My vacation last week was a little bit of a joke in that it mostly didn’t happen. I have one of those jobs that means I can get away sometimes but I can’t necessarily stay away, especially as we’re weeks away from the start of the university semester. I knew it was a stretch to try and I did have time away recently so it’s all good really.
I even managed to work from a vacation like spot–Sarah’s family farm in Prince Edward County–and I did get some activity in between emergency meetings. Since I don’t even have time to write blog posts right now this is more of a photo essay of my triathlon of vacation activities.
This is not a novel idea. But it bears repeating. Sometimes, we share articles with such titles. And, even though they often contain helpful information beyond the title, the title annoys me and I usually mutter to myself, “the one you enjoy doing”. Duh.
On occasion, when someone hears that I enjoy running, they will say “Oh, I wish I enjoyed it, but I don’t”. “I’ve never been able to achieve that “runner’s high”. To which, I will say, that’s OK, it’s not for everyone. What do you enjoy?
Most advice about moving for wellness, boils down to a few main ideas. Any movement, you enjoy, that you can do safely, and that raises your heart rate a bit, is useful. It may prolong your life (it may not) and it will likely make you feel better, day to day.
As I get older, it feels ever more important to me that I remain consistent with fitness. Consistent with doing the things that work for me. A mix of running, indoor cycling, walking, HIIT-style workouts that are careful and thoughtful, some strength exercises and mobility. The strength and mobility are mainly so that I can continue running.
How many times have you seen a person say “I hate running!” but “I’m doing a couch to 5K program!”. They may complete that program, but if they hate running, it’s not likely to stick. It’s not likely to become consistent. The consistency is where the gold is. It’s where the brain-rewarding, juice-flowing, joint-soothing gold is.
I don’t like to ride a bike outside, mainly because I never became a good cyclist and I don’t have the interest to become better at it. So, it’s not for me. But, I love spinning on an indoor bike.
I hate treadmills. My brain wants me to jump off as soon as there’s any real movement. I prefer running outside, in the weather (all of it, rain, sun, light snow).
It doesn’t matter if a study comes out that suggests that riding a bike outside is going to give my heart health a slight edge. Because, I won’t become an outdoor cyclist suddenly. So, I’ll take whatever benefit (and there’s always a benefit) and enjoyment I get from spinning indoors.
Don’t let anyone convince you that you have to do a specific exercise for it to be worth it. Find what you enjoy. Discover what works for your body, whatever it’s abilities. Figure out a way to do it regularly and safely. That’s it. So simple.
Nicole P. enjoyed her Sunday run with glorious mid-August weather and is hoping you enjoy whichever movement you choose to do this week.
This year’s Olympics in Tokyo was hot. Yes, it was exciting too, but I’m talking about temperature. The daily high temperatures were between 29-33C (84-91F) every day since they started on 23 July, said one news source. Add to that high humidity, and of course there will be effects on athletes. From archery to rowing, Olympians experienced physical distress– so much so that some left their fields of competition in stretchers or wheelchairs.
The first notable casualty of the heat was Russian archer Svetlana Gomboeva, who collapsed while checking her scores. She had tried to prepare for the climate by training in Vladivostock, a Russian city just 1,000 km from Japan. But her coach told reporters: “She couldn’t stand a whole day out in the heat”.
By “standing”, they meant literally standing:
“If you stand up in a warm environment for a long period of time and you’re sweating and you’re becoming dehydrated and the blood flow to the skin is going up and up and up, you can have a fairly drastic fall in blood pressure and that’s seen with people getting light-headed and feeling faint,” [said Mike Tipton, a professor in Human and Applied Physiology at the University of Portsmouth who helped the UK’s triathlon team prepare for the heat.]
In fact, he said, standing still can make the problem worse because contracting your leg muscles as you move helps maintain blood pressure and blood flow back to heart.
There were many other cases of heat-related illness, but I bring up this one to emphasize how important environment is to athletic activity. The heat doesn’t just keep us from competing and doing our best; it can keep us from doing anything outside for an extended period of time.
The Lancet published a commentary in 2016 with predictions on what northern hemisphere cities could host the summer Olympics in 2085. Here’s what they came up with:
Global map showing low-medium-high risk cities for hosting 2085 Olympics. Only eight of them are outside western Europe.
The researchers focused on the northern hemisphere only in this study. Their results are sobering– many of the locations of former Olympic Games will no longer (in fact, are no longer now) viable for intense outdoor competition in summer.
Here’s a thought: why not hold the summer Olympics in the fall instead? Turns out, some people have already thought of this (and written about it):
Tipton says the Tokyo Olympics should have been held in the Autumn, as they were in Tokyo in 1964 and Mexico City in 1968. “It might well be that we start to think of it being the Autumn Olympics because of climate change,” he said.
