Author: Kim Solga

I am a university professor currently based in Hamilton, Ontario. I teach theatre and performance studies at Western University; previously, I was Senior Lecturer in Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. On Wordpress, my teaching blog is The Activist Classroom; I'm also a regular contributor to the popular blog, Fit is a Feminist Issue.
Guest Post · health · injury

Exercise and coping with extreme stress (Guest post)

Kim Solga10 Comments
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Me and my mom, in my less active youth!

Members of the Fit is a Feminist Issue non-virtual community (that is, those of us who live and ride and row and lift and run here in little London, Ontario) know that I’ve been having a very hard winter. My mother is ill with dementia (you can read about that on my own blog, here). Today she moves into a long-term care facility after 30 very difficult days in hospital, during which my father and I took turns visiting daily, helping her keep her spirits from sinking too low. Meanwhile, I’m trying to adjust to life in Canada after more than two years living and working in the UK (where I learned to love riding my road bike – see here for more), and I’m trying to adjust as well to life without my partner, who stayed behind. The winter in the great lakes region was hard as nails this year, too, and the spring flood has brought water flowing into my basement… so, basically, I’m a stressed-out wreck.

In my younger life, I probably would have thought that doing regular exercise – and in particular scheduled fitness classes, boot camps, and the like, plus committing to riding with friends – would have been way, way too much on top of all this trauma. I grew up a chubby kid, teased for my size and my wacky hair and my weird, bookish ways; I was not what you would call active, and my diet was not what you would call healthy. I pretended not to care. (Hey: I was the “smart” kid, not the “sporty” kid. Right?) I grew up, went to university, to grad school, got married…

Then, when my husband and I split up for a while in the early 2000s – just before I wrote my qualifying exams for my doctoral degree – I realised that I weighed almost 200 pounds and was really unhappy. At that point – possibly my first encounter with a really extreme, concentrated period of stress – I decided to try going to the gym and swimming in the pool at my apartment building as a way of coping with my feelings of isolation and distress. What the gym gave me at that moment in my life was a community of people doing something together that they all wanted to do; I mostly worked out on my own, but it was comforting having others around who were into the same things I was and sometimes had really useful insights and stories to share. After about three months of going regularly to the pool and the gym I lost 25 pounds and gained some confidence; I felt better in my clothes and in my heart. I found the energy to look for a new apartment, one that was all mine and in a neighbourhood I really liked; that neighbourhood had a pool I wanted to join, and I quickly found an amazing community of endurance athletes there to swim with. Through a modest commitment to exercise, I’d found people, fresh interests, new community spirit, and a stronger sense of myself at a time when I needed reassurance that I was going to survive the troubles littering my life. I realised I felt pretty good!

(I should note here that, like Sam and Tracy and Nat and the others at FFI, I do not believe weight loss should be sought in and of itself, simply because society wants us all to believe thin is beautiful. The weight I lost in the early 2000s was part of an initiative to get myself healthy, one that included seeing a superb therapist, changing my diet to include more green veg and less meat, and shifting my outlook beyond the narrow confines of my apartment and my doctoral dissertation. Losing weight was part of a life-changing, life-saving series of events for me. I’m proud of my fit, healthy body now, but I’m a completely average-sized woman – which means 158lb, not 130lb, by the way  –and I’m not interested in becoming smaller. I only want to get stronger for my summer of time trial races!)

So here we are, in winter 2015, and I’m experiencing once more the kinds of mini body crises that come with consistent, high-level stress. I’ve been getting nosebleeds. My chronic hip problem has been acting up. Headaches. Shoulder tension. Frequent crying, and feelings of depression. I recognise all of these as physiological responses to what’s happening for me emotionally as I cope with the painful changes and losses in my life: bodies and minds are a unit and share their burdens equally. But I also know from my own past experiences that moving my body, being active and whenever possible active with others, is not an added stressor but an antidote for me. While superficially requiring me to expend precious energy, heading for the park to ride or walk with friends, or getting to the gym for a class, or just getting out on my bike by myself, all ultimately raise my endorphin levels and leave me feeling better in my limbs, lungs, and heart. I was reminded of this recently by my friend and coach Jo McRae, who encouraged me to sign up for a late-winter cycling boot camp as a coping strategy that also allowed me to continue my training – as long, she insisted, as I gave myself permission to miss a session or two if I just wasn’t feeling up to it.

And that’s the other piece of this puzzle, of course; if you’re an active person, exercise offers a wonderful way to help with stress. (And if you’re not an active person, I should add, trying out some modest exercise, with supportive friends, can be really freeing – as I learned in 2001!) But even active people need to be kind to themselves; we are not bionic men and women, and in times of severe stress there will be days when it’s just not possible to get on the rollers, or out for a run, or whatever. On those days we need to remind ourselves that there are lots of different ways to cope with stress; exercise is part of a package, not a cure-all. On those days, a chocolate bar, cup of tea, and a movie might be what’s needed – and that is really, really ok.

As for me, here’s a brief list of what I’ve been up to since things really hit the fan for me in late February. This isn’t meant as a model for coping; it’s just an example, in case you’re curious or looking to create a coping plan for yourself. (And if you are: I wish you the very best of luck!)

  • First, I sent an SOS to my friends and colleagues. I told them what I was going through, and asked them for love, support, and all the invites they cared to send for walks, rides, swims, yoga, etc, anticipating that things might get worse and that I might not have the energy to reach out later. (Read more about that strategy here.)
  • Next, I signed up for a fantastic cycling bootcamp with my friend and fellow road rider Rachel Skinner; we ride twice a week, two hours at a time, on the spin bikes at a local gym. Rachel cues the rides like an outdoor course, including a lot of flat roads and aerobic (mid-zone) work, as well as some hills and drills. It’s totally manageable, including plenty of recovery riding as well as good challenges, and a heap of fun.
  • I committed to getting on my rollers once a week. So far, it’s more like once every 10-12 days, but I’m ok with that. (I’m still working on relaxing my upper body, and not falling off all the time!)
  • I’m trying to do yoga once a week – chilled yoga, not hard core stuff. Stretching, yin, Iyengar. This week, Jess invited me to an acro-yoga workshop (eek!).
  • I’m getting as many massages as my health plan will pay for. (And I told my massage therapist what’s going on in my life; since I need to be fully relaxed in order to take best advantage of his good work, I figured he needs to know. And he’s a health care professional, so I was not worried about oversharing; it’s his job to listen!)
  • I’m walking my dog with my dog-loving friends, in the woods, as often as possible.
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    Even Emma the Dog thinks it’s been a hard winter.
  • I’m seeing my psychotherapist (the same one I started seeing many years ago – he’s still with me!) as often as possible, too. I’m really lucky to have a therapist whose services are covered by our provincial health care plan, and I want to remind all our Ontario readers that these people DO exist – and many of them are excellent. (Just ask your family doctor for the current list of OHIP-covered therapists, and a hand in finding a good one.)

