We’ve had a reader ask us about waist size and bellies. Cate will be posting about that next week. But in the meantime I’ve been reading through some of our older “belly” posts. Here’s Nat on belly patrolling.
I am one of those people who can sleep almost anywhere, anytime. I sleep on planes and I rarely experience jet lag. My trick is simple: arrive well-rested, spend time outside, make it through the day, and then bang, I’m good to go after a night’s sleep in my new location. It’s a good trick and I benefit lots from it. I’ve flown to New Zealand for four days and returned to work not much the worse for wear.
” Personal Relationships have been a topic of philosophical research for quite some time. And rightfully so: they can contribute more to our well-being, give meaning to our lives, and generate salient moral duties and responsibilities. However, the debate has been focused on just a few types of relationships: friendships, the nuclear family, romantic partnership and co-citizenship. In this conference, we aim to explore the focus and explore what we call neglected relationships. These are kinds of relationships that play important part in our personal and moral lives, but that have gone largely underexplored by moral philosophers so far. ” My talk was on chosen family.
My flight turned out to be the Lufthansa equivalent of Air Canada Rouge. (It’s Rouge on the way home, I think.) I’m flying Basic Economy. I flew here on the “overnight” flight–scare quotes because it was just a 5 hour flight. The seats were super small, hard, and uncomfortable. I couldn’t sleep but I also couldn’t work because the person in front of me reclined into my lap. So I arrived sore and scrunched up and very, very tired. Thanks to my compression socks I didn’t have swollen ankles. But my knee hurt a lot from sitting squished into a small space with my knee brace on.
I walked to my hotel and that helped a bit. I napped too before settling down to work on my talk. But I was still really sore. Luckily Yoga with Adrienne came to my rescue! I discovered YWA through the 219 in 2019 fitness challenge group. I knew if I was going to make it to 300 workouts in 2019, I’d need an at home/travel plan. This series of moves really helped with the unscrunching. Indeed, after a day of sitting in talks I might just do it again!
My talk went well. I got some really good comments and I’m looking forward to working on it some more.
Here’s another good thing. Yummy vegetarian/vegan conference food. Also, no single use plastics. These are salads and dressing in glass bowls.
This is part two of my report on how I didn’t run a half marathon. Read part 1 here!
Once I had realised there was no way I was running 21k, I decided to downgrade to the shorter distance of the race. A friend of mine had signed up for the half marathon too, but had injured his knee a couple of weeks before, so he also decided to switch. What a pair! At least we were in the same boat. But as I resigned myself to the shorter option, I also made a crucial mistake: in my memory, there was something about a distance of 9, but this being Europe, my mind somehow turned this into a 10k option. It wasn’t until the Friday evening, after a more than 3k swim practice with speed work to boot, that I exhaustedly realised we were talking about 9 miles, i.e. 14.5k! Yikes.
I turned up on Sunday morning, still tired from the 10k test run the previous Thursday and swim practice on the Friday, and with my stomach still not at 100% after whatever bug it was I had picked up the week before. This was going to be… interesting. Luckily, my friend and I had a good support crew: our partners came along to chauffeur and cheer us on. And there was the prospect of burgers at an excellent diner close to the race venue afterwards.
The conditions were perfect: around 20C and sunnier than expected – the rain that had been forecast decided to hold off until later that day, so weather-wise the only downside was a slightly-too-strong wind. I was a bit nervous because of my stomach, but also determined. If I wasn’t going to do the half marathon, I was at least going to give it my all for the 14.5k.
Bettina during her final sprint with a determined look and unwittingly colour-coordinated blue shirt and blue shoes, in front of several onlookers (anonymised with yellow stars to cover their faces).
I set off at quite a good pace. My stomach wasn’t very happy though – you know that feeling when you want to burp, but you can’t? That was me for about the first half of the race. Not too pleasant. Because I wasn’t very comfortable, I had trouble settling into my rhythm. I was keeping a decent speed, but it constantly felt like I was pushing myself. There was also the wind, which was coming from the side or the front. But the course was nice, it took us through a park with two small lakes and then out into the fields.
