Feminist reflections on fitness, sport, and health
I’m a feminist scholar, a fitness blogger, and a dean of a college of arts. So naturally, I end up thinking about the ways in which art and health fit together.
See Is looking at art really the new running?
I’ve also love the idea of yoga in art musems, like yoga in the Louvre.
But this is definitely a first!
Lifting sculptures! Count me in.
In the past month two women in my family have fallen. They didn’t hurt themselves seriously, nothing broken, but we’ve all been thinking a lot more about falling and how to fall well since those falls happened.
I’ve also been missing Aikido and the falling on mats, that’s part of martial arts training. It’s one of the things I love about Aikido. When I was training regularly I thought it would be fun to offer seniors classes in Aikido that were focused on the falling part.
Lately classes on falling for seniors have been showing up in my social media newsfeeds and I want to share them here with you.
Here’s two examples:
I’m not sure about my future and falling on mats, but I still wish there were an Aikido for seniors class.
It’s summer but it’s also the middle of August and Sarah and I are getting ready to return to our usual routines. We start meeting with our personal trainer again on Tuesday and we’ll be back to lifting heavy things in the gym.
But being away from the gym doesn’t mean we haven’t been lifting.
Just today we emptied out our shed, it’s full of some pretty heavy storage bins. But we needed to find some bins belonging to one of the adult kids.
We also put our canoe away since our next trip isn’t until the fall.
I like the deliberate and careful lifting in the gym because it makes things like this possible.
Here’s an older post on lifting in the wild.
Sam lifts heavy things in the wild
I’m riding 200 km to fight kids’ cancer and save little lives. Please sponsor me to support my challenge!
The matching donation day for the annual Great Cycle Challenge Canada (the major cycling fundraiser to fight childhood cancer) is Kick Cancer’s Butt Day, taking place on August 12. On this day, online donations made to riders are matched dollar-for-dollar by supporting organizations and sponsors to double the impact.
Donate here.
So far I’ve ridden nearly 60 km. Above are some photos from recent rides.
“Bra doping” is the phrase making the rounds in cycling news this week, and no, it’s not what it sounds like. Nobody has been accused of stashing performance-enhancing drugs in their sports bra. What’s actually being alleged is aerodynamic: some riders may be padding their bras or wearing specially shaped inserts to smooth the airflow around their chests during the individual time trial — a trick cyclists call a “chest fairing.”
To be clear up front: as of this writing, no rider has been found to have cheated. This started as concerns raised by rival teams, reported by the Dutch outlet WielerFlits, and it prompted the UCI to run extra equipment checks before Tuesday’s time trial at this year’s Tour de France Femmes.
Why would this even matter? Because time trials are won and lost in fractions of a second, and aerodynamics researchers say the underlying science is real — a chest fairing can measurably cut drag.
I was struck by two things. First, wow, a competitive sports advantage for large-breasted women! Is this a first? Second, the riders are mostly not very large-breasted women since there is such a competitive advantage in having a lower-weight body in cycling, particularly climbing hills in France. They all look very thin to me.
Here’s where it gets interesting, feminist-issue-wise. This isn’t actually a new problem. Men have been doing versions of this for years, tucking ice packs or water bottles down the front of their jerseys for the same aero effect, and the UCI has already banned that. Dutch rider Jan-Willem van Schip is something of a repeat offender. He was disqualified from the Ronde de l’Oise this past June for racing a time trial with a hydration pack stuffed into the front of his jersey, chasing the same “chest fairing” effect riders are now being accused of getting from padded bras. Same physics, same rule against altering your body’s shape for aero gain — just a very different object doing the altering.
But policing it for men is comparatively simple. After all, a bottle-shaped lump under a jersey is a bottle-shaped lump. Women’s bodies don’t offer that same clean test. Breast size varies naturally, rider to rider and even day to day, which means the UCI’s fix — sending riders through pre-race chest checks — puts officials in the position of eyeballing bodies and making judgment calls about what’s “natural” and what isn’t.
