Tag: inspiration

feminism · fitness · stereotypes · swimming

Grandmothers as Athletes: How About We Just Call them Athletes?

Diane Harper

Sam recently wrote about Amy Appelhans Gubser, her amazing swim and the way it was portrayed in the media. TL:DR it was bad. Lazy journalists treated it as a “human interest” story about an overweight grandmother who miraculously did a long swim.

Since I follow a lot of marathon swimmers and marathon swimming enthusiasts, the coverage I saw what quite different. Everyone was respectful (in awe) of what she achieved. No-one commented on her age, family status, weight or anything else. I assume it’s because women are very well represented in marathon swim records (which do not have separate categories for men and women) and extra weight may actually be an advantage when you are swimming for many hours in cold water. And they can understand just how tough that swim was, and that it wasn’t undertaken lightly by some kooky old lady who miraculously succeeded.

Here’s what Amy accomplished:

  • Golden Gate Bridge to SE Farallon Island
  • 47.7 km (29.6 miles) in 17 hours, 3 minutes on 11 May 2024
  • First to complete route in outbound direction (mainland to island)

That’s impressive all by itself, but here’s what her friend and fellow marathon swimmer Simon Dominguez had to say:

“I am still marveling at Amy’s swim. What some might not know is why this is such a difficult swim so I thought I would tell you.

28.5 miles of open water swimming. A long way but there are other swims of the same distance that are not nearly as tough. Why is it so tough ? (and thanks for asking). Because of the following:

The cold
While the temperature ranged from 48 to 57 degrees F, I know that it touched down at a low of 43 near the islands. 17+ hours of swimming in these temperatures should not be possible but were for Amy because of the work she put in training in very cold water for a number of years preparing for this swim. Also, you need to remember that the longer you swim, the more exhausted you get, the more you feel the cold. Add this to the fact that as you head out to the Farallones, the water temperature continues to drop so you get the double whammy of exhaustion and cold combining to make this an almost impossible undertaking.

The currents
While Amy whipped out extremely quickly at the start of the swim on a strong ebb, she then had to fight a flood. Amy told me that she got stuck in place for over an hour at one stage as she fought the tide. And it was near the end of the swim when she was the most depleted. Truly amazing.

Sea creatures
Luckily Amy did not encounter any men in grey suits but they are out there all year long. I have no doubt that she was watched while she was swimming. The Farallon Islands sit in the Red Triangle – the largest great white shark breeding ground in the world. Amy respects that she is a visitor in their world. This is not the first swim that Amy has done in shark inhabited waters.

I attempted this swim in 2015 and did not make it due to a shark encounter about three miles from the finish. I could not be happier that the first person to successfully complete this swim is the amazing Amy Appelhans Gubser. A fierce competitor who has no quit in her and who is the first person to put her hand up to help others in need.

I salute you Amy. I know you probably feel like you have gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. But your name will now go down in history as a true South End Rowing Club badass.”

Amy Appelhans Gubser showing off the badass T Shirt her husband brought her from Dublin, where he had been while she was doing her Farallon Island swim. Photo shared by Amy Appelhans Gubser on Facebook

Amy is well-known and respected as a long-time marathon swimmer. Her first major marathon swim was across the Strait of Gibraltar in 2015: 14.4 km in 4 hours. There have been many great swims since, and she was named one of the World’s 50 Most Adventurous Open Water Women in 2019 by the World Open Water Swimming Association.

But somehow all that pales in importance imparted to her status as a grandmother (sarcasm). Sam’s son Miles made me laugh by telling Sam “All your athletic achievements could be so much more impressive if I had a kid.” I have a feeling Amy would laugh at the absurdity of it too, secure in the knowledge that people who understand marathon swimming appreciate what she achieved.

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Representation and the PWHL

Diane Harper1 Comment

Last week, I made it to my first Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) game. I have seen previous women’s games, but this game was important to me for many reasons.

1) The fellow fans: when season tickets went on sale, a whole gang of my friends signed on. Some are women friends who play or just love hockey, some are women friends who are learning about the game and want to support women doing sports, some are feminist men friends who want to support the league. Plus more than 8,000 other people who fill the arena to capacity every single game.

2) The excited girls and women watching their idols play: a huge proportion of the fans is female-presenting. Entire girls’ hockey teams are getting on buses and coming to watch. Those big screen shots almost always show young girls dancing in their team jerseys, or showing off signs cheering for favourite players or the entire Ottawa team. I’m not a huge fan of the city’s plans to tear down and rebuild the arena, but I seriously reconsidered it after standing in the very long line for the women’s washroom. The place was not designed for so many female fans!

3) More specific representation on the ice: Akane Shiga, a member of the Japanese national team and the only visible minority player I spotted, had her own fans with signs in Japanese. Sadly, I won’t be able to see Sarah Nurse play when Toronto comes to town in March. Will there be crowds of young black girls cheering their role model on? I’m sure Nurse and Saroya Tinker, the league’s director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion hope so. You can read more about their work to get more black girls playing hockey here.

