling peers.
“Turns out the women who biked more frequently tended to report better experiences in the bedroom. “We found that lifetime miles ridden was associated with better sexual function, as measured by a common, validated questionnaire,” researcher Thomas W. Gaither, a UCSF medical student, said in a press release.
Good news for women who ride.
One question for Bicycling magazine: Why this image? First, not exactly an image of woman who rides her bikes a lot. Second, it looks like she hopped off her bike to pleasure herself in the field. Am I the only person this thought occurred to? (I actually know that’s not true since a Guelph faculty member and friend came up to me in a meeting and said that she hasn’t stopped laughing since she saw the photo with the story. She says she’s going to look at women laying bedside their bikes differently from now on.)
Also, also, the caption: “Women who ride bikes tend to have better experiences riding, well, other things.”
Search for “worries” on Unsplash and you get this guy. I’d be worried too if I were wearing a suit and I was up to my chest in water. Photo by Mubariz Mehdizadeh on Unsplash.
I think really that most of us aspire to eat intuitively, to have an uncomplicated relationship with food. You know the basic ideas, if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile: eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, no foods are off limits, listen to your body, and follow “gentle” nutrition. I admit it sounds heavenly. Me too. Me too. And I think it’s terrific for people who have a broken relationship with their body’s signals , people who eat what a diet says, when it says, ignoring all the cues our bodies give us. Getting in touch with hunger–which many of us have the privilege to not experience very often–can be super useful.
But I have so many worries about intuitive eating as a social phenomenon.
So I am going to try to sort out my concerns in a numbered list, like philosophers are in the habit of doing.
First, I worry that it’s often a disguised diet where “working” as in “does intuitive eating work for you?” is measured, in part, in terms of your weight. If there were more fat people, at stable weights, not obsessed with diets or food, held up as intuitive eating success stories, I’d be happier.
Second, I worry that it’s connected to another way of judging fat people. You’re supposed to only eat because you’re hungry. Intuitive eating, done right, is supposed to land you at the right weight for your size (see above). Therefore, larger people must be eating for reasons besides hunger. You’re supposed to be vigilant about emotional eating. So often there’s judgments about mental and emotional health of fat people, as if we can read your emotional well-being off the number on the scale. It assumes that if you take care of your mental and emotional health your weight will fix itself. And that you can tell that people–and here pretty much we mean women–are emotionally unstable, because they’re fat. Just no.
I’ve written in defense of food as comfort and emotional eating here.
There are many amazing photos of food on Unsplash. This is a tray of cinnamon buns. Photo by Otto Norin on Unsplash.
Okay, but these two worries are about intuitive eating as a thing, as a social phenomenon, about the way we think about it and talk about it. We could stop all that. We could hold up some fat people as successful intuitive eaters. We could stop assuming that fat people aren’t eating for hunger. We could do it right.
Third, I have worries about the actual practice of intuitive eating. I worry that hunger is not exactly the most reliable bodily signal in town. My own experiences in this area are pretty wild and they have to do with thyroid levels. I’ve had thyroid cancer and as a result take a synthetic version of thyroid hormones called synthroid. There’s a lot of juggling in getting your thyroid levels right. Lots of things can throw it off and the thing I notice is the most is how this affects hunger. I can go from raging hunger all day, like waking up during the night hungry, to not caring at all about food. It’s really striking.
The study involved 50 overweight or obese adults, with a BMI of between 27 and 40, and an average weight of 95kg, who enrolled in a 10-week weight loss program using a very low energy diet. Levels of appetite-regulating hormones were measured at baseline, at the end of the program and one year after initial weight loss.
Results showed that following initial weight loss of about 13 kgs, the levels of hormones that influence hunger changed in a way which would be expected to increase appetite. These changes were sustained for at least one year. Participants regained around 5kgs during the one-year period of study.
Professor Joseph Proietto from the University of Melbourne and Austin Health said the study revealed the important roles that hormones play in regulating body weight, making dietary and behavioral change less likely to work in the long-term.