In other words, I’m coping. Yes, I’m still crying a bit more than I’d like. And I’m aching a bit more than I’d like. But I’m not drinking too much (a risk for me), I’m not overeating (also a risk), and I’m feeling increasingly ok when I wake up in the morning. So far, so good. I’m so grateful to have a healthy body that lets me do the exercise I love and need right now, and I’m ever so thankful for my community of supportive, active friends. Here’s to you, gang.

Kim

cycling · Guest Post

How to ride your road bike up really, really steep hills – with minimal weeping (Guest post)

Kim Solga

kim12

 

Regular readers of this blog know that Sam is not a hill climber, and that Tracy, while she has been assured she *will* be a hill climber, is not one yet. Hills are in short supply in the part of the world where Sam, Tracy and I ride our bikes together: the flat terrain and gently rolling slopes of farmland surrounding London, Ontario (100 miles west of Toronto).

I didn’t learn to ride a road bike in little London, however; I took to riding after my husband and I moved to (the rather larger) London in south-east England in 2012. That means I cut my climbing teeth in the short, sharp Surrey Hills, on the ridges in Kent, and in the South Downs, which features the gut-busting Ditchling Beacon, among other gems. While training for our epic London-to-Paris 24-hour challenge ride (read about it here), Jarret and I also did some riding in the Alps, where I learned the difference between “punching” 12% grades for 1/2 to 3/4 miles, and sustaining 8%-12% grades for more than 5 miles up mountain switchbacks. All in all, I’ve ridden up a lot of hills. I’ve learned what it takes to make it to the top, whether quickly or slowly, tightly and neatly or messily, with plenty of crying en route. But I have gotten up every hill I have ever attempted – though in one recent, brutal case that necessitated me going back down again immediately after a failed first attempt in order to maintain my unbeaten-by-the-hill streak. That hill (Yorkshill, in Kent) was by far the steepest thing I’ve ever climbed, and it has inspired me to write this post.

I want to stress that I am not, like Tracy, physically built for climbing: I weigh more than the average female cyclist, and though I’m extremely lean and strong I’m simply not light. I’ve got a sprinter’s body, and as anyone who watches the Tour knows, sprinters don’t climb hills willingly. So my fondness for the hills is perhaps a bit out of (physical) character; what I love about hills is that I have the mental toughness as well as the physical skills – which I have worked on over time, since they did not come naturally – to climb, and I get tremendous pleasure and satisfaction from reaching the top. The hills are a fun challenge for me, and I love a fun challenge on my bike.

I also want to stress that I know I’m a minority in the cycling world, or at least in the cycling world in which I live: most people I ride with groan at the sight of a big hill in the distance. (Jarret, my husband, is not one of these: he kicks hill arse.) But the truth is that a hill isn’t ever going to be as physically challenging as it is mentally and emotionally daunting; people who hate hills mostly hate them because they fear them. I know what this fear feels like; I felt it on Yorkshill last month, encountering what seemed to me a truly unclimbable grade for the first time in a very, very long time. So what I’m going to do here is tell the story of that encounter, and then I’ll offer five top tips for those who want to work past the hill fear and see what they really can do.

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Jarret has this book that features the top 50 climbs in the greater London (UK) area; for those who have never ridden in southern England, let me assure you there ARE 50 proper climbs (more, in fact), and they pretty much all suck. Most hills in the ridge-filled terrain near the Thames and the Channel feature grades in the teens and even low 20s; Yorkshill (henceforth known as The Climb), with two shots of (the book claims – reports vary) about 25% and an average grade in the mid-teens spread over just 500 yards, is one of the hardest in the region. When Jarret told me that he, our friend and coach Jo McRae, and I were going to do this hill on a 60+ mile ride through Kent, I didn’t think he was actually serious. But, alas, he was.

The Climb appeared about 2/3 the way through our ride. We hadn’t been hitting it too hard and I wasn’t that tired, but I was jet lagged from my recent flight over to the UK, bike in tow, and I was well aware that I hadn’t been doing a lot of hill work over the autumn in Ontario. So as we approached The Climb, I wasn’t feeling my usual confidence. If anything, I was feeling an unusual level of apprehension. Jo, who had done the ride before and knew what to expect, talked us through the terrain leading up to the really tough part of the hill, and she warned us that there would be mud and slick bits (it was late October). Then, we took a photo at the bottom near the sign marking the start of the climb, agreed it was every rider for her/himself, and set off.

The road was pleasant and barely inclined for the first portion; the tree canopy was lovely, and I let myself think, briefly, that this wasn’t going to be so bad. Then the road narrowed, the trees closed in, and the wall of road that is 25% steep reared into view. I panicked. I could not imagine making it. Nevertheless, I knew I had to try; Jo and Jarret were up ahead, their climbing bodies slipping from view. I did what I always do when I climb a tough new hill: I grabbed my handlebar tops, settled back on my saddle, started breathing deeply and rhythmically, and repeated my hill mantra. Every Hill Ends. Every Hill Ends.

Jo had warned us that this was one of those rare climbs where you simply cannot reach the top without standing. Many climbers stand, of course; it’s easier to use the weight of your body to propel your legs around the pedal circle. But climbing is also high-intensity cardio; you will hit your VO2 max heart rate quickly if you don’t moderate your time off saddle. (This is why lots of inexperienced hill climbers punch and then blow up, struggling desperately to finish the job.) Personally, I prefer to climb on-saddle, keeping my heart rate under control, with very brief bursts out of the saddle to get speed and power up. I knew that this hill would necessitate me getting up when *it* dictated, and not when I chose, which made me even more nervous. As I saw what looked like the worst bit approaching, I rose and rode; I hung on for as long as I could, watching my HR hit 180bpm, very near my max. Then, as things levelled a touch, I sat, imagining the worst was over.

But I was wrong. I’d misunderstood Jo’s description of the hill; there was another very, very steep bit coming. I panicked again and started to cry a bit; there’s no shame in the crying, but it doesn’t exactly help the heart rate or breathing. I knew I was in trouble. I rose, and at that minute my back wheel skidded out; I hadn’t kept my body positioned far enough back over my saddle, and thus there wasn’t sufficient weight over the back wheel to maintain traction. I put my foot down.