But TV broadcasters are resistant, particularly in the US, where the autumn already has a packed sporting schedule. The NFL American Football season typically starts in September and the NBA basketball and NHL hockey seasons start in October.
Neal Pilson, former President of the US-based CBS Sports television channel told Reuters in 2018: “The Summer Olympics are simply of less value if held in October because of pre-existing programme commitments for sports…the IOC is well aware of American network preferences for the timing of the Summer and Winter games”.
Given global climate change, a summer Olympics is increasingly looking like a “having cake and eating it too” situation. By this I mean that we are faced with a choice: either we can have an international athletic competition at the time that corporations and media entities prefer, OR we can have that competition at a time and place that’s conducive to optimal athletic performance. Climate change is forcing our hand: we can’t, it seems, have both anymore.
For me, the answer is easy: have the Olympics at a time and place that promotes health and performance for athletes.
Of course, there are so so many other climate-change related questions, not the least of which is: should we even still host such a carbon-intensive event? I’m not weighing in on that here. I need to do my homework first. But it’s certainly clear that we are increasingly having to change our behaviors and activities due to climate change. This includes recreation.
Readers, do you think the Summer Olympic Games would be just as good as the Autumn Olympic Games? I’d love to hear any thoughts you have.
One of the things I was most excited about when tiny human was born was eventually introducing him to water by means of baby swimming. What I had in mind was more or less what the cutie in this video is doing: splish splash!
Video of a baby splashing around in the water.
But alas, tiny human is a pandemic baby. For the longest time, pools were closed altogether, and even now many places that usually offer baby swimming courses still don’t. The few that do are ludicrously oversubscribed (or offer their classes during working hours, which – baby activities during working hours in general – pisses me off no end and is a topic for a separate rant). So, no baby swimming for us. Out of all the baby-related things the pandemic has deprived us of, this is the one that makes me really sad.
I’m still determined for this baby to be an aquatic baby. I watch the websites offering baby swimming courses like a hawk to see if they’re coming back on. We’ve taken Mini to the pool a few times (loved it until he got cold) and he tested the sea while on holiday (he was sceptical but loved messing around with his uncle and aunt in the water). We have a paddling pool on the terrace we were hoping to get a lot of use out of, but our summer has been horrible and it’s been too cold most of the time. So we still mostly splash around in the bath, which is… not quite the same.
Overall, introducing baby to water isn’t going as swimmingly (see what I did there?) as I’d hoped. Still, I’m not too worried yet, he’s tiny and will hopefully have plenty of opportunity to get wet. I do worry about older kids who haven’t been able to learn swimming or continue. From what I can tell with my lifesaving club, which cautiously started practice again in early summer, many of them aren’t coming back after such a long break. My colleague’s daughter, who used to swim regularly, became a body-conscious teenager during Covid and refuses to go back to the pool. My heart breaks for her. And all that’s without even thinking what it will mean for drowning incident numbers if several cohorts worth of kids aren’t learning to swim (properly).
I don’t quite know where this post is going, just that I’m sad for all the kids who don’t have the chance to enjoy the pleasure of getting in the water now. Ugh 🙁
This has been the summer of swimming for me. Not just swimming aspiration (as every summer is), but actual swimming. In lakes and oceans, and today, in my friend Kay’s fancy apartment complex pool.
We’ve written a lot about swimming on the blog this year. I mean A LOT. Certainly a lot more than usual, and a lot more than I recall from previous years. Why? Partly it’s a function of what our bloggers are into. But I think there’s something more going on here.
For me, swimming during the pandemic has been one of the few times I’ve felt total respite, a complete break from the fear and worry and fussing about disease risk, physical fitness, mental health or isolation. Whether I swim alone or with others, I’m aware of being held by the water, of moving under my own power, of gliding and submerging and floating, of breathing and holding my breath and then breathing again.
I joined the Boston Open Water Swimming Facebook group this year to get tips on where and when to swim in fresh and salt water around here. Thanks to them I got my ISHOF swim buoy and have been using it happily.
But (there’s always a but, isn’t there): I’m not swimming long distances. I’m not swimming fast, either. I haven’t even donned my swim cap and goggles to do any serious swimming (yet). At the ocean, I’ve gone in with friends or family, jumping waves, diving, floating, laughing and letting the surf swirl me around. In lakes, I’ve been wading in, heading for deeper water (my swim buoy following right behind me), and floating, treading water, swimming, diving, and enjoying the feel of being between water and air.
Then I saw this video, posted by on my FB group. This sloth is my summer-of-2021 swim mascot. Watch at least a little bit and you’ll see what I mean.
Happy sloth swimming slothfully and happily.
Yes, I am a slothful swimmer. Slow and steady and cheery and grinning and untroubled and unhurried.
We can learn a lot from animals doing sports in a slow and jaunty way.