“Our study has provided clues as to why obese people who have lost weight often relapse. The relapse has a strong physiological basis and is not simply the result of the voluntary resumption of old habits,” he said.”
Why does it matter? What’s this got to do with intuitive eating? My worry here is that intuitive eating assumes that our bodies are right about various things, that the signals they send us are correct. But if the formerly obese person eats when hungry, they’ll be eating a lot more often than is consistent with maintaining their weight. Still thinking about this? Want more information? Here’s two articles from Precision Nutrition that do a pretty good job of explaining the hormones that regulate hunger: Leptin, ghrelin, and weight loss and Weight loss & hunger hormones. It’s pretty complicated.
If your hunger cues are reliable, great. If you’re not a formerly obese person or someone who struggles getting their thyroid levels right, enjoy! But recognize that as a privilege and don’t assume that it will work for others.
Fourth, I worry about intuitive eating in an environment where some foods are designed to make us want them. Sugar + fat? Yum! Read here for how junk food is designed to both create cravings and convince your body that you’re not full and can keep eating more. From the article just cited, “Foods that rapidly vanish or “melt in your mouth” signal to your brain that you’re not eating as much as you actually are. In other words, these foods literally tell your brain that you’re not full, even though you’re eating a lot of calories. The result: you tend to overeat.”
We’re not all alike and if intuitive eating works for you, then great. But what do I mean by work? I don’t mean weight, that’s for sure. I mean if you eat this way are you, on reflection, happy with the food choices you’re making? Are you leading a life you enjoy? Are you meeting your own food goals around nutrition? Do you have energy to do the things you love? When I say it doesn’t work for me, I mean that sometimes I am hungry all of the time. I can be hungry 20 minutes after finishing a meal. Hungry again before bed. Hungry during the night. When I am like that I have to ignore hunger because I know I have eaten enough. At other times I am hardly hungry at all and I can skip meals without noticing. Then I have to make sure I still eat to fuel some of the activities I like, like riding my bike. So as long as this hunger fluctuation is part of my life there’s no strictly intuitive eating for me.
How about you? How well do your hunger cues track the need to eat? Do you listen to your body about what to eat? Are you happy with the choices you make?
Since Weight Watches announced its program targeting teenagers, there’s been a flurry of posts here, chock-full of information and perspective.
One of Sam’s recent posts has (among other things) pointed to research on fat shaming. There are severely harmful physical and psychological effects of identifying children as fat (calling them fat or overweight, treating them as fat, subjecting them to dieting, etc.) Enrolling a child in Weight Watchers is a guaranteed way to label them as fat.
While we’re talking about studies, the data on the long-term effectiveness of Weight Watchers (or any commercial diet program) is not promising. A 2015 systematic review of commercial diet programs suggests that, in the very short term (3-12 months, mostly 3—6 months), Weight Watchers might produce a slightly higher incidence of >5% body weight loss in some populations (all adult) than self-directed dieting, but in the longer term (>12 months), we either have no data, or the data show weight regains (and then some).
Tracy’s post on dieting and magical thinking really gets at the psychological pitfalls of yearning for some way to transform our and our children’s bodies into shapes and sizes that conform to medical guidelines and BMI charts. It’s an illusion, one that does us and our children much harm.
As some of you know, I live in Boston, which is a very good place to be sick; we have highly-rated hospitals to treat whatever ails you. I found out from my friend Janet, who’s a health care provider, about the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children’s Hospital. It’s associated with (and I assume partly funded by) New Balance (the athletic shoe manufacturer), which has a named Obesity Prevention Center and also sponsors the OWL program at Boston area community health centers.