This was the moment I had a choice. Keep going, or start walking. I’ve never walked a hill; I didn’t want to start now. But I was also realistic about the situation: this would be the ugliest hill start ever. I was on a slope with at least a 12% grade at this moment, if not a higher; I might fall off again quickly, especially if I couldn’t clip in immediately. I made a deal with myself: we get on again and ride as well as we can. If we come off again, we walk, and that’s ok.

I made the hill start. I got another 50 yards or so before skidding out again and coming off. That was it; I could see the top but couldn’t imagine getting there on the bike. I walked, feeling defeated but knowing it was the only option.

Jo and Jarret hadn’t been at the top long when I got there; it turned out Jarret had also skidded near the top and walked the last few yards. Jo knew we both had the skill and the fitness to make the climb; what we needed was to psych ourselves up and talk ourselves through the technical bits, the bits with the traction-challenging standing climbs. She encouraged us to go back down and tackle it again right away; we both knew we’d likely never attempt this hill again if we didn’t do it immediately. Before I had a chance to rethink the idea, we were on our way. Jo stayed at the top; she would coach us as we came into view around the last bend, the most mentally gruelling part of any climb.

The ride down was terrifying; I leaned into my brakes the whole way, riding my drops with gritted teeth, body well back on the saddle for balance. When we reached the point where the trees opened into a wider canopy we turned around. Jarret went first; I let him ride out of sight before I started, knowing that otherwise the climb would become a race rather than a personal challenge for me, and it wasn’t a race I’d win today. I also took a moment to remind myself of everything that would be different this time: I knew what to expect; I knew there were two hard standing climbs and that I’d have to moderate my exertion on the first in order to make the second; I knew what the top looked like and what the bend before it looked like; and I knew, most importantly, that this hill ended. It really ended.

I made it. Here’s how.

(NB: this is an impressionistic list for those with The Fear, not a technical one for those very new to climbing. I recommend looking here and here for some thoughts on gear choices, shifting while standing, different cassette options, etc. All these practical things matter – especially if you haven’t really climbed before.)

1. I talked to myself the whole way up. Mostly silently, but sometimes out loud. I reminded myself of all the steep climbs I had already done, and that I knew I could do; I reminded myself that this hill was no different, just a bit steeper in spots. I reminded myself constantly that this hill ended – that in a couple of minutes it would be all over. Every. Hill. Ends.

2. I took my time. Sure, I’ve raced up hills and nearly puked at the top, but mostly hills feature on races because they separate those who can climb from those who can’t – they aren’t, except at elite levels, about speed. I worked on rhythm, on balance, on breathing. I focused as much as possible on the road immediately ahead of me – not on the road around the bend. (This is Jarret’s trick, too, and I think it’s crucial on really steep climbs.)

3. I didn’t speed up when I stood up. I kept one eye on my heart rate monitor, which is incredibly useful in situations like this. I saw my HR remain steady in the low to mid 170s – high, but nowhere near the puking stage. If I could keep it there, I knew I’d be fine. With my HR mostly in check I could focus on the technique required when standing: a low push-back climb, with a flat back. (When I got to the top Jo reminded me that I need to practice moving my body side-to-side across the handlebars, using the bike like a lever as I climb. Also good advice: that’s a skill that will need some practice but, Jarret assures me, will really help with really hard gradients.)

4. When I felt myself about to panic I talked myself right back down to my mental pace line. I spent a moment with the panic – it’s a natural reaction to having to ride your bike up a 25% incline! – but then I reminded myself again that I was going to make it. I just was: I kept telling myself that I was, and that made it, in the moment, true enough for me to keep going. (When, near the top, I started to doubt my own voice, Jo took over for me. And then I was there.)

5. I made it because I was ready for it – in all respects. This isn’t a hill I could have done 18 months ago. I have ridden a lot of intervening hills, all of them increasingly challenging, so this one was a natural progression upward for me.

Everyone with hill fear has an ascent they believe they cannot do but feel compelled to return to, because somewhere, deep down, they know they can, they will, make it up that hill, someday. My best advice is to use your own version of The Climb as a medium-term personal challenge. Set a day or a week to make it happen. Be ready to fall off, go down and try again, maybe more than once. If you don’t make it, spend some time thinking about why, dissecting the ride both technically (were you in the right gear at the right time?) and emotionally (when was the moment you felt yourself giving up?). Perhaps bring a friend along who has made it up that hill, and who can watch you from the top and talk you through it, like Jo did for me. That person will also help you see trouble spots in your technique that you can’t focus on when you’re really exerting yourself hard.

Above all, don’t get stuck in your belief that you can’t ride up that hill. You can. I know you can! It’s just a question of time, patience, practice, and faith – in yourself.

kim11

cycling · Guest Post

QoM v KoM: Strava’s Genders (Guest Post)

Kim Solga9 Comments

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Sam recently wrote about her experience joining Strava, the internet hub for sporty men and women who want to measure their success against one another, and “compete” even when we aren’t officially competing (as in, when we’re just going to work and stuff). Her post resonated, in part because Sam and I are having an ongoing conversation about what it means to be marked as “female” on Strava. Is it a good thing, a bad thing, or an infinitely complicated thing – something that taps into the trickiness around gender and sport in so many areas?

A few months back I joined Strava. It was my partner’s idea: he had been using Strava to keep up with friends and to test himself on known stretches of road (we are both cyclists). He always glowed, I noticed, when we returned from a ride and he uploaded his data to discover new personal bests (or the besting of friends – coveted). Alternately, when The Strava Gods did not shine, he was blue. But I succumbed anyway: he convinced me that it would be helpful to track my progress using something; I needed data for the lovely, talented semi-pro cyclist who was coaching me (the brilliant and funny Jo McRae), and I definitely needed to let my competitive spirit loose in order to improve on my existing personal bests, which I’d been timing with my – runner’s watch. Plus, there was a handy Strava iPhone app, for when he was bogarting our shared Garmin bike computer. What’s not to love?

So I joined, and for the first couple of weeks I just let Jarret upload my data and tell me stuff. Mostly I didn’t notice; it hadn’t sunk in yet that Strava was a way for me to test myself. (Like Lisa Simpson, I respond extremely well to tests.) Then, around week three, something thrilling/troubling/discombobulating happened: Jarret told Strava I’m a woman.