Unsurprisingly, that went about as well as you’d expect. The riders’ association pushed back hard on how the checks were rolled out — thrown together the night before, with little warning — and specifically raised concerns about rider “dignity and privacy” being protected during what amounts to officials inspecting women’s chests before they’re allowed to start. A female commissaire was assigned to do the actual checking, which maybe helps, but doesn’t erase the strangeness of the situation: a sport already prone to scrutinizing women’s bodies in every other respect is now formally empowered to scrutinize them for hidden padding before a race.
So here’s the tension I keep turning over: on one hand, a rule against artificially altering your body shape for aero gain is a completely normal kind of equipment regulation — no different in principle from banning an illegal bike frame. On the other hand, applying that rule to breasts, specifically, in a sport that already treats women’s bodies as endlessly inspectable, is not a neutral act. It’s hard to imagine an equivalent scenario for men that would involve officials in a tent making judgment calls about whether a body part looks “natural.”
What do you think? Does fairness require stricter enforcement? And is there a way to enforce a rule like this that doesn’t put women’s bodies under yet another layer of scrutiny?
Further reading: Jan-Willem van Schip disqualified again — Cyclingnews | UCI conducts chest-area kit checks — Canadian Cycling Magazine | chest checks video
Susan
One way or another, I’ve been heading into Algonquin for 20 years with a variety of friends, family, lovers and dogs. To say it is a sacred and integral part of my life is to understate what it means. The four years I’ve been away from it have been achy (not just because of the lack of Park, there’s been plenty to ache my heart). Yet, every summer that ended without me spending time in a tent on a lake with a canoe parked under a tree and a loon calling just around the corner, was another piece of grief. So this summer, as I reorganized my life, again, after so many losses, again, I messaged Sam and Sarah to see if they would have me on their trip with them.
In part, my failure to plan trips was due to my increasing trepidation about my body. Pandemic, menopause, auto-immune conditions all conspired to rob me of confidence that I could still endure and do this thing. So going with people who never gave it up, who knew they could adapt themselves, was heartening. I was very surprised at what I found out about my capacity.
First of all, the things that hurt while I’m not on a trip barely hurt while I was on the trip. Other things hurt of course, but I was so happy to feel tiredness in my shoulders and quads, knowing it was because I was moving, rather than the vague ache of. . .pick the poison. . .sedentariness, grief, age, decline, despair. . .it all adds up. In fact, there were ways I was stronger somehow. I have never given up yoga and Pilates and always focused on balance. I have this notion that I am no longer agile and that my core isn’t what it used to be but I was wrong. I think the last number of years I have spent in meditative stillness have conditioned something I never had before that practice became a huge part of my life. There is a core conditioning and balance along with a softness and awareness that means my body knows where it is and what it is doing. It knows what hurts in the way of “discomfort” and what hurts in the way of “don’t do that”. Discomfort is far more prevalent and discomfort I can handle.
I can feel that I’m at another crossroad, I could just stop pushing and drift to a customary decline or I could keep brushing up against my limits and seeing what beauty I can find. The verdant beauty of the earth expressed in Algonquin park is worth pushing for. I was so happy and confident about how this trip went that I booked more vacation and decided to bring friend of the Blog, Kim, on the trip she’s been pestering me for since we met. We will report back on Older Women In The Park, Susan and Kim edition, after Labour Day!
Sam
Like Susan, I love love love canoe camping. There’s something very special about it and no other sort of holiday scractches the same itch.
It’s effort and natural beauty, yes. It’s also no phones and hammock naps. I love swimming after a hard paddle. I love eating food that’s been cooked over the samp stove. I love basking on rocks. And I know it’s a minority view, but I love sleeping in tents.
I go at least once every summer, sometimes more. This summer this was our first trip but we have two more planned.
It’s the vacation that packs the most bang for buck in terms of rest and relaxation and the feeling of really getting away. Three or four days in the woods isn’t that much time, but it feels like a real holiday.
I also love that I’m still learning new things. This trip, for the first time, I carried my pack and my canoe. I learned that in some ways that’s easier. Yes, it’s a lot more weight but it felt better on my shoulders.
It was lovely to get out there again with Susan since that’s really how our friendship began, on a canoe trip in the woods.
She had the uncomfortable middle spot in our canoe but this inspired us to get a third removable seat.