The OWL program is for families who are worried about their children’s weight and risks for type 2 diabetes, or who have children with type 2 diabetes. After doing a bunch of medical tests, the treatment services focus on nutritional counseling and individual behavior modification. Some group therapy is offered, and follow up is required for at least 6 months. They tend to favor a low-glycemic index diet (one of their directors is David Ludwig, who leads research investigating and has written popular books promoting low-glycemic index diets; look here for research and here for popular books).
I have to say, I really like the approach they use in the OWL programs at community health centers. Here’s what they do:
…10-week comprehensive program that introduces families to healthful eating and supports them in making changes to benefit their entire family. The program offers group and individual counseling and is led by a dietitian and psychologist from the OWL clinic. Group discussions and interactive activities allow for peer support, skill building and knowledge sharing.
The first six weeks are spent in a group format. For the groups, parents and youth are separated and both groups discuss the same educational topic. Following the educational intervention, the groups unite for a healthy meal and a question and answer session. Each class concludes with a hands-on activity to reinforce the main messages. Upon completion of the groups participants attend 2-4 weeks of individual counseling with the dietitian and psychologist to develop behavior change strategies to support individual goals.
Through the program, patients learn:
How to shop for and prepare balanced meals and snacks
How sleep and screen time impact health
How small changes can be implemented to benefit the entire family
How to address body image and bullying
All of this sounds reasonable, comprehensive and evidence-based. By the way, what’s good for the goslings is also good for those of us on the spectrum from geese to ganders—that is, adults can also use support around shopping, screens, sleep, small changes, body images and fat shaming/bullying/harassment.
But I don’t like the name of the program—Optimal Weight for Life. Yeah, it’s cool to have OWL as your acronym. You could give away T-shirts with owls on them, or maybe even have an owl-petting room at the hospital. It’s already been done in Japan at this café, and I hear it’s popular.
Here are my three problems with the name OWL– Optimal Weight for Life:
1.Optimal. Why do we have to be optimal? That’s a pretty high bar to set. There are lots of reasons and causes for a child to be of non-optimal weight. Maybe it’s not an optimal time in a kid’s development to be optimal. I’m not a parent, but I have observed my niece’s and nephews’ growth patterns over time, and their sizes and shapes and heights don’t increase in perfect synchrony. It’s just not the way human growth works (as Sam pointed out about her own kids). Sometimes they are shorter and wider, and sometimes longer and narrower, and this varies over time and across people.
Also, who says that optimality should be the goal? We know from epidemiological studies (and by looking around in the world) that there’s a range of body weights, shapes, sizes, influenced by a host of factors, many of which we have no control over. What makes “optimal” optimal is presumably association of a class of body weights with lowered risk factors for disease; otherwise, this is just a matter of aesthetics/conventions, right? When we dive deep into that data vortex, I argue that, given both the intractability of long-term weight loss and the small or nonexistent shifts in relative risk profiles that come with some weight changes, setting “optimal” weight as a general patient goal is both unrealistic and unnecessary.
2. Weight. Why do we have to focus on weight? Why not health? There are lots of metrics that track health quite well, and weight is arguably not one of them. Yes, this is a contested position, but it’s held by lots of medical and public health experts. Physical activity happens to be one of those metrics. See here for results of a very large European study showing strong association between even small increases in physical activity and lowered all-cause mortality risk.
3. For Life. That sounds scary to me. Why? Because it seems controlling, demanding, and not understanding about the ups and downs of our experiences through the life trajectory. There are going to be times in every child’s life when their physical state will be non-optimal. This is not a cause for panic, and it may not even indicate that anything is wrong. So, setting people up with this humongous and unrealistic (yes, I said that before—it’s still true) goal is not very nice and not, uh, well, realistic.
We’ve got a lot to learn about how to help people identify, move toward and find some stability around health-according-to-them. Owls are a great symbol, but how about we go with more variation, in keeping with our own glorious variation? I have something like this in mind, but need help with names/acronyms. Any thoughts?