4) Women keeping the game running: three of the four referees were women, which made me smile about there being more than one path when you love a sport (I have been reading recently about Bouchra Karboubi, the Moroccan women who was denied the opportunity to play soccer as a girls but refereed at the Africa Cup of Nations that just ended. She is also the first Arab woman to referee a senior men’s match).

4.1) And don’t forget the coaching staff. Every official behind the Ottawa bench was a woman.

5) The hockey is really good and the model looks like it will be sustainable: PWHL games are broadcast of several TV channels and YouTube, and the league has attracted some solid sponsorships. The players all earn a living wage (a far cry from what the men earn, but it’s a start).

6) Sadly, the game ended in an overtime loss but that was almost incidental. I was this close to my own personal legend: three time Olympian and world champion and captain of the Ottawa team Brianne Jenner, the gay married mom of three. People with kids also need to see that there is a place for them as athletes.

Brianne Jenner from behind as she stands at the Ottawa team bench, wearing a red jersey with her number 19. To her left is Kristen Della Rovere holding her hockey stick.

This post seems appropriate for Valentine’s Day because I just love this league and these women. I can’t wait to go again on Saturday.

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Diane’s 24 Things for 2024

Diane Harper

Recently Sam posted her list of 24 things she wants to do in 2024, inspired by Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project and asked what others planned to do. Here is my list:

Pick a word of the year. Mine is explore.

Commit to writing for 2, 4, or 24 minutes a day – not sure at all I want to do this one. I write regularly (I have a personal blog plus whatever goes into FIFI, and I do my best to write a little something in a journal. But it feels forced and what I really want to do is catch up on reading and crafting.

Choose 24 things I want to do in 2024:

1.       Camp more at the cottage property

2.       Start work on getting a cottage built there. I need everything from a building permit to a well to electricity and a septic system, and I have never done any of those things before

3.       Get the canoe into the water and explore the lake

4.       Hike some of the trails around the cottage area

5.       Bike to Gatineau Park for a swim

6.       Read one book a month

7.       Read one magazine a week

8.       Cook one new recipe a week

9.       Weed and care for my gardens and hopefully harvest more food

10.   Swim outdoors more

11.   Make some gifts I have offered but not started (and there is a February deadline)

12.   Sew at least five outfits that have been lurking in my fabric stash and “to do” list for 4 years or more

13. Get back to crafting – I have too much stuff in my stash and don’t believe that the person with the most stuff when they die wins

An image of Julie Andrews spinning in a circle with her arms spread out (from The Sound of Music), with the words Look at all these unfinished projects”.

14.   Couch surfing vacation to southern Ontario as part of Stratford Theatre trip with friends

15.   Volunteer more. I’m currently active with three groups but don’t spend as much time working with them as I would like

16.   Visit my son in Toronto

17.   Spend more time with my parents

18. Adventures on my new-to-me Brompton. More cycling generally, actually.

19.   Qualify as a lifeguard and swim instructor and look for a part-time post-retirement job

20.   Maintain some sort of yoga practice, still to be defined. Right now it’s a short video every night before bed

21.   Empty my closets. I don’t buy much, but neither am I very good at getting rid of things I never wear

22.   Be loud. This year I have discovered my activist voice and I like it.

23.   Relax. Deliberately spend time staring at trees, or lounging in the sun, meditating, or whatever

24. I have no idea! This is a placeholder for whatever adventures might come my way, or new things I want to explore.

Image of Bilbo Baggins walking while holding a map, from the movie The Hobbit, and the words l’m Going on an Adventure.
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Does a Fancy Women Bike Ride Make Sense?

Diane Harper

September 17 was the day of the Fancy Women Bike Ride around the world. This year, there were rides in over 200 cities.

Riding with a group of women can be a joyous occasion, as you can see from the video of this year’s ride in Izmir, Turkey, where it all began in 2013.

After the ride though, our local organizer commented that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the name. Did it exclude people who didn’t want to dress up, or didn’t feel they had anything fancy enough to wear?

That led to a lively discussion among participants about the merits of dressing in different ways as a safety measure. Many of us had found that being super femme was protective. Drivers tended to give us more space. One woman noted that going from a gender-neutral coat to something more fitted and colourful had a noticeable impact on drivers around her.

However, this doesn’t always work. Female cyclists face harassment and bad driving at twice the rate of male cyclists, according to one study. They are particularly vulnerable to close passes and dooring because they tend to keep to the side of the road. But if they take the lane, they are sometimes threatened by aggressive drivers. Anecdotally, this was the experience in our group too.

Even within our group, some felt more vulnerable than others. The local organizer of Black Girls Do Bike rides said there just aren’t many women like her on the road so it always feels a bit uncomfortable. The woman who organizes rides focused on safety for kids (and brought her two along). The trans women who arrived at the last possible moment, hung back on the ride, and didn’t join the discussion until they heard us talking about “female presenting” cyclists.