At the first water station, I took electrolytes and water. Mistake. My stomach hated the electrolytes, there was too much liquid, but on the other hand I was thirsty, so something had to give. I pressed on as the course turned onto a long, straight stretch through the fields. The wind was now coming from the back, which was technically an improvement, but it also meant that the sun was now in my back and it got really, really warm. I really struggled to keep my pace at this point and wished I’d worn shorts instead of capris.
The second water station came around the 10k mark; I’d learned from my earlier mistake and only took water. My stomach had now settled down and I was able to focus more on my stride, which was also becoming necessary because I was getting quite tired. I could still feel Thursday’s training run and Friday’s swim practice in my legs and my splits were constantly getting slower. Up until then, the Spotify 170bpm playlist I had on really helped, but at this stage it became about continuing to run rather than speed.
If I had hated the part of the course with the sun in my back, the course setters had something “better” in stock at around 12k: over 1 kilometre along a sandy path. My friend and I agreed after the race that this was by far the toughest bit physically. Since this was a combined 9-mile and half-marathon course, as we came up to the 19k sign I knew we had about 2k left and the going was getting really tough. I’d long decided to disregard the mile signs: being used to counting kilometres, the miles didn’t tell me much and I found them more confusing than helpful.
As I slogged along, my friend, who is known for taking his time to settle into a race, finally overtook me about 1 kilometre before the end. Mentally, the first half of the last kilometre was the hardest for me: the course looped down a random street for about 200m before coming back in the opposite direction to make the distance fit. I was exhausted, and the way into the loop was ever-so-slightly uphill. Plodding along as I saw other runners coming towards me was really discouraging somehow.
But once I had finished that horrible part, I knew I was out of the woods. There was a guy right in front of me who was going at the same pace I was, so I made it my goal to overtake him before the finish line and mobilised my reserves to speed up. Turns out, he had the same idea and we basically raced each other to the finish. I got so caught up in the competition I ran straight past my finisher medal and had to go back for it later!
I was completely spent, but elated. I’d finished! I hadn’t died! I hadn’t thrown up! I’d run 14.5k with far less-than-ideal training and while not being perfectly healthy! I was also really thirsty, but for the first 15 minutes I didn’t feel like I could drink anything but water. Then I had some coke, which I don’t usually love but suddenly craved. Later, we ate burgers as promised – I couldn’t quite finish mine (still that pesky stomach), but I’ve never had a veggie burger that tasted of victory quite as much as this one!
Reading over this post again, it sounds like I really suffered, and in the moment, I actually did. But I’m still really, really pleased I ran. The feeling of having finished made all the difficulties worth it! Even if it wasn’t a half marathon.
For what it’s worth, I finished in 1:22:32 and actually came third in my age group (it was a small race). Not bad, all things considered! I was on point with my splits (my goal pace was under or around 5:30mins/km) up until kilometre 8. My aim for the half marathon had been to do it in about 2 hours, give or take, and speed-wise I was nearly on track for that. Stamina-wise, I couldn’t have done it on the day, but I’m optimistic that if I manage to get through training without getting sick right before the race, I can do it – next time!
Excerpt: “Each woman’s conversion to the double-shoulder lifestyle is unique. Anna Swanson told me she started coming into the office with a backpack instead of a purse when she began work as a bureaucrat, which seemed, to her, to be a more “masculine” sphere. I corresponded with dozens of women for this story, and they told me they had grown tired of juggling multiple bags on public transportation or while walking—in heels, no less! They shared tales of trying to squeeze a laptop, makeup, gym clothes, a water bottle, notebooks, and a phone into a classy tote, then giving up and saying, Screw it.
“A year ago, I would have said, ‘You’ll have to pry my leather satchel purse from my cold, dead hands,’” says Silver Lumsdaine, a marketing specialist in San Francisco. “But after standing in a jam-packed bus for a 45-minute, swaying, nausea-inducing commute over the hills of San Francisco with my hand cramping in pain from holding my laptop-burdened purse, I did what any reasonable person would do.” Reader, she got a backpack.”
That’s fine. I was once asked to speak at a student event called From Backpack to Briefcase and I had to confess that I had never really made the transition myself. As a cyclist, I’m a fan of backpacks, also messenger bags.