Instant change. Like, kaboom. Suddenly, I wasn’t just some person called Kim who rode some rides in Surrey and East Sussex. I was in, like, third, fifth, ninth place overall on a bunch of segments and – holy mary jane! – queen of the mountain (QoM) on a particularly gruelling stretch of road near Chipstead that features a bitch of a climb sandwiched between two rather impressive stretches of steady incline. More shocking yet: to achieve this QoM I had bested a really talented category-one cyclist (NB Strava addicts – this is no longer the case; she has bested me right back). I was overwhelmed, and, of course, incredibly proud of myself.

Jarret was a bit dejected. He kicks my ass on many of these segments, but doesn’t rate at all on Strava; not only are there loads more men riding to compete with him, but of course he’s not as strong as the strongest men (hey, Mark Cavendish!) and so cannot break the top-ten in most cases. So I glory in my amazing achievements, and he discovers what it’s like to be on the short end of the gender stick for a change.

So what’s the problem? I’m awesome and Strava tells me, right? Not so fast. First of all, I’m not entirely convinced the semi-automatic division into men and women is a good thing on Strava. True, when it imagined I was a man (because I had not specified a gender, and of course default in cycling = man), Strava let me be the anonymous, me-against-the-world cyclist that Jarret and so many of his pals have to be. But once I specified a gender, Strava got excited. Now, when I upload ride data, it lets me know immediately what I’ve achieved – against other women. Which is fine. But why does the gender-specific data need to be the default? What if I want to know how I’m doing overall? More important, what if I feel like my main “competitors” aren’t (just) other strong women, but also men of similar build and strength as me? (I’m tall, muscular, and I weigh 70kg. My frame is not exactly girlish.) True, Strava offers the option to look at “men”, “women”, and “all” for any segment very easily in its navigation, and true too that more information about you and your linked friends is available through the Premium service (about $60 a year). Nevertheless, as a woman on Strava I don’t get the feeling that I’m being encouraged to use a gender-neutral approach; I feel like I’m being encouraged to measure myself primarily against other women.

Second, I’m genuinely concerned about a certain amount of gender bias against men within this system. It’s true that most people into road cycling are men, and of course it’s true that this has to do with gendered expectations about sport in general, about this sport in particular, and with a host of other things that weigh in men’s favour on the road. (Hello, giant quads and incredibly ripped calf muscles.) But it’s also true that men who cycle need to take a huge gulp when they start out, and be willing to feel extremely bad about themselves while other, more impressive male riders grandstand around them for a while. (And man oh man, do riders ever grandstand!) Women, meanwhile, often get points just for showing up. Yes, sometimes we feel we are genuinely not welcome – cycling can be a cravenly gendered sport, full of plain-spoken stereotypes. But mostly I get approving nods from men on rides who wish their wives or girlfriends would ride, too. I also know that loads of men who aren’t very talented may well drop away from the sport because they feel they aren’t man enough to ride the bike fast enough, to keep up with the pushy racers. Macho bike culture is cruel to anyone it doesn’t think makes the grade.

So what’s the solution? I do not blame Strava for its set-up; in fact, all things considered, it’s a fairly equitable site that lets me choose quickly and easily between data that places me against all athletes or against just women, and that shows me quickly how I’m doing against myself – probably the most important measure of all. But I can’t help but notice that it’s become, for me, another crucible of all the challenges we face when we try to untangle the gendered world of sport: how to measure men and women equitably, in a way that celebrates all of our achievements without condescending, and without shutting doors on those who aren’t immediately and obviously talented, regardless of gender?

Kim + Jarret in Dover, July 2013

athletes · competition · cycling · gender policing · Guest Post

On getting “chicked” – and why strong female cyclists need to have sympathy for the guys (Guest post)

Kim Solga12 Comments
Team Tuscany: ready for the big final day!
Team Tuscany: ready for the big final day!

It’s been almost a year since I guest-blogged in this space about my experience preparing for and riding Scope’s London-to-Paris-in-24-hours challenge, and a lot has happened in that time. I’ve become a stronger, more focused road cyclist. I’ve engaged a terrific female cycling coach, Jo McCrae, and she’s helped me to train my tempo zone and grow my climbing capacity. I’ve chalked up some serious personal bests, achieving a current PB of 7 minutes 51 seconds on Box Hill, the famous climb in the middle of the London 2012 Olympic road races. I knocked 24 minutes off my 2013 time in this year’s early-season “Puncheur” sportif in East Sussex, placing 6th out of 30 female riders. And just last weekend I kicked some serious ass on a cycling holiday in Tuscany.

Some of you may remember that, as part of our L2P24 training last summer, my husband Jarret and I rode the Morzine Cyclosportif in the French Alps, making the trip with the touring company RPM90. Run by Nick Miles and his team, RPM90 create cycling trips for serious riders: there’s usually about 300km of road in the plan for a weekend getaway, with lots of gorgeous but arduous hills in the mix. There’s plenty of excellent food and company, too, but the riding is front and centre on these journeys. Having really enjoyed Morzine, Jarret and I eagerly signed up for Nick’s spring Tuscany trip, which took place on the first weekend in May. At the centre of this trip lay the Strada Bianchi – the white gravel roads that connect the Tuscan hilltops, that frame the famous Eroica race, and that afford stunning views of the Chianti countryside – along with lots of rain, and a pounding 14,000 feet of climbing. That’s a hell of a lot, even for really strong riders, and all nine of us were totally cooked by the Sunday afternoon.

Last year’s journey in France featured a few pretty big egos in the group, and I was hugely intimidated by them; it didn’t help, of course, that I had never been on a cycling holiday before and was absolutely terrified at the prospect of the race on the final day. This year’s group was very different: while there were, once more, only two women (including me) on the trip, the men were on the whole pretty class acts, and included an enormously talented but also hugely supportive amateur racer (who should really turn pro!), a couple of very able triathletes (including an Ironman competitor), a fellow academic, and a pair of friends who, while blowsy and confident, were also really kind and lots of fun to ride alongside. And this year, of course, I was also much more ready for the roads ahead, more confident in my own abilities, and more familiar with the RPM90 set-up and with riding alongside the RPM90 crew. In short, we were almost immediately a happy team.