My very unscientific answer to whether we need a Fancy Women Bike Ride is yes. It’s not just for women in places where riding is relatively safe for them. It’s for women who are marginalized in our community, and for women in communities where women are marginalized. It’s for women who don’t want to be fancy but want to be safe moving around on a bicycle. And it’s for women like me who see being fancy as part of their subversive feminism and celebrate the pink.

A group of women on the Ottawa ride stopped for a picture with their bikes in an urban area. They are wearing regular clothes and shoes instead of riding gear and sneakers.

Bicycles lined up beside an ice cream truck where we ended our ride. feminism, fitness and ice cream – it doesn’t get any better than this.

Dian Harper lives and swims (and cycles) in Ottawa.

Let’s Hear it for the Women Who Didn’t Make it to the FIFA Quarterfinals
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Let’s Hear it for the Women Who Didn’t Make it to the FIFA Quarterfinals

Diane Harper

I thought about celebrating all the teams who made it out of the opening round, but what I really want to celebrate is the surprising women who showed the world that women’s soccer is becoming increasingly diverse and interesting.

Here’s to 2019. Here’s to Haiti, Morocco, Panama, the Philippines, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Vietnam and Zambia, who made their World Cup debuts. Only Morocco made it to the round of 16, where they were defeated by France.

Not just teams were new. There were also a couple of individual firsts. Nouhaila Benzina of Morocco is the first woman to play in a hijab at this level. She is being hailed as a role model for Muslim women everywhere, and especially those in France, where wearing a hijab is forbidden while playing sports.

Nouhaila Benzina is wearing the red, black and green jersey of the Atlas Lionesses soccer team, as well as a black hijab.
Nouhaila Benzina in her Atlas Lionesses uniform.

She’s not the only hijabi though – keep an eye out for Heba Saadieh, the first ever Palestinian referee (male or female) who also wears a hijab.

Referee Heba Saadieh, in a black jersey and hijab, holds her arm up while making a call. She is wearing a microphone and looks very serious.
Heba Saadieh making a call.

With powerhouses including the USA, Canada, Brazil and Germany out, the rest of the tournament looks rather Eurocentric. I’m not sure who I’ll cheer for now – maybe Japan because they have a very Barbie-coloured away jersey, and I love a subversive feminist icon reference, even if it was not the Japanese intention.

Five or six women jump and hug. They are all smiling. They are wearing pink and lavender uniforms.
Japanese team celebrates after a goal. Photo by Marty MELVILLE / AFP)

Diane Harper is a public servant in Ottawa.

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Women Cycling

Diane Harper1 Comment

My Twitter friend Patty (@pattyboge), who is very active in the Winnipeg bike community, shared a couple of thoughts about biking and feminism this week.

First was an excellent commencement speech at Smith College given by Reshma Saujani on imposter syndrome. “Imposter syndrome is modern day Bike Face, just another attempt to hold women back. Just ride your bicycle, pursue what you want to pursue.

“Imposter syndrome is just two made up words on the page. Start pedalling, feel the sun in your face, feel the wind in your hair, feel the joy, feel the freedom, feel the love.”

Sam wrote about Bicycle Face way back in 2013. She also interviewed lawyer David Isaac in 2020 about how safe infrastructure and women on bikes. His key point was that safe infrastructure that connects to places where women want to go is key to getting women riding bikes. And it is a feminist issue because it can make cities more equitable.

That brings me to Patty’s second thought: « Women’s Rights activist Susan B. Anthony says it best ‘Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel, the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood.”

Patty’s response to all the people who pass two close and try to intimidate women to try to get us “off the road, B!&%!” is to say “we can’t and we won’t stop. Our bikes are our freedom”.

One of my favourite pictures of Patty, swiped from her Twitter feed. She is wearing a hot pink mini dress, sunglasses and a pink helmet with a tiara. She is riding a white e-bike with a front basket decorated with flowers. And of course, she has a huge smile.
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Grieving the Loss of a Feminist Friend

Diane Harper3 Comments

On Sunday, my world got just a little darker when one of my oldest friends died suddenly.

I first met Jennifer 37 years ago in the context of a medieval group I belong to. She was one of the first people I knew who broke the second-wave stereotypes of feminism. She was married for over 40 years to Henry. She studied classics at university. She loved to cook, garden and do textile crafts. She was a woman of faith who shared her love of music with her church community.

She also worked in the high tech industry, then moved on to run her own business as a career coach. She was a fierce defender of rights – for the disabled, for the LGBTQ community, for visible minorities. She taught me my example about grace, tolerance and the value of diversity.

On the fitness side, it was more complicated. Jennifer never looked stereotypically fit, and she had mobility issues, but did do her stretches and some yoga, in addition to gardening. In the spirit of this blog, she did what she could and accepted herself as she was. And she was pleased that I was contributing here.

In recent months, and despite all her precautions, COVID caught Jennifer. She had some long COVID symptoms and then a series of “cardiac events” and died less than 48 hours later. Was it COVID related? I don’t know.

I do know is the world has lost a big-hearted and generous soul. This will be the reality for all us aging feminists going forward