The Atlantic called their story The Rise of the Lady Backpack. Of course they did. because women can’t just wear backpacks. We have to wear “lady backpacks.” Likewise, we ride “women’s bikes.”
What’s with the unnecessary gendering? A friend explained that lady backbacks are built for the female frame. They’re smaller. But what about small men? I asked. Well, said the friend, they can buy a lady backpack.
But they’re not a lady! They’re a small person. Wouldn’t it be easier if backpacks came in sizes to match differently sized people?
FFS. And they’ll probably come in pink.
A friend recently raised the issue of step-through bike frames. He wanted one because he’d had knee surgery and couldn’t swing his leg up over a traditional cross bar. The bike shop told him he wanted a women’s bike. He said, no, that he wanted a step through frame. How hard is this to understand, people?
Humans come in lots of different shapes and sizes. How about you just label the stuff by measurement and let us choose? Leave gender out of it, thanks.
My favourite is the TRX class. It’s good for people of all fitness levels because your body position determines how much of your weight you’re working with. I like that.
“TRX Training is extremely joint friendly. People of all ages and fitness levels can be challenged appropriately using the TRX because it allows the user to do high intensity workouts without having to put full body weight on knees and hips. The Suspension Trainer allows the user to off-set their own body weight and move through the correct range of motion without pain.” From Home Fitness for Her.
My knees approve. It’s also a very good core exercise. We do some combination of the exercises here.
Sarah owns her own TRX so in theory we could hang it up outside and do it at home. Or take it camping. In practice these days I’m better off if someone else tells me what to do.
What is it anyway? Here’s Wikipedia: ” The TRX System, also known as Total Resistance exercises, refers to a specialized form of suspension training that utilizes equipment developed by former U.S. Navy SEAL Randy Hetrick.[TRX is a form of suspension training that uses body weight exercises to develop strength, balance, flexibility and core stability simultaneously. It requires the use of the TRX Suspension Trainer, a performance training tool that leverages gravity and the user’s body weight to complete the exercises. TRX’s designers claim that it draws on research from the military, pro sports, and academic institutions along with experience gathered from the TRX team, who work “with thousands of athletes, coaches, trainers, first responders, subject matter experts, professors, and service members in all branches.”[
If the 15 above weren’t enough, here’s 66 TRX moves:
How about you? Do you use the TRX equipment at the gym or at home? Love it? Hate it? What are your fave TRX moves?
This weekend, marathon fans were treated to not one but two new world records. One is official– Brigid Kosgei of Kenya broke the existing women’s marathon world record, clocking 2:14:04 in the Chicago Marathon. Paula Radcliffe of the UK held the previous world record of 2:15:25 since 2003.
Brigid Kosgei, new world record holder for women’s marathon.
Just the day before, Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya also broke a record: he ran a marathon distance in less than two hours: 1:59:40. The sub-two-hour marathon has been the elusive white whale of running sports, and breaking that barrier is momentous news.
Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, crossing the line in Austria in 1:59:40.
Important thing to know: Brigid Kosgei’s Chicago marathon time counts as a new world record, but Eliud Kipchoge’s marathon run doesn’t. Why not? Because Kosgei ran in race conditions (well, in an actual race), and Kipchoge’s run was not in race conditions. What do I mean by that?
Glad you asked.
Kipchoge’s run was set up to optimize on race course, weather, running conditions and nutrition so to maximize the chances of breaking the 2-hour marathon mark. Here are some of the features of the setup, as detailed by an article in the Atlantic:
The organizers scouted out a six-mile circuit along the Danube River that was flat, straight, and close to sea level. Parts of the road were marked with the fastest possible route, and a car guided the runners by projecting its own disco-like laser in front of them to show the correct pace. The pacesetters, a murderers’ row of Olympians and other distance stars, ran seven-at-a-time in a wind-blocking formation devised by an expert of aerodynamics.
Here are pictures of Kipchoge and his ominipresent rotating phalanx of world-class runners, all there with him to optimize his run time.
Kipchoge and support staff (all of whom are world-class runners).
Kipchoge on the course with his running phalanx.
Kipchoge himself came equipped with an updated, still-unreleased version of Nike’s controversial Vaporfly shoes, which, research appears to confirm, lower marathoners’ times. He had unfettered access to his favorite carbohydrate-rich drink, courtesy of a cyclist who rode alongside the group. And the event’s start time was scheduled within an eight-day window to ensure the best possible weather.