That did not mean we weren’t competitive, though. And it didn’t mean we were always humble. I, for one, was out to ride my very best, and to hold my own against even the strongest men in the group. And for the most part I did. While I’m not a confident descender (and in fact I crashed on a descent on day one, making things trickier for me emotionally as we approached the challenging Strada surfaces), I am a really strong climber, and I made my mark on the many rolling hills we attacked. I was up near the front on almost all the big climbs, and I cruised past quite a few of the men a couple of times. At the end of the last day, as we pushed out the final 20 of a gruelling 120km before getting ready for our flight home, I hung onto the lead group (which included my coach, Jo, the massively talented tall guy, and one of the other strong male riders), rotating tightly as we pushed over 30kph up to the final 6km climb (where they dropped me, and I’m totally ok with that). I finished ahead of all but two of the men, and I felt just amazing.

I am also aware, though, that a number of the men who finished behind me may have felt less amazing – both for themselves, because all strong athletes have personal goals that it sucks to miss, and because getting passed by a woman (what the cycling community calls “getting chicked“) can be disheartening.

Now, I absolutely hate the term “getting chicked”, and like many of my fellow feminist athletes (including Caitlin at Fit and Feminist, and Sam here) I consider it to be a significant indicator of cycling’s (and sport in general’s) gender problem, which stretches for us riders from the lack of a women’s Tour de France all the way down to the disrespect female riders sometimes get out on the road when male riders insist on passing us even if we are (and demonstrate ourselves over and over again to be) stronger and faster than they are. But I want here to advocate for some compassion for those male riders who are, in fact, on balance really respectful and generous, yet may feel like crap anyway when it turns out one of the women in their group is a better cyclist. Those feelings are real, and managing those feelings is part of the challenge of growing as a male athlete (and as a person).

Let’s think for a minute about how men and women are socialised in our culture. As a feminist scholar of theatre and performance, I’ve done a lot of reading in gender theory and cultural studies over the years, and I know that while men’s and women’s bodies are, of course, materially different in a number of ways (there are clear physiological reasons why men are on balance physically stronger than many women), the way we are socialised to experience our sexed and gendered bodies has a huge impact on the way we see our strengths and weaknesses relative to one another. Lots of women don’t imagine they can be as strong as men – they have always been told they should endeavour to be smaller, to be less muscular, in order to be pretty and attractive to men and in order to seem “normal” among other women. In the very same way, lots of men imagine that they should be stronger than the women around them, because “real” men are the stronger ones. This does not mean these same men haven’t been socialised also to respect women, or to treat their fellow women athletes fairly or celebrate their achievements; it does mean, however, that part of their self-image is based on being part of the “strong” and powerful gender, and when a woman shakes that image up out on the road or track or in the pool, it can have a powerful, destabilising emotional impact.

Are there lots of problems with these ingrained assumptions about what men and women “should be”? ABSOLUTELY. But they are nevertheless a social and emotional reality for many men and women, myself included. I’ve made a real push to become a strong climber in large part because I don’t look like one: I’m not a small person, and for a climber I’m fairly heavy. When I was a kid, I was reminded constantly that I lacked daintiness, and the knock-on insinuation was that I wasn’t “girlish” enough. For a long time that made me feel like less of a woman. Now, knowing better where those feelings came from, I insist that what I lack in daintiness I make up for in power, and that I’d much rather be powerful. And I’m proud of that.

The men who rode with us in Tuscany were all really good, very strong guys, and they were really generous in sharing tips and conversation as we covered the countryside. But I know it irked a bit when I rode by. On the last day, as we packed up our bikes, one asked me if I’d beaten any of the guys back to the hotel on our final climb; he may well have meant of the guys in the lead group, but the fact that he asked in the non-specific way he did made me wonder if he’d conveniently forgotten that I’d beaten him back by rather a good margin. Another made a point of telling me that the riders who had had to climb into the van for various reasons on the home stretch were remarking on how strong I was; this was a kind and supportive statement, but I also wondered if he made it because he thought I might warrant special praise for my strength, being a woman and all. (Am I imagining this? Possibly. The not-girl-enough woman who still lives in the back of my brain can’t help but ask.)

I want to be clear that none of these comments was made in a way I perceived as disrespectful, even as they bothered me a little – and in many ways that’s my point. If my fellow male riders were troubled that I “chicked” them a good few times, they never showed it to me. If they were managing anxiety about being passed by two strong women (and Jo!) on the Tuscan hills they did it well. In return, I want them to know that I have huge sympathy for any feelings of inadequacy they might experience as a woman passes them. After all, I have a lot of experience feeling inadequate as a woman, too.

Perhaps the most important thing we can do, in a mixed group of riders, is be open and free both with our praise for one another’s skills, and with our compassion for how one another might be feeling. When it comes to the perils of gendered expectation, after all, men and women are in this thing together.

The glorious Strada Bianchi
The glorious Strada Bianchi
Three of our amazing male riders – too strong for me to pass!

Three of our amazing male riders – too strong for me to pass!
cycling · Guest Post · training

Three things I now know, thanks to riding L2P24 (Guest post)

Kim Solga10 Comments

Kim 3We did it! Jarret and I made it to Paris in 24 hours and 18 minutes; our strategy of working stage by stage, breaking the ride up into manageable chunks, clearly worked, as we didn’t get on the bus at all. I felt good the whole ride through; I wasn’t even especially tired in the middle of the night. Better yet, while I was drained at the finish line (thanks and see ya later, adrenaline!), I felt completely OK the following day. I even got up early to hunt down my favourite Parisian pastries.

Now that we’ve made our goal and recovered (more or less) physically from the ride, it’s time to reflect on lessons learned and problems encountered. In the spirit of Sam’s “six things” posts (for example, here), herewith I give you three awesome things I learned while on the ride, and three things that troubled me – and are motivating my next bike-related labour.

Three Things I Now Know, Thanks to L2P24

1. My body is freaking amazing!

I’m going to say this loudly, and proudly: my body is brilliant, wonderful, strong, amazing. I’m a 38-year-old woman, and until I was in my mid-twenties I was overweight, not especially active, and definitely not as fit as I could have been. My whole young life I carried with me the same body-image problems many, many young women experience as a result of multiple, colliding factors and influences, from peer and parental pressure to photos circulating in the media. I constantly felt inadequate, I hated looking at my body in the mirror, and I wore baggy clothes to hide my body (NB: that never works). When I was 27 I lost a fair bit of weight, shifting my body from overweight to “normal” (aka, a size 10), and I’ve kept it off all these years; the secret hasn’t been dieting, but swimming, cycling, lifting weights, and making sensible food choices (which, by the way, includes rather a lot of cheese, and brownies. YUM). As I’ve become more fit, I haven’t lost much more weight, but I have become more lean, and I’ve become ever more confident in my body. I want to stress that this confidence has never emerged from becoming “thin”; for me, body confidence came from growing strong.