Hi everyone. We’re having a contest! Want to win a copy of Fit at Mid-Life: A Feminist Fitness Journey by Sam and Tracy? It’s officially coming out with Greystone Bookson April 14 (Canada) and April 17 (US) and we want to give three of our followers a chance to win an early “sneak peek” copy.
There are three ways to enter.
Facebook: Comment on this post on our Facebook page (Fit Is a Feminist Issue) by telling us your favourite fitness /pursuit activity (one word answers are just fine).
Instagram: Show us some Instagram love by liking the contest post on Instagram. [we had a photo issue so we posted a second time on Instagram, which is where this link goes. If you liked the first post, don’t worry, it’s still up and we will consider you eligible.]
We’ll randomly select three winners, one from the Facebook comments and one from our Twitter retweets and one from the Instagram likes.
The contest closes at 11:59 Eastern Time on March 31st and is open to North American residents only. We will get in touch with the winners for North American mailing address and our publisher will send them each a book.
Prizes will only be shipped to addresses within North America, which in this case refers to the continental US and Canada.
For the Facebook contest, only original comments will be considered entries (feel free to comment on another’s comment but it won’t count as an entry unless it’s a stand-alone comment).
For Twitter, only retweets of the original post will considered entries.
This video came across my newsfeed recently. It’s a little girl kid (I’m not sure if they’re a boy or a girl–see the reader’s comment below) attempting and failing a box jump. The ponytail made me think girl. Watch til the end!
What’s striking about it is that their dad doesn’t stop them. Instead, he encourages the child to keep trying? How about you? What would you have done? I confess I fretted a bit. “Don’t hurt yourself!” Does it make a difference to you if it’s a boy or a girl jumping?
And then I got thinking about it in terms of my work on the “play gap” between boys and girls and between men and women.
Canadian kids don’t move a lot. Very few get enough daily movement.
The grim facts are that Canada’s children just got a D- in physical fitness for the third year in a row. Just 9% of Canada’s children between the ages of 9 and 15 meet the recommended guideline of one hour of activity per day. Experts are blaming the dismal showing on the so-called “protection paradox.” Parents try to keep children safe by not allowing them to move freely between home and school, or engage in active, outdoor play, but as a result our children are leading increasingly sedentary lives. See here.
But of course it’s not just that kids don’t get enough movement. It’s also the case that girls move less than boys. More on that in another post. I promise!
If the protection paradox is indeed part of the story about kids’ increasingly sedentary lives, we might wonder if the protection offered is gendered.
Do we stop girls but not boys from risky physical behavior? I bet we do. I’m still thinking about this and welcome your thoughts and ideas.
Two weeks ago, I sweated and panted my way through the last hundred metres of climbing up Gros Piton in St. Lucia. It’s a strenuous, steep hike, about 2000 ft of swift ascent. It was hot and the sun was out, but the trail was broken, slippery rock, and I scrambled far more than I walked. I finally broke through from the rainforest to the summit, and the island and the sea sprang forth in front of me.
There was a young male/female couple and their guide at the top, and my local guide Quentin and I offered to take their photo. We faffed about a bit, then I sat down to eat my cheese and cucumber sandwich, eyeing the darkening clouds.
A few minutes later, my resort guide, Marlon, came bursting up the trail, sweating and out of breath. “I could not catch you!” he laughed.
Marlon had driven me from the hotel, and connected me with the Piton park guide who was required for the hike. I was supposed to hike with them both, but Marlon took longer doing the paperwork at the trailhead, and said he’d catch up. He never did.
They’d told me to expect the climb to be about three hours, and we’d done it in an hour and twenty. I wasn’t racing — I was just focused. While walking, Quentin (who was from the small community at the base of the mountain, and was about 18), said “you are fit, and you are not worried.” He kept telling me we were making great time, but I was just … going.
Later, Marlon told me repeatedly that he hadn’t climbed that quickly with any guest in a while, not since he had the trail-running guest who was trying to race it. Even when I stumbled a few times going down, he said “you are soft on your feet — most people would fall like that.”