Brigid Kosgei also had pace runners with her for at least the first half of the marathon. Here’s more about how that works from the Chicago Tribune:
Because Kosgei runs so fast — and because she planned to go out for a women’s world record if conditions cooperated — those pacers were hard to find, according to a marathon spokesperson. Race commentators questioned whether they had gone out too fast and abandoned pre-race strategy.
There are two pacers who work for the elite women’s pack and four for the men’s pack — all accomplished runners themselves. They stay with runners up to the 35 kilometer mark.
Kenyans Geoffrey Pyego, who mainly works as a marathon pacer, and Daniel Limo, who has competed in marathons since 2006, led the way for Kosgei. Limo holds personal bests of 1:01:30 in a half-marathon and 2:08:39 in a marathon, winning the 2015 Los Angeles Marathon in 2:10:36.
They planned with Kosgei on Saturday night to get through the half-marathon mark at 1:08. She passed 13.1 miles at 1:06:59, which was also on pace to break the course record pace of 2:17:18.
Here’s Brigid Kosgei, on the course with a pace runner, and winning the Chicago marathon on her own.
Kosgei running with a pace runner.
Kosgei crossing the finish line by herself.
I love watching marathons– I live in Boston and always try to watch the Boston Marathon either in person or on TV. It seems an impossible task to run that far that fast, and I am always in awe of the world class runners (while also admiring the thousands of non-professional athletes who do this as well).
I think it is super-tremendously awe-inspiring that Eliud Kipchoge ran a sub-2-hour marathon course. But, this two-day/two-records-sort-of brings two questions to mind for me.
Question one: I wonder how much faster Brigid Kosgei could run a marathon course if she had 1) her own rotating phalanx of world-class runners; 2) a pace car equipped with lasers to point out the best route on the course; and 3) a personal bike-riding specialized nutrition delivery person?
Question two: how much faster or stronger or better at their sports would women be if their training was at the level of men’s training? What would girls be like as athletes if we trained them and funded them and equipped them and surrounded them with a rotating phalanx of praise and support and encouragement?
Answer to question one: Not sure, but definitely faster. Right?
Answer to question two: Definitely faster. stronger. better at sport. happier. More fulfilled. Right?
Okay, final question to you, dear readers: Which would you prefer, if you could pick one:
a rotating phalanx of experts around you all the time?
A pace car with lasers to point you in the best direction in life?
A personalized-for-you special nutrition delivery person (bike optional)?
Friday, I was buzzing around like a stressed little bee meeting deadlines; scrambling to find my keys, my glasses, my whatevers; reacting to my various alarms I set as reminders — you know, the usual minutiae of modern life. I piled out the front door and turned to lock it. And I stopped, transfixed.
My burning bush had burst into flame with the overnight frost. The mid afternoon sun struck it at exactly the right angle to highlight every scarlet leaf. It was so beautiful I forgot I was supposed to be at an appointment in 15 minutes; I ignored the Fitbit alarm, and I just looked.
I looked and looked and looked. The rest of my day was just as busy but I was transformed by the beauty of that moment.
This Thanksgiving weekend, take those moments to breathe, to look, to notice, to appreciate.
It’s the little things that will ground you. It’s the little things that will add joy to your day.
Popular news outlets sprinted to the scene, putting out headlines urging us to go faster. See this one from Runner’s World:
Caption reads: Slow walkers might age faster than people who pick up the pace. Smaller print: the quicker you stroll, the more likely you are to keep accelerated brain-and-body aging at bay, a new study suggests.
This article sounds less sensational but the idea is the same:
Faster walkers at 45 have younger brains, bodies: study
You may want to know now: is it true? Do we really need to run for our lives?
No. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.
Our bloggers have written about claims connecting walking speed to health and mortality risk for a while now. Martha blogged about an earlier study linking walking speed to good health: Walk your way to long life. And Sam recently blogged about being a slow walker in the midst of this scientific flurry of praise of fast walking: Now Sam’s a slow walker will she die earlier than the rest of you?