Back when I used to ride long distances on Saturdays with a cycling club there was a lot of debate, especially among the slower, more social group, about the perfect distance. I say “slower and more social” but my most standards even this group wasn’t particularly slow. We were social, in that we stopped for lunch rather than just chowing down on a cliff bar and turning around, but we weren’t that slow. We averaged about 25 km/hr.
Our rides commenced at 8 am in the summer months and lunch took about an hour. That means a 100 km ride was a 5 hour commitment. Home by 1:30 after riding back from the start like the teddy bear below.
Text reads ‘cyclists at 130 pm on the weekend after getting home from a ride.’ The image is a bear in a blue sleep shirt with a red night cap still wearing bike shoes sitting in a green arm chair with tea and scones on a table.’
At the time, I was fine with 100 km. I arrived home sleepy. That’s true. I showered and had lunch round 2. Sometimes I even napped. But it didn’t take away the whole day. We used to gripe when the distances got much past that. 110 km? Fine. 120 km? OK. But 140 and 160 (the summer’s peak distance? Meh. At 160 km Jeff and I had a great trick–I’d ride out with the club, he’d meet me there with kids and car and bathing suits, we’d all have breakfast together, and then he’d ride back.
Now 100 km is pretty much a day for me. And that’s okay when you have a day to spare but often I don’t. I mean, I can make dinner, I can watch a movie, but often after a 100 km I don’t get anything productive done.
I’m coming to appreciate shorter rides, even on the weekend.
This year our most common riding distance is 50 km.
We’ve got a great 50 km route outside Guelph that we got from doing the Tour de Guelph.
Brantford to Port Dover? Also 50 km.
Our ice cream ride in Prince Edward County is 50 km.
Slickers Ice Cream, Prince Edward County
I’m hoping we get a 100 km county ride in September. I’m also hoping it’s cooler by then. The heat this year is killing me.
The heat waves this summer are making think about my fitness activities and how to do better. First, how to do better about staying active in the heat, but also how to do fitness better to minimize my contribution to climate change.
Staying active – I am lucky enough to live near an old quarry and an outdoor swimming pool I can walk or bike to every day. For me, both are great ways to exercise and stay cool. I can go to the quarry early enough in the day that I don’t even worry about sunscreen, which is good because it is in a conservation area and most sunscreens are harmful to water creatures.
Beyond that, it gets trickier. It’s too hot to ride my horse by the time I am done work most days, and she lives too far away for me to contemplate a ride before work. I still do my Zoom ballet classes, and there are video options for yoga, HIIT, pilates, various dance forms etc.
But how to do fitness better? One of the biggest pieces may be travel to do activities. At the Tokyo Olympics, there were lots of measures to minimize the carbon footprint, but COVID turned out to be the game changer. Without spectators to feed, house, and entertain, the carbon emissions dropped an estimated 12%. The carbon emissions from all the airline travel for fans to get to Tokyo appears to be on top of that.
That is something I have started discussing with my swim buddies. We meet about once a week at a beach that is relatively central for all of us. But all but one of us drives a car to get there. Public transit isn’t really a viable option given the times we swim and the awful cross-town bus service. I try to minimize my impact by combining that swim with other errands in that part of town, plus grocery shopping on the way home. It does have us questioning whether we will go further south for cold water swims as we have done in the past. And of course, we will all be back at the indoor pools once our swim clubs start up again in the fall; not exactly a low-carbon activity.
Biking is also an option that I want to explore more. Right now, I use it mostly for short commutes to do errands, but lately it has been too hot even for that. I joke that learning to ride a horse would help me survive an apocalypse, at the same time as driving to her barn in the country contributes to that apocalypse. Could I bike, then swim (or ride my horse), then bike home? Probably not, at least not yet. The spirit is willing but the legs are weak. Maybe in a couple of years, once there is a decent train service where I can bring my bike and just cycle the last few kilometres.
I understand the desire to travel in order to do interesting sports; I am currently living vicariously through Cate as she cycles her way around Bulgaria. I thoroughly enjoy all the posts about cycling in Prince Edward County or along the Guelph to Goderich trail, or canoeing in places like Algonquin Park. My bucket list has included a trip to Peru so I can hike to Machu Picchu for decades, and more recently I have dreamed of a swim trek through Croatia. Or even a trip back to British Columbia, which has so many sports options, including canoeing along the Sunshine Coast like these two women.
Photo by Chris Montgomery, via Unsplash
Then there are all the gear questions. Microfibres, miracle knits, water-resistant clothing versus old-school linen and leather. Most days it doesn’t seem like much of a choice. I won’t give up my comfy streamlined bathing suits or goggles and caps, but I can at least limit my purchases to essentials. Just this week I reluctantly threw out a suit I have worn for a decade because the latest repairs were giving me sores when I swam. I have started looking for companies that sell gear made from recycled plastics. So far I haven’t found a swimsuit I love, but I do have gorgeous comfy leggings that get a lot of use.