Sarah
Seems like this was a bit of a different trip for everyone this year. Susan returning after a hiatus, and Sam growing in strength and confidence a few years out from knee surgery.
For me, the biggest hiccup this year wasn’t work, and it wasn’t the dramatic car part failure that meant switching cars and shaving a day off our trip. I’m currently dealing with a frozen left shoulder – not usually hugely painful but the restricted range of motion means I can’t reach up to hold the gunwales when the canoe is on my shoulders. This means that for the first time since we’ve been tripping, I would need to rely entirely on my companions to portage the canoe.
Fortunately, Susan and Sam were both more than up for the challenge and were more than capable at carrying and manoeuvring Sam’s unwieldy (when it’s not in the water) 17’ canoe. For someone who’s used to being self-reliant in the backcountry, it was a wonderful experience to be able to literally share the load this trip.
How many posts? More than 30 posts this month, through a run of heat and wildfire smoke that scrambled a lot of our workout plans — proof that showing up looks different every summer.
Who blogged? Sam, Diane, Christine, Nat, Catherine, Mina, Tracy, Martha, Elan, and guest blogger Chloë.
Recovery and what the body actually needs. A strong thread this month was on healing slower — and more honestly — than planned. Diane’s cardiac-rehab arc continued in Recovery is Weird, where her Garmin body battery finally climbed out of the “depleted” zone even as her intensity minutes stayed baffling. Mina’s Deny Pain, Heal Faster; if only … looked back at a shoulder injury that turned out to be several fractures and torn tissue, and wondered whether not knowing the full diagnosis for a month actually helped her heal with less fear and guarding. Nat worked through the final stage of a back injury in Nat, spinal movement and the Jefferson curl, learning to trust movements she’d been avoiding out of old caution. And Tracy’s C25K is taking longer than 9 weeks and that’s okay traced how a running program stalled out after she lost her mother, and how she’s found her way back to it.
Guest voices on bodies and belief. Chloë’s guest post What I thought my body was for was a standout: a lifelong “mind person” who took up jiu-jitsu in her forties and discovered a forty-year-old assumption about her own physical limits was never actually true — just an old, unquestioned story.
Heat, smoke, and summer plans going sideways. Climate kept elbowing its way into the blog’s usual summer rhythms. Sam’s summer movement plans go awry catalogued a cascade of cancelled rides, smoky air quality, a shuttered pool, and a too-hot dog walk, while Nat’s Summer’s in full swing and Nat couldn’t be happier found the bright side of an early-morning, heat-dodging routine of walking, biking, and lane swims. Sam and her crew still managed a four-day canoe camping trip into Algonquin (“Type 1.5 fun,” by consensus), and Catherine spent two weeks travelling and noticing the small sensory pleasures of summer — cold rivers, gravel underfoot, one very memorable watermelon slushie — in Mid-summer: a time for ordinary movement and extraordinary sensory experience.
Charity miles for good causes. Nat rode the MS Bike Tour (Today’s the day!), a weekend that’s become a fixture in her relationship with Michel. Diane paid forward her open-water swimming in Sometimes Good Things Grow, serving as a swim angel at Bring on the Bay for the fourth year running. And Sam wrapped the month gearing up for the Great Cycle Challenge in support of SickKids, after laying out her whole summer and fall of charity riding in Sam’s August Charity Riding.
Feminism, sport, and language in the news. Martha’s Blowing the Whistle on Gender at the World Cup celebrated the six women officiating the men’s tournament this year — a record, even if still a small fraction of FIFA’s roster. Diane’s My FIFA Protest Has Turned into Something Pretty Great turned frustration with lopsided World Cup coverage into a new love of the Northern Super League. And Martha’s Incompetent, blighted, senile took on the quietly damning language medicine uses for women’s bodies — incompetent cervix, senile vagina — and argued for language that doesn’t blame the patient for the problem.