Okay. But what did this study actually show? In short, it showed that, in a cohort of 904 people who were followed regularly from age 3 through and past age 45, that the adults in the lowest quintile (20%) of gait speed also had poorer physical health (as assessed by 19 different markers like blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol level, etc.), cognitive function, and accelerated rates of aging, compared with adults with normal gait speed (according to some chart somewhere). Because the study also had early childhood medical information (from age 3), they found that the lowest quintile group also was more likely to have manifested early signs of poorer cognitive health.
Do the researchers (or anyone who doesn’t write for a popular news outlet) think that one’s gait speed contributes to poorer physical and brain health and accelerated aging ? NO
Do the researchers think that walking faster will reduce cognitive decline, accelerated aging and poorer biomarkers of physical health? NO.
All health care providers recommend physical activity for health, but walking fast is not the moral of this story. Or any story, for that matter.
There is one good takeaway for clinicians here: including checks of people’s gaits intermittently through life may provide information to help detect conditions, or prevent advancement of conditions, or to treat them. This is still pretty speculative, as the nature of the association and the causal picture are still very unclear.
In an invited commentary on this article, Dr. Stephanie Sudinsky offers a really clear and important message for public health experts and also those of us who care about health through the lifespan:
The human brain is dynamic; it is constantly reorganizing itself according to exposures and experience. It is affected as an end organ by many other organ systems. Perhaps in this sense, brain health, reflected in brain structure, cognition, and gait speed, is not necessarily a first cause, but rather may be a consequence or mediator of lifelong opportunities and insults.
What this means to me is that it’s important to focus on ways to address early childhood cognitive functioning problems right away, through a variety of means. These means include better nutrition, safer physical environments for play and exercise, stimulation through early education and interventions, etc.
For adults, it means that we should consider expanding our notion of health risks to include those “lifelong mediators of opportunities and insults” like access to food, health care, safe living spaces, accessible opportunities for movement, safer workplaces, etc.
None of us can outrun our own mortality. Walking faster won’t whisk us away from our own aging. Walking more slowly won’t send us into cognitive decline or poorer health.
We know roughly what to do for our own health. If you’re looking for tips, I suggest dancing. At your own speed. That’s what these people in Mozambique did to celebrate World Disability Day in 2017.
Martha posted this week about the challenge of keeping fitness a priority when winter hiberation calls. I share her pain and her worry. It’s too dark to bike after work already and too cold to ride before. There’s only so much indoor exercise a person can take. I wrote a short comment on her post and then realized I had more to say.
This is halfway between a long comment and its own blog post. LOL.
Like Martha, come fall I need some motivation. The 219 in 2019 group has been good for that. I blew by the 219 goal at the end of September and now I’m at workout number 227. There are 83 days left in the year. If I hold to my commitment to workout 300 times in 2019 that’s working out all but 10 days for the rest of the year. Can I do it?
I do a TRX class at the university one day a week. I do a spin class once a week. Personal training with weights once a week. I bike commute most days and when knee is feeling okay, I take walks. (On my way of counting my short bike commute plus a walk counts as one workout.) Come October 23rd I plan to return to indoor riding on Zwift at the Bike Shed. I’ve got a 7 pm date to drop off my bike and get riding.
For now I’d like to get a few more outdoor rides in on the weekend, head to my discount gym with my son some evenings, and find a good at home thing I can do when all else fails. Yoga? Planks? Something!
All of this summer, I’ve been so excited about my new bike and getting into cycling, I’ve only mentioned half marathon training in passing. I’ve done a bunch of shorter races by now, mostly 10k. After the last one, a 10k in the sweltering heat in July, I decided that maybe it was finally time to tackle the half. If I could run 10k in 30C and survive (though just barely), perhaps there was a chance I could run twice as far?
To be honest, I was super intimidated by the sheer distance. I could do 10k, but I’d end up exhausted, and at races that included a half marathon option, I always wondered how the hell it was possible to double my distance. But plenty of people were doing it, and some of my running mates were egging me on: “if you can run 10k, you can do a half marathon, no problem!” and “anyone who runs a bit regularly can do a half!”. They meant well, I know, but this sort of encouragement made my anxiety worse. What if I was the sort of person who could run 10k, but not 21? Or who could run more or less regularly, just not very far? I was really quite scared of the idea of trying to run 21k.