Here’s the thing: they had no reason to flatter me. I’d started out the morning quite cranky, as I wrote about last week, because the hotel had mis-booked my trek with Marlon, and I wasn’t about to get up at 6 am twice in a row on my holiday. (Much like the time the hospital never notified me of a change in date for my colonoscopy and I insisted I have it that day because I wasn’t going to do the awful prep twice). The drive from the hotel was more than an hour, and Marlon and I had had a good chat, and I knew that he fancied himself as a would-be endurance athlete, and had participated in an 88 mile walk around the island last year. (He made it something like 40, which was amazing with these hills).
I was preening inwardly in a weird way at the matter of fact way they acknowledged my fitness. When I reflected on that preening, I found some unexamined baggage about measuring up.
Flashback: hiking around a national park on the Bruce Peninsula in my 20s with a guided group and my then-partner, when I struggled to get up a particularly large boulder. (I’m very short and I was heavier than I am now). A snotty comment from another hiker, calculated so I’d hear the scorn: “they really should make sure people who do these hikes are capable.”
Flashback: climbing in the hills of Skye with a different partner in my early 40s. Those mountains were a lure from the first moments of our connection, when he said “come stand with me on the mountains that scare me.” We approached the dangerous, hard to find summit on Sgurr nan Gillian, one of the hardest peaks in the Cuillin, and he freaked out suddenly. “We have to go back! We have to go back!” Later, he sat across from me at dinner, thin-lipped, refusing to talk about it, his vulnerability our failure. A year later, he remembered that trip as his having summited hills that I had hung back on, despite a photo on his desk of us both on a peak.
Flashback: riding for a week in Vietnam, alone with a young male guide, who continually told me stories of the exalted fitness of other people (older men, mostly) he’d guided, while continually refusing to let me ride up the passes I wanted to ride because he didn’t want to ride them. When we finally rode the long hard Spring Pass, he left me behind to manage a dropped chain on my own. (He was a shitty guide). A year later, riding in Laos, having to get off my bike and order my guide to stop shadowing me 10 metres behind in the van because he didn’t want me to ride in the fog.
On top of Gros Piton, I still felt that 25 year old sting of the fellow hiker who dismissed me as a chunky irrelevance. I felt the bruising of those holidays in the hills of Skye, where my then-partner’s self-image continually erased my accomplishments. The frustration of cycling guides who see my age and bodyshape, not my capability, strength and desire to push myself.
Quentin and Marlon have no idea what they did, just matter of factly accepting my fitness. No false praise, just factual enjoyment. On the way back, we talked about Black Panther and the history or St Lucia, and Marlon laughed about how I beat him, said he had to train harder. He then asked if I wanted to go for coffee at a local place. “I don’t always offer this,” he said, “but I think you’ll like it.”
I did.
Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who blogs here the second Friday and third Saturday of every month, as well as other times when the mood strikes. She lives and works in Toronto, where she works in the space of creating socially accountable strategic change in healthcare and education.
I transitioned from triathlon to cycling about 18 months ago. I made the switch after completing an Ironman, wanting a change, and enjoying my time in the saddle more than the time spent running or swimming. Over the past few years, I’ve seen the field of triathlon working to recruit and retain more women in the sport (as evidenced by the hugely popular Facebook group, Women for Tri). I hoped for a similar dynamic with cycling, but had just moved across the country for a new job and was not sure where to find a community of rad cyclists. I started by searching for groups online, found one with similar speed and distance to fit my training, and was launched into what became a new norm for my next year: being one of the only women on a group ride surrounded by several men. I’ve generally been treated really well and I can’t thank many of them enough for making me who I am today. I’m a much stronger cyclist thanks to their challenging group rides and much of their ongoing support. But we’ve got work to do.