Retreats, rest, and work-life boundaries. Catherine spent four days at a meditation retreat for neurodivergent people in North Carolina, previewed memorably in Neurodivergent meditation retreat preview: the fans (an ode to industrial box fans in a humid mountain hall). Mina’s When Rest Feels Reckless sat with the discomfort of taking five unpaid weeks away from work, and the old voice insisting she hasn’t earned the rest. Christine kept finding her own way back to consistency, from a “you don’t need motivation, you need a decision” meditation prompt in Meditation Jumpstarts Christine’s New Exercise Routine to rediscovering movement-snack cards from an old favourite book in (Finally) Circling Back to Trisha Durham’s ‘Movement Snacks’.
Sam’s dean life meets the blog. In Is Looking at Art Really the New Running?, Sam brought her day job as Dean of Arts at Guelph into conversation with the blog, digging into the research behind claims that gallery visits can be as good for you as a run — and landing on cautious enthusiasm for treating art as part of a whole-life approach to health.
Trackers, streaks, and small daily wins. Elan reflected on five years of wearing an Oura ring in A Fitbit for My Finger, Five Years On, noting how her relationship to the data has quietly simplified over time. Sam kept her Zwift streak alive through the heat in Sam’s Zwift streak abides!, and the team traded reflections on their most valuable personal habits — sleep, meal planning, morning movement — in The bloggers and our best habits.
Checking in as a team. July 2 brought Happy Halfway Day!, the bloggers’ traditional midyear check-in on their words of the year, and Elan closed out the month interviewing Sam about her long-running “3 good things” practice in Positive is Practice, digging into negativity bias and what it means to notice the good on purpose.
Month-in-review posts are assembled by Claude with prompts from Sam and edited by Sam. If you spot any errors, let us know.
Sometimes Good Things Grow (Diane)
Blowing the Whistle on Gender at the World Cup: Why Six Women Referees Matter More Than the Score (Martha)
Deny Pain, Heal Faster; if only … (Mina)
Nat’s trying to “live like Doug” (Nat)
A Fitbit for My Finger, Five Years On (Elan)
Sam’s summer movement plans go awry: Some problems and maybe some solutions (Sam)
Nat, spinal movement and the Jefferson curl (Nat)
What I thought my body was for (Chloe)
Recovery is Weird (Diane)
The bloggers and our best habits (Team Post)
I haven’t figured out the full plan yet, but I’m starting strong: the first holiday Monday with Sarah, then Tuesday morning before work with Abby, my Tour de Guelph Gryphons teammate. Neither ride is huge on its own — but they add up fast, and that’s the idea.
Cancer is the leading disease-related killer of Canadian kids. Over 1,700 are diagnosed every year. Kids should be living life, not fighting for it.
Click here to donate — every dollar supports SickKids Foundation’s work on care, treatment, and finding a cure.
Here’s my weekday commuting bike and my smile yesterday at the cool, clear summer air.
At least that’s what Susan, Sarah, and I decided on day 3 of our 4-day canoe trip into Algonquin Park after a particularly long, buggy portage.
A younger guy travelling with young kids looked at us carrying the canoe and hauling backpacks and paddles and PFDs and asked us if we were having type 1 or type 2 fun.
Sarah replied, We’re getting old. It’s all type 2 fun for us.
But then Susan and I discussed it and decided it averages out to 1.5 fun.
You know the distinction between Type 1 and Type 2 fun?
See Bored by the same activities? Try some ‘Type 2’ fun. The joy hits later, but lasts a lot longer.
“First, let’s break down the differences. “Type 1” fun is pure, uncomplicated enjoyment in the moment. Think eating ice cream, watching a movie, or lounging on a beach. It’s casual, low-effort, and comes with an immediate reward.
Type 2” fun shifts the dynamic. It’s an activity that requires effort—and maybe even a little discomfort—in the moment. Think backpacking deep in the woods, downhill mountain biking, or learning a physically and mentally demanding new skill. Sure, you might feel a little miserable while you’re in the thick of it, but once you’ve accomplished it, the experience can feel downright glorious.”
Here’s our breakdown:
What’s Type 2 fun? Portages! Paddling into the wind! Hanging the food so bears won’t get it!
What’s Type 1 fun? Swimming, basking on rocks, paddling on a flat lake, naps in hammocks, eating any food cooked over the camp stove, coffee in the morning…
Here’s some photos from our trip:
Magnetawan to Hambone to Ralph Bice to Little Trout and back
We moved everyday!