Photo of an unsurmountable-looking, ice-covered mountain face. This is how Bettina felt about the half-marathon distance when she first started training. Photo by Stas Aki on Unsplash
I’ve always been one to avoid a challenge rather than risking failure, but it’s something I’m trying to work on: getting out of my comfort zone and push myself to take on things that are a bit of a stretch. Learning to maybe fail.
And so I scoured the web for an autumn half marathon with a flat course that was close enough so I could get myself there on the morning of the race. There was no way I was starting out with a hilly half. I settled on a small race around a former US Army base called the Franklin Mile Run. The US Army left a lot of its German bases in the 2000s and these areas are being redeveloped now, and the event website promised an entertaining and – I noted with relief – almost completely flat course. 29 September, I was on!
I started training “in earnest” following the aforementioned 10k race in early July, so I had ample time to prepare. I didn’t draw up a particularly sophisticated training plan: the idea was to run two to three times per week (ideally three), with one long run on the weekends, gradually increasing the distance up to 18k a few weeks before the race, repeat that a couple of times, and then taper the week before race day. I mapped out the long runs on the calendar, knowing I would hit my first 18k at the end of August. Then we’d go on holiday, during which I would do a couple of shorter runs and one more long run before tapering.
Initially, the long runs were tough. I had this mental block caused by my Fear Of The Distance (FOTD): I wasn’t going to be able to do it, it would be too hard – essentially all the negative self-talk that was trying to protect me from failure by sabotaging me, as Cate recentlypointed out. It was also really, really hot. And so I would go out, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to complete my run, and any difficulty I’d run into – it still being too warm, being slightly uncomfortable in my gear, etc., would compound that feeling and leave me starting out jittery and nervous. There was one particular run, my second 14k, during which I hit a wall at 10k and spent the final 4k shuffling along in suffering, convinced I would never be able to run a half marathon. In hindsight, it was really just too warm that day. I should have taken something to drink and taken it easy. But at the time, it was quite discouraging.
And then one day, I ran 16k and was fine. I’d taken a water bottle and decided not to sweat it (haha!), and it really helped. A friend of mine, who has done several half marathons, had also given me an amazing pep talk the day before. Not the “anyone can do this” kind, but the “you, Bettina, can do this, I know how much you train, you’re clearly in great shape”, kind. After this successful run, I was much more confident. I even knocked my first 18k out of the park. By early September, I was ready. I was feeling strong, doing great for speed, the temperatures were finally coming down, and my FOTD had subsided. Then, we went on holiday, and I got sick. Not ideal, but at this point, two weeks out from the race, I still thought I’d be able to do it.
I got back, went to work almost recovered from my cold, and immediately picked up a stomach bug that was going around. A week and a half out from the race, it was getting seriously worrying. The week before – I hadn’t run in almost three weeks at this point – I was still not feeling 100%. The race was going to be on the Sunday. On the Tuesday, I had planned to do a trial 10k but didn’t manage to get out of work on time – it was also one of the busiest weeks of the year, of course. I finally got myself out for a run on Thursday. I did 10k, which went alright, but it was abundantly clear I wouldn’t be able to do the half marathon. I was gutted. I had been ready! And now, I clearly wasn’t.
It was especially disappointing because I knew I couldn’t just sign up for another half a few weeks later once I was fully recovered. Just two days after the race I was going to have a hyperactive parathyroid removed, which would keep me from exercising for several weeks. By this time, the season would be essentially over and I would likely have to wait until next spring for another go at the half-marathon distance. (There are of course winter races, but none of them meet my criteria of ‘no overnight stay required’ and ‘mostly flat course’.) But there was nothing I could do about it. I hadn’t done anything wrong, I had just been unlucky. I now know that I can do it, so training myself up for another go will be much easier. Still tough, ARGH. Double-, nay, triple-ARGH!!!
Luckily, the race had a shorter option and it was possible to downgrade on the day, so I decided that at least I was going to run something, even if it wasn’t a half marathon. Read on this upcoming Wednesday for the race report…
Have you ever had to bow out of a race (or another challenge you had worked hard for)? How did you deal with the disappointment? I’m curious to hear your experiences.
