Tag: age

fitness · swimming

Does being a grandmother matter to your swimming ability?

Sam B3 Comments

One of the way we get ideas about to blog about is that outraged readers send us some of the things that outrage them. This past weekend many of you sent us this. It’s been shared by many feminist groups on social media.

Tweet reads, “Last week, a 55 year old, 200 lb grandmother was the 1st to swim from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallon islands, a -30 mile journey. She swam in 43° water & it took ~17 hours. She was stung by jellyfish 20 times. It’s considered the toughest marathon swim in the world.” Comment below reads, “The fact that her weight is included but not her name is an interesting choice. Congrats to Amy Appelhans Gubser.”

________________________________________________________________

Most people were shocked that the tweet mentioned Amy Appelhans Gubser’s weight but not her name.

When I shared that tweet and the response on our Facebook page, many readers also pointed out that the “grandmother” identity is off-putting, too. We’re all pretty sure that men who achieve great things don’t get called “grandfather” in the headline even if they are, in fact, grandfathers.

The grandmother theme was pretty ubiquitous in the reporting of this incredible achievement.

I was impressed that in in my newsfeed at least Outside Magazine didn’t mention her grandmotherly status or her weight in the headline. She even got her full name in the title. Nice!

See here:

But then I clicked through and got this:

ARGH!!!

In some ways, it seems worse than the “mother” designation. At least in my case becoming a parent, is something that’s about me. “Grandmother” just means my kids decided to have kids. Is the emphasis on the age part of being a grandmother? Or do you think there’s something special about grandmother in particular that makes her accomplishment so remarkable? It’s like age + gender + parental status all bundled into one identity.

I used to wonder if it got used in headlines because the women themselves talked about it a lot in the interview. But no, there’s no talk of how thoughts of her grandchildren kept her going through the night, no discussion of how she worried about sharks and not being there for her grandchildren. It’s just there in the headline. Otherwise, it’s all the terrifying details of marathon swimming that we talked about in our Saturday night with Nyad blog post. You know, the cold and timing the swim, and the support crew and the jellyfish.

Anyway, what an incredible accomplishment. I’m in awe.

aging · fitness · training

Sam’s max heart rate is slowing down but that’s okay, she isn’t

Sam B3 Comments
A beating cartoon heart

So I’m back training again. I’m riding and racing on Zwift. I’m working with a coach. Hi Chris! And that means I’m paying attention to data.

I’m also paying attention to some comparative data. Because I’ve been riding and using a Garmin and Strava for years, some things are interesting to track over time.

My ftp has gone up. (FTP stands for Functional Threshold Power and represents the highest wattage number you can expect to average over an hour.) All good. It’s fun. I like measuring and tracking progress.

Yay!

Except what’s striking is that my maximum heart rate has gone down, like way down. A lot. Fifteen years ago when I used to race crits, do short distance duathlons and do flying laps at the velodrome, I had a max heart rate of 182.

Here’s younger Sam racing in a crit. Thanks Greg Long for the photo.

Now my max heart rate is 164 or so. I used to do time trials at 168. Now my time trial heart is more like 150. That’s the highest heart rate I can maintain for a good chunk of time without blowing up.

Remember the old formula? 220 minus your age? That’s pretty much right for me now. I suppose I shouldn’t care. My top speeds haven’t gone down and neither has my power output. But what’s it all about?

See Heart rate and age: “The relationship between the heart and exercise has been studied for more than six decades and the research is clear: Max heart rate—the highest heart rate you can safely hit during exercise—decreases with age regardless of lifestyle or level of fitness. Why the drop? The reasons aren’t completely known, but a 2013 University of Colorado Medical School study found that one reason could be slower electrical activity in the heart’s pacemaker cells. Basically, “your heart can’t beat as often,” says Roy Benson, running coach and co-author of Heart Rate Training.
However, a lower max heart rate may not necessarily affect your splits. “It’s not a foregone conclusion that a decrease in heart rate max means a decline in performance,” says Joe Friel, coach and author of Fast After 50 and The Triathlete’s Training Bible. “That’s a very common but unsupported view of athletes who are ill informed about the science behind heart rate. They assume a high heart rate means a high level of performance. Not true.”

I started to go down the rabbit hole of reading journal articles about why max heart rate declines. But really, do I need to know? I am still puzzled about why it doesn’t seem to matter as much as I thought it might.

I’ve written about heart rate training before.

See here:

Take it easy: Why train with a heart rate monitor, part 1

Go hard! : Why train with a heart rate monitor, part 2

Obviously, I need to open up my Garmin/Strava settings and put in some new numbers.

Do you track heart rate while exercising? Have you noticed it dropping with age?

Photo by Nick Hillier on Unsplash
aging · weight lifting

Get up off of that floor!

Sam B

The Yahoo Health headline reads, “Simple Test Predicts Longevity.”

“Brazilian researchers discovered an interesting link between a person’s ability to sit and rise from the floor and the risk of being 6.5 times more likely to die in the next six years. The study, published in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention, included a simple test in which more than 2,000 people ages 51 to 80 attempted to sit down on the floor and then stand back up using as little support as possible.”

“The ease with which a person stands and sits clues doctors in to a person’s ratio of muscle power to body weight. But the researchers say there are other relevant issues. “It is well known that aerobic fitness is strongly related to survival, but our study also shows that maintaining high levels of body flexibility, muscle strength, power-to-body weight ratio, and coordination are not only good for performing daily activities but have a favorable influence on life expectancy,” said Araújo.”

I think I’m in pretty good shape by that measure. Two of the the activities I do regularly involve a fair bit of getting up from the floor.

In Aikido we spend a lot of time falling to the ground and getting back up again, ideally with no support.

Aikido break fall

But my favourite ‘getting up from the ground’ exercise is the Turkish Get Up, which I did first in the gym a few years ago and then relearned when I joined Crossfit. It’s a Crossfit staple.

The image above comes from a kettlebell work out site, http://www.bestkettlebellworkout.com/the-turkish-getup/. The site also features a common theme in men’s weight lifting sites, men lifting women. Funny there aren’t any I’ve seen of big women lifting small men. If you find one, let me know! Lots of people think the Get Up is the best kettlebell workout though personally I like the plain old swing.

Turkish get up

I figure if keep these up I’ll get excellent scores on the “get up off of that floor” test.