I wish I had some snappy conclusion, but this is a complicated issue. Getting out and being active allows us to both notice what is happening in our environment, and to be more resilient to its negative effects. At the same time, I live in a city with Canadian winters, so it is hard to do all the things I would like without getting into a car. I am not brave enough for winter cycling. I could focus on more seasonal sports such as cross-country skiing along the nearby river, and give up pool swimming, but that would mean giving up on both friends and an activity where I feel strong.
Do you ever think about how your sports affect the environment? What are you doing to adapt as the world gets hotter and the weather more unpredictable? What trade-offs are you willing to make and what is too important to give up?
Oh no! It’s chin-up day. How can I practice this without dangling from the top bar on the rig? Can I do those alternate ones with the band placed horizontally? Or on the shorter rig. The one that I can reach easily? These are the types of thoughts that go through my head when there is something on the menu I don’t want to entertain. They can make my brain freeze, and sometimes, the best way to deal with them, is to avoid the offending item all together.
This is why I enjoy long distance running. The repetitive motion forces me to get out of my head in a meditative way. Much more effectively than a long shavasana, where my mind is likely to get busy. This is nice, but are we done yet?
Being this type of person is why I haven’t worked on my chin ups. I can’t get my head to stop thinking about dangling off the bar from a high place. I mean, I haven’t been back INSIDE the gym yet, and I probably won’t be any time soon, but even when I do, I’m not likely to run to the high bar on the rig. Which is a shame, because I am confident that I have the necessary upper body strength.
When I do let myself get out of my head for brief moments, it’s nice.
Whether it’s the start of a sprint during a park workout and I let my whole body move without worrying too much about form. Or, during jumping jacks or kettlebell swings, where I can feel the adrenaline rush. Those moments feel special. Luxurious. I’m not suggesting that people don’t employ good form, but if you do something often enough, you should naturally have the form down, so that you can let go and enjoy.
I was thinking about these things for this post. I figured it was a little ode to free(ing) movement. Free from inhibitions. Free from overthinking. Letting them spill out into other areas of our lives.
Then I read Bitch Media’s review of Alison Bechdel’s, “The Secret to Superhuman Strength“. I read this graphic novel a couple months ago and enjoyed it. Cate wrote about it here. While not quite as “sporty” as Bechdel, and though I discovered my love of fitness later in life, I can relate to her quest for a higher sense of herself through movement. Or, if nothing else, bliss that comes from turning off an anxious mind. There were two things that stood out to me from the Bitch review:
“Khloé Kardashian has an E! show called Revenge Body whose entire premise revolves around people sticking it to their exes by losing weight and getting jacked.”
“Early in life, Bechdel discovers that she can blunt the utter awkwardness of being a human being through vigorous physical activity. She’s looking for the bliss that comes through forgetting yourself, a way to turn off the relentless grinding of an anxious mind.”
With respect to the first, I’m so glad I don’t have cable and I’m not tempted to watch crap like that.
With respect to the second, this is me, in a nutshell. Some parts of exercise are hard. But there are lots of moments that feel good, that are fun, and more importantly, result in that bliss that comes from forgetting yourself, from turning of the relentless grinding of an anxious mind.
And, then I thought, because I’ve been feeling typical feelings of annoyance and frustration with myself, about my career (and ruminating over school choices)….what if instead of distracting myself through exercise, I channelled some of that sweat equity into more meaningful endeavours through work? What if I tried to find artistic and cerebral activities that provided the same hard work, and way to turn of the relentless grinding of an anxious mind? What effect would that have on my hampster in a wheel feelings of making some ground with new experiences, and then hitting the same barriers (external and internal) over and over? What would happen then? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but it is something I am thinking about. I’ll let you know if I figure out a way to jump off the wheel. If this rambling paragraph makes any sense to you, and you have any wisdom to share, please do!
In the meantime, I will keep moving through it. Seeking those blissful moments. This sweaty glow is courtesy of a hot Sunday morning in Toronto, but also, from letting go and enjoying my morning run.
A collage of photos from a jog in Toronto. Top left is the view from Church St. looking West on Adelaide towards the financial district. The pink coloured Scotia Plaza is prominent. Top right is the flatiron building at Church and Front/Wellington. Bottom right is the entrance to the Distillery District from Parliament St. with the heart display in the centre. Bottom right is Nicole with blue cap and black tank top, sweaty from a hot but happy run.
Nicole P. is in a “slow and steady” season, both with exercise, work and play.
Cate’s travels in Bulgaria and more reflections on heat, hills, and grit. Many of us here at the blog are living vicariously through Cate’s travel adventures. Hope you enjoy them too!