Now, after L2P24, I can say in all honesty I have never felt better in my skin: together, my brain and my body worked to keep me feeling good, feeling powerful, and feeling safe for an entire, solid, day and night of physical exertion. My back didn’t ache. My heart rate was low and consistent. My power levels rarely dropped. I felt like I could have kept going, maybe even could have pushed a bit harder. That is an incredible achievement; it proves, to me, that I am, indeed, an endurance athlete – something that, ten years ago, I could never have imagined saying about myself, or seeing in the mirror.

This week of all weeks I want to share this fitness-given strength and confidence publicly, because on the weekend we had a terrible reminder of how poorly we as a culture understand that strength and power are core aspects of women’s beauty. Yesterday, Tracy blogged about the negative media reaction to Marion Bartoli’s Wimbledon win; Marion is a phenomenal athlete, a really open and lovely presence in interviews, and by all accounts a woman with a very strong and healthy sense of self. She does not deserve to be mocked as fat, or as not a “looker”; rather, she deserves to be celebrated as a role model not just for athletic girls, but for ALL girls and women who feel “quirky”, who think they look odd or wrong, or who think they might be, maybe, could be be strong and fit, except they don’t look thin and sleek, don’t look “the part”. As a middle aged woman who weighs 70kg and just rode 281 miles on her road bike in one go, I’m here to tell all of you: you are strong, you are beautiful, and the stronger you get, the more beautiful you will become. That’s guaranteed.

2. Riding at night is glorious – and perfectly safe if you’re smart about it.

Four and a half hours of our ride was in the middle night dark; to light our way, we had powerful torches on our handlebars, blinking red safety lights on our seat posts, and some of us wore helmet lights. As we left Calais for the final 2/3 of the ride, I noticed immediately how quiet and peaceful the roads and the little towns along the way were; my group was five riders strong, and we moved swiftly through the night, single file, on perfect pavement, enjoying the cool breeze, the stars, and the shadows of trees and in the distance. I found the night ride meditative; it reminded me of my teenage years growing up in Edmonton, Alberta, and driving myself home from friends’ houses at night, through the quiet city to the northern suburb where we lived. I used to sing to myself, or compose poems in my head (or out loud!). I’d take the time to think, to wonder, to let my mind gently wander. To dream! Riding through northern France in the middle of the night brought all that back to me.

As a feminist and a scholar of urban performance, I know very well how easy it is for women not to be empowered in this way in the dark: city streets can be dangerous places at night, especially for women, in groups or alone. Walter Benjamin wrote the original “flâneur’s” guide to Paris in his Arcades Project, but feminist cultural geographers like Doreen Massey have explored the limits of Benjamin’s image of wandering for women. (In Benjamin’s place and time, for example, a single woman out walking on her own would not be revered as an urban pioneer, but could be denigrated as a prostitute.) I generally don’t fear walking at night, though I don’t go out of my way to do it in neighbourhoods I don’t know; I’m a tough chick, but I’m not invincible, and I do live in a patriarchy. As a cyclist, though, in a group of experienced riders, I felt protected as well as empowered to gaze around me and to be free. I also felt far less gendered than I do when I’m out walking – and not just because of the gender-neutral rider’s kit. Being on the bike demands a physically powerful posture: I felt a bit like I was ready for anything, crazy or calming.

3. Sometimes, it pays to come last.

OK, so we didn’t actually come last. We did take longer than I was hoping, though, to get to the finish line. Looking back, I know we could have made the 24 hour “cut”: we had a problem with our equipment as we got off the ferry, which slowed us down right when we needed the most momentum, and then one of our group punctured, slowing us down further. For a while, Jarret and I pushed hard to make up for lost time, but then the rushing seemed pointless, and unnecessarily tiring: this was not a race. It was an endurance test – a test of strengths, physical and mental. The mileage itself presented the physical test; managing our spirits, and shifting our expectations, along with the passing miles presented the mental challenge.

When we reached our second last rest stop, I realized that we could absolutely make the 24 hour cut if we began to ride just a bit faster. Jarret was less convinced: he wanted to ensure we arrived in Paris feeling good, not feeling utterly smashed, and he was a bit more tired than I was already. I had a decision to make: stick with his slow-but-steady plan, or drop him and make for the finish myself.

I decided that the latter was a pretty dumb idea. We were in the ride together: we had trained together, planned together, and we would ride to the finish together.

Then, just as I was making that call, along came a fellow rider called Andy who was on his own, and struggling with a bad knee. He asked to borrow my sunscreen, and then he asked if he could tag along with us, as he’d been lonely through the night and needed a boost to keep going. I remembered the lessons I took from riding in the Alps two weeks ago with Jo McRae, and the case was closed: we would ride alongside Andy.

In the end, not pushing the last 60 miles was hard for me – it was a fitting, and welcome, mental challenge. Don’t get me wrong: I’ll be ready, right out of the gate on our next race, to up my game. But this was not a race, remember. This was about teamwork, mutual support, and celebrating a collective, extraordinary, achievement. In that respect, we absolutely won the day.

Three troublesome things worth working on

1. This wasn’t a race, right? Nope. Scope, our charity sponsor, and Action Challenge, their ride organizers, told us this over and over. So why did it seem so much like a race at every rest stop? Why were we constantly hurried along by the Scope and Action Challenge gang? Why were they so quick to push us, and so insistent on marking pace and measuring time?

My guess is that their hearts weren’t really in the claim that this was no race, however much they wanted (or felt pressure) to pretend a facade of egalitarianism: they knew, given the make-up of the group (about 215 men and 15 women, give or take), that the majority of participants were well-kitted-out guys fuelled by peer pressure and testosterone and keen to get the very best time possible to Paris. Jarret and I found this atmosphere of “sort of but not really a race” very difficult to stomach; when you’re working hard to be in the best physical and mental place possible over the course of a very long period of exertion, the last thing you need is to have to parse mixed signals, and you really, really don’t need to feel in any way inadequate. I understand that Scope and Action Challenge were likely trying to find a way to support everyone’s goals – including those of the racing dudes – but I would have appreciated much more if they’d made a serious, sustained effort to reinforce how much this was not about speed, but about skill, patience, and endurance. The latter three we need much more of on the hills and highways of London.

Which brings me to item #2 on this list.