Reflecting back on my transition to cycling, I think I expected to find similar dynamics to triathlon—plenty of women at races, large Facebook groups for women to share advice and experiences, and plenty of group rides and teams to train with or race for without the fear of getting dropped. Unfortunately, I think I was naive and mistaken in a few ways. Field sizes for women in many of the events I’ve done are only about 15%—especially gravel, cyclocross, and fat biking. Women and gender diverse athletes are sorely underrepresented in this sport. I’ve scoured the literature to identify potential reasons for the gap. Some say it’s a lack of confidence or skill with mechanical abilities. Others say lack of time to train due to childcare and domestic responsibilities. Some note a lack of navigation skills needed for gravel or discomfort being in the middle of nowhere. Others reflect on a lack of safety, whether due to car traffic, crashing, or sexual harassment.
Many of those factors, however, are specific to one discipline or one community, have small sample sizes, are published by men, and/or completely exclude cyclists who do not identify as cisgender men or women. And while I appreciate the important work on these issues, I think the gender gaps go a lot deeper than what the literature has said thus far. I believe we need a more comprehensive understanding of the experiences of women and gender diverse cyclists in order to decrease disparities in the field. I believe it’s time to share our stories.
My experiences as a white cisgender woman in cycling over the past year have been exciting, nerve wracking, challenging, and empowering. They have also been colored by microaggressions, sexist comments, harassment, and exclusion. I love this sport and so many aspects of this community. I want to stay engaged. But I also know we can do better by stepping up our game and working hard to understand the experiences of that 15%. After identifying what has helped and hurt us over the years, we can work to shift our culture to one with more diversity and representation.
Aside from my identity as a cyclist, I am a feminist, a sport psychologist, a professor, and a researcher. As a feminist, it’s important for me to 1) own my biases that stem from my own experiences; and 2) recognize that the personal is political. I’m doing this project because of my own experiences and because I want our community to do better. The disheartening moments I’ve had over the past year have lit a fire inside of me and have motivated me to take on a piece of this puzzle.
This past week, I launched an international research project for women, trans*, femme, non-binary, genderqueer, and two spirit cyclists who have raced over the past 5 years. The survey asks about factors that have increased and decreased participation in competitive cycling, as well as motivations and experiences in daily living. I ask for stories of exclusion, harassment, and sexism—in addition to times cyclists have felt valued.
As an incentive, I’ve secured money to donate $2/person to charity for the first 250 participants. (It’s not much, but it’s something.) I’ll present the findings in my community, at conferences, and to anyone who wants to listen. I’ll also write up the findings for publication to help us shed some light on gender gaps and increase retention of women and gender diverse cyclists throughout the world.
If you are a woman and/or a gender diverse cyclist who has raced in the last 5 yrs, I’d love to hear your story. What has pushed you away? What helps you to keep going strong? I’ll share mine in a post to come.
Erin, a dark haired woman with her hair pulled back, looks onto another spectator while wearing her cycling kit after one of her first cyclocross races. She is leaning forward on her bike. Her sunglasses are resting on top of her head, her jersey is zipped down, and her hair is wet from sweat. Photo Credit: Carlos Sabillon
Erin is a professor, psychologist, researcher, feminist, spouse, and cyclist. When she is not working, she spends her time training for new cycling adventures, eating, laughing, and spending time with loved ones.
![women-sexual-health-cycling-study-1521203410[1]](https://i0.wp.com/fitisafeministissue.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/women-sexual-health-cycling-study-15212034101.jpg?resize=663%2C443&ssl=1)
Marlon had driven me from the hotel, and connected me with the Piton park guide who was required for the hike. I was supposed to hike with them both, but Marlon took longer doing the paperwork at the trailhead, and said he’d catch up. He never did.
Quentin and Marlon have no idea what they did, just matter of factly accepting my fitness. No false praise, just factual enjoyment. On the way back, we talked about Black Panther and the history or St Lucia, and Marlon laughed about how I beat him, said he had to train harder. He then asked if I wanted to go for coffee at a local place. “I don’t always offer this,” he said, “but I think you’ll like it.”