1. How Gendered Myths of Strength Keep Women Weaker
On disparities in physical activity and what keeps them in place

Read here.

2. What Overtraining and Underfueling Do to Your Thyroid
Scientists weigh in on the underlying causes of relative energy deficiency in sport

By Alex Hutchinson,  read here.

3.

View this post on Instagram

Read here. The paper is open access.

4. Water aerobics could boost VO2 max by 12 per cent, science says
Runners: this is your sign to join your next local aqua-fit class

In Canadian Running.  Read here

5. “A cycling influencer nominated for a list of top 100 women cyclists said she has declined the honour due to the decision not to include trans women. Cycling UK, a charity promoting the sport, has compiled its 100 Women in Cycling list for the last nine years, but this year decided only to include biological women following the recent unanimous UK Supreme Court ruling defining a “woman” and “sex” in law. Claire Sharpe, a cycling guide and coach from Bristol, said: “If they don’t want to ride with all women, then it’s not the kind of ride I want to be part of”.” BBC website

6. 5 health benefits of line dancing – according to science

In The Conversation.  Read here

. .

Strength and speed are my friends.  They were my go to fitness mojo. But no more. The times they are a changing. 

The issues I’m facing aren’t directly age-related.  They’re health related, though obviously there’s a connection. Did you know that by age 60, more than half of people have a hiatal hernia? Until last month,  I did not know that either.

Most people are asymptomatic and don’t need to worry about it, but that’s not me.

Now,  I know a lot more about the condition and the implications for my fitness life.  See You never know when you’ll perform your last heavy deadlift for more.

To be absolutely clear, I’m not asking for medical advice.  I have a good doctor.  I’m also definitely not giving medical advice. I’m not that kind of doctor.  I’m talking about my life, fitness and health experiences.  If you think you might have a hiatal hernia please go talk to your doctor.

Back to strength and speed,  and changing directions.

I’ve always been good at sprinting and generally good at sports that require bursts of power and strength. In cycling, I’m a sprinter. Many people can ride further than me. Many people can also ride up hills more quickly. However, on the flats, I’m pretty good at short bursts of power.

This was recently confirmed by a Zwift (virtual cycling) assessment of my riding abilities.

See Sam is not shocked by her Zwift baseline camp report, but will she take their advice?

My Zwift baseline report declared my strength as a cyclist was sprinting and that I should work on my endurance.

My strength:

My weakness:

I joked in that post about the likelihood of my giving up my sprinting ways. Now here I am, needing to give up intense efforts on the bike. 

Why? Medical advice is to continue exercising with a hiatal hernia, but to avoid heavy lifting and intense aerobic activities. What am I allowed to do? Long, slow endurance efforts. There’s advice out there like this, “Stick with low-impact activities that do not put excessive pressure on your core. You can try walking, swimming, yoga (but only certain poses), or light cycling. ” Light cycling?!?

Also, “high intensity exercises may exacerbate your symptoms.”

Could I become an endurance athlete? Maybe. 

Will I die of boredom? Possibly.

Endurance riding would undoubtedly be a reasonable winter training goal. It has the virtue of being a weakness I can work on, and that I’m allowed to work on it. Even Zwift thinks I ought to work on it.

I’ve done a few slow Zwift rides since diagnosis, and they’ve been fine. It’s hard to resist sprinting, though. It’s hard to admit that my “beast” days are over. What’s the alternative? I’ve never been that keen on the “energizer bunny” fitness archetype–you know, those people who can go at moderate pace forever, but maybe I can warm up to it. I have to start to tell new fitness stories.

Until now I’ve associated the move from beast to bunny, with age. Older athletes lose their top end speeds but they can go forever. See On turning 56 and thinking about age and speed.

“There’s a thing that people say about older athletes. They say you lose your peak performance, your top end speeds, your ability to sprint. You keep your endurance. The older athlete can go forever. We just can’t go as fast.

That’s the received wisdom and you hear it from masters athletes themselves.

But the problem is that this isn’t quite true. Studies show that older athletes who lose top end speeds do so because because they stop training for performance at those speeds. They keep the long rides and long runs but drop the speed training. Almost nobody keeps training at 60 as much as they did when they were younger. When they conduct studies and test older athletes responsivity to training, older athlete do make the same kinds of gains they did when they were younger. They just don’t feel like doing it.

What’s missing, it turns out, isn’t the phsyiological ability to respond to training. What’s missing is the desire to train hard.”

I still have the desire to train hard,  but it’s not medically advised.

Wish me luck as I transition from beast to bunny!

To celebrate Hallowe’en, I read Shirley Jackson’s terrifying novel, The Haunting of Hill House (recently adapted for Netflix). Jackson’s famous story, “The Lottery” impressed me as an undergraduate forty years ago, but I had never wondered about its author’s life. This fall, a podcast led me first to the novel and then to Ruth Franklin’s wonderful biography. There I learned that Jackson had managed to write six novels and dozens of short stories while raising four children and supporting her husband’s academic and writing career; I also learned of the ill health, both mental and physical, that preceded Jackson’s death at 48. She died taking an afternoon nap. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest caused by coronary occlusion.  

“If only Jackson had taken up running,” was the thought that came to mind. I know, I know—women jogging around the neighbourhood was not a thing in 1950s America, although there were superlative women runners who represented the country in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics (Mae Faggs, Catherine Hardy, Barbara Jones, and Janet Moreau won gold in the 4×100 relay in 1952; Isabelle Daniels, Mae Faggs, Margaret Matthews and Wilma Rudolph won bronze four years later). My response was a projection; in my late forties, I suffered, like Jackson, from panic attacks, and while I’m grateful to the care I received at the time, I wish that someone had suggested exercise as a possible therapy. It may be that my symptoms were perimenopausal and would have abated on their own. In any case, they disappeared when I turned fifty and took up running.

That year my youngest child left home for university. I suddenly had a lot of free time on my hands, a moment to breath and find my feet after twenty years of full-time work and children’s hockey, soccer, and music lessons—and also puppy training, dog walking, and household chores. The freedom that running afforded was an extension of a broader sense that new horizons were opening up in front of me. Jackson suffered agoraphobia in her mid-forties and was prescribed tranquillizers, which didn’t alleviate her fears and only left her feeling “stupid” (her word). In the novel she was drafting in the months before she died, Jackson tells the story of a woman who leaves everyone behind, finding a room of her own far from the demands of children and marriage. Clearly, freedom was on her mind.

Jackson drank, smoked, and ate poorly—all contributing factors in her untimely death. I can’t help wondering if exercise might have extended her life and helped her overcome her fears—if she had walked the hills around North Bennington, the Vermont town where she lived, would she have gained the sense of freedom that running gave me? Had Jackson lived to fifty, maybe she would have caught a glimpse of a new life on the path ahead.

I am grateful for the amazing narratives that Shirley Jackson gave the world. But I can’t help wishing, for her, more years of writing and the health she needed to sustain it.

(The featured image is “Vermont Countryside.” This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)