2. Lycra really chafes – figuratively and literally. I will spare you the details of my blistered rear end, except to say that the traffic lights (dozens!) we encountered on the route through suburban Paris were especially punishing, as I clipped in and out of my shoes and moved myself on and off my saddle. But lycra is more than just the stuff of which bike shorts and jerseys are made: it’s code, in big cities like London, for the bike riders who boss the roads. They are the men and women (mostly men; we need to be honest here!) who race up the bike lanes, cut off cars, push ahead of other cyclists and road users, flying off the curb as soon as the light turns green. They are the riders who grandstand at every red, and ignore most stop signs. They are the riders who ride to intimidate – and intimidate they do.

The vast majority of the riders on L2P24 were sensible and knew how to ride safely; some, however, were ill equipped to navigate the busy London and Paris roads, either because they did not understand proper road protocol or because they wilfully flaunted it, and they presented hazards for motorists as well as for us, their fellow cyclists. In a week when a woman riding a “Boris” bike in London’s east end (along my regular commute route, no less) was killed by a truck, this journey was a reminder to me of how hard we all need to work to ensure that we are riding properly, and safely, at all times. For some, that might mean taking some safe riding lessons at a local bike shop. For others, it might mean learning the zen lesson Jarret taught me when he reminded me to slow down, for heaven’s sake, because we were not riding a race. For me, post-L2P, it’s going to mean learning to change my own punctured tires in the next few weeks, so I can be more self-sufficient on the road. Safety first – really people.

3. “Sports nutrition” needs a rethink. Don’t get me wrong – there are some excellent sport nutritionists out there, and a good nutrition coach is hard to beat if you’d like to become more fit and physically efficient. But when I hit a rest stop on a 24-hour, 271-mile ride, and “sports nutrition” equates to energy gels and energy drinks, rather than to wholemeal carbohydrates and replenishing proteins, I worry. Scope and its caterer put plenty of fruit out for us at a number of our rest stops, and we did eventually see some porridge, but for the most part their notion of “refuelling” involved white breads, white pasta, sugared sweets, bars and gels.

Not good enough! If I’d had my way, the rest stops would have featured even more fruit, plenty of veg, sweet potatoes and brown rice rather than white rice and pasta, a wider range of thirst-quenching drinks, and far fewer sugary junk items. The food was fine, to a point but it certainly wasn’t excellent; sadly, however, it was still far better than what I normally see at amateur races in the UK. When will race and ride organizers wake up to healthy fitness eating? It doesn’t have to be expensive; it just has to be more thoughtful, more logical, and just plain better for you. I learned this, too, from Jo in the Alps: eating the best, healthiest food possible is better than carb-loading or gel-sucking any day: it won’t jolt your body, won’t make your stomach sick, and will keep you in a balanced place throughout your ride. Eating good food is about trusting your body, after all: that body, powerful and amazing, knows what to do with healthy, nutritious stuff. No junk required.

And on that note, it’s time for me to end this series of guest posts. Thanks to all of you for reading! I’ve enjoyed sharing my experience in the lead-up to this mad, illuminating journey, and I hope to see you over at my blog, The Activist Classroom, sometime soon.

With gratitude,

Kim

cycling · Guest Post · training

The Headspace Challenge (Guest post)

Kim Solga4 Comments

image

Just five days to go now: on Saturday, 6 July, the 250 of us signed up for London to Paris 24 will leave Blackheath, in southeast London, and “dash” to Dover, then get on a ferry, then get off in Calais and slog through the night toward the Eiffel Tower. It’s 272 miles in total, much of that in the darkness between 6 and 7 July. Jarret (my husband) and I know we’re physically ready: we did a reconnaissance ride to Dover yesterday (our last full training ride) using the official race route, and easily made the 90 miles through Kent in 5 hours 50 minutes – that’s within the official “24 hour” pace the team riders will set for us. Now the only question is: how the hell are we going to motivate ourselves to get off the boat and back onto our bikes after the 3-hour channel crossing, keeping up the pace as the light fades in France and all we really want to do is collapse into sleep?

The week ahead is rest and recovery time; as pro riders will tell you, resting is the most important preparation in the lead up to a big event. So on Tuesday it’ll be a swim at my favourite outdoor pool, on Thursday I’ll do some yoga, and on Friday I’ll cycle gently up to my favourite coffee spot for delicious pastries and drinks before doing some grocery shopping and sorting out last-minute details.

I’ll also be working throughout the week on the intense mental challenge ahead, preparing myself emotionally to face the extraordinary endurance requirements of this rally without any panic.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the mental labour L2P24 requires since we returned from our Alpine training in France last week (if you missed it, check out my last guest post here). I noticed, on race day in Morzine, that I was really anxious; my stomach was churning at the start line, and I frankly thought I was going to have to abandon my bike for the toilet moments before we were ushered off. I had that same feeling yesterday, as we prepared to leave Blackheath on our recon ride – and that was only the two of us! This gut-wrenching performance anxiety is familiar to me from another aspect of my life – my job as a university professor. When I teach now, I usually feel mild butterflies, but when I first started teaching I used to panic before class. The fear I’d do poorly – because I didn’t have a lot of experience at that point of managing my teaching stress, surviving problem situations, or, indeed, having fun with my classes – overwhelmed me. I used to panic, too, when preparing papers and articles – again, this was back before I had the experience of managing that stress successfully, by breaking up the job of writing and teaching preparation into manageable chunks I could face without panic or fear. Now, getting ready for class, or working through an argument on paper, is second nature to me, and these are tasks I actually look forward to.

How, I wonder, can I harness what I know from my teaching-research life to prepare myself psycho-physically for the London to Paris ride?

Manageable chunks: I think this is the key.

When I was a young student, I would often procrastinate strenuously before blitzing my essays the night before they were due. I knew I’d likely get an A, and though I also knew I’d more likely get an A+ if I would just give myself more time, I didn’t want to prolong the anxiety that always built up around essay writing. What I learned in time (in fact, what I learned while writing a 300-page PhD dissertation, no surprise!) is that the more time you give yourself for difficult tasks, and the more sensibly you break those tasks into manageable chunks, the quicker performance anxiety dissipates, letting your body normalize the (in this case, writing and researching) experience. Athletes know this; it’s why they train so hard for so long! And as a researcher I know this too, because I now approach my job as one of constant learning – complete with snags and missteps. I wrote my first book in just 8 months or so, partly because I told myself that I actually had plenty of time, and that if I ran into a snag there would be time just to let the work sit, and to let my brain adjust to and synthesise whatever intellectual problems I’d run into. Once I’d given myself permission to take the time I needed to complete the next task – the next chapter, say, or section of a chapter – the easier it became to motor along sensibly, feeling good about the writing. (Tracy has a very similar strategy – read her thoughts on “doing less” here.)

London to Paris is divided into a number of stages – three on the England side and six on the France side. Each stage is about 35 miles long, and each finishes with a food and rest stop where riders can take a short break, refuel, and – if they are riding as part of a relay team – trade off from bike to bus. For those of us aiming for a solo finish (Jarret and I are riding as a team, but we’re not in a relay; we aim to both ride the whole route together), each rest stop also marks a point where riders who feel ill or simply too fatigued can get on the bus for a stage and rest. I’ve decided to use these stages as mental dividing points: the ride, for me, will not be 272 miles, but 35 miles at a time. Each time we set off, I know that we need only go 35 more miles; if I can make that, I can decide at the end of the stage how I feel, and make a prudent decision about food, about rest, and take stock of how I’m feeling generally. I’ve given myself permission in advance to get on the bus twice; if I can do 200 of the total miles on my bike, that will be in itself a major achievement. I don’t need to be a hero and cycle through pain or massive fatigue; that’s not the point. The point is to achieve an extreme endurance personal best, and that comes in many forms over the course of 272 miles.

My suspicion is that, dividing the ride into chunks like this and telling myself that, at the end of each stage, I have choices, I’ll be much more likely to make the entire ride under my own steam than if I insisted to myself at the starting line that failure is not an option. I’m actually a big fan of failure – I think failing can tell us a lot about who we are, and about what we can achieve, if we just sit with it a little bit and absorb it as a teaching rather than a terror. So I’m not afraid to “fail” next weekend; momentary failures during the ride will only be instructive. And I already know what I’ve achieved in the last six months of training: a mind/body that is more endurance-ready than ever before, and that has learned so much about what is possible for me as a feminist athlete, teacher, student, and human being.

charity · cycling · Guest Post · training · traveling

Supporting each other makes us all better! (Guest post)

Kim Solga10 Comments

Sam and Tracy have asked me to contribute a few guest posts because I’m currently preparing for the biggest challenge of my career as a feminist amateur athlete. On 6 and 7 July 2013, I am going to (try my very best to) ride from London, England to Paris in just 24 hours, as part of a charity event organized by Scope. (Read about the event here; if you read my posts and get inspired to support me you can also find my team’s fundraising page here.)

I’ve been getting ready for what I call L2P24(2013) for some time now, but in the last couple of months training has kicked into high gear (figuratively and literally!). As part of our training (my husband Jarret and I are doing this event together, supporting each other at every stage along the way), Jarret and I are spending this weekend (20-23 June) on a cycle “holiday” (more on that in a minute) in Morzine, in the French alps. We are here with a UK-based company called RPM90; they provide us with food, accommodation, technical support, and support of many other, less tangible kinds. In fact, their motto is “you ride, we provide” (check them out here).

I’ve been nervous about this holiday; after all; riding about 100km a day in the mountains for two days, and then ending the weekend with the 2013 Morzine Sportive race, is relatively challenging, even for us; while there are perks at the chalet and some good food and drink, for our purposes this is a working weekend.

I’ve also been a bit worried about this holiday for another reason, one that came clearly into focus when we arrived in the Alps. Cycling is a very expensive sport – once you factor in a good bike, all the gear, and stuff like going to the Alps on a cycling holiday, you’re into the thousands of dollars/pounds, if not five figures – and I felt an immediate sense of class difference as soon as we got into our airport transfer van in Geneva. There are bankers on this trip, there are high-flying execs, and their bikes are worth, well, easily more than I make in a month. They are amateurs, but they are focused on their sport nevertheless, to the point that they seem willing to buy virtually anything (at pretty much any cost) that will help them to improve their performance. They are all decent, nice, friendly people (I gather, having known them for about 24 hours at the time of this writing), but they seem stunningly unaware of their privilege (economic as well as physical) in just being able to be here.

They are also all – with one exception plus me – men. Cycling is a very male sport in most nations where it rates; I probably don’t need to tell many of the readers of this blog how much sexism prevails in the sport (check out Sam’s recent post on podium girls, for example). So I wasn’t shocked to be surrounded by (more or less middle aged, pretty well off) men when we arrived. What did surprise me, though – and what has made all the difference to my riding experience so far (day one down!) – is that 50% of RPM90’s support team on this ride are women. And they are pros, and champions (Anja Rees Jones and Jo McRae).

This morning, starting out for our first ride, I was slightly panicked; the men in the group left a lot of testosterone on the floor during our first dinner and breakfast together (as well as in the airport van, sigh), and while I know this kind of banter is designed to be self-aggrandising and intimidating (and to cover insecurities, of course), it was, well, frankly intimidating to have to listen to. So it was a relief and also a thrill for me to get to ride quite a bit today with Jo, our female road bike pro; she put me at ease, encouraged me all along the way, made sure to note my strengths, and to remind me how strong I actually am at moments when I really needed that reminder. She also answered numerous questions and helped me to address some weaknesses: for example, I’ve never been a courageous descender, tending to brake a lot and not use my drops enough, but today she offered me observations, tips, and joined me on a couple of downhills, to the point where, by the end of the day, I was literally racing with her and Jarret down a mountain we had climbed in pretty freaking good time (this one – it’s actually slightly famous!). I felt incredibly strong, powerful, and free – and I have today’s mentorship from a really great female athlete to thank for that.

Even if the rest of the weekend turns out to be crap, I have had, thanks to Jo, an experience today that made the journey here (and all the boisterous bollocking this morning) worthwhile. It’s also an experience that I plan to pay forward. Like Sam and Tracy, I’m a teacher and researcher by profession and I write a lot about “activist” teaching on my own blog; with my larger life in mind I’ve also been broadly inspired by Jo today – reminded of how incredibly valuable positive reinforcement, coupled with useful, specific critique, and a willingness just to ride alongside, can be for students looking to up their game (and, of course, for students who don’t yet know that upping their game is their ultimate goal, or even a remote possibility). A great work lesson, a wonderful life lesson, and a fantastic sport lesson all rolled into one and wrapped in a mountain view. I feel privileged to be here, and thankful.

Kim

KIM SOLGA currently teaches theatre and performance theory and practice at Queen Mary, University of London. Catch her blog at www.theactivistclassroom.wordpress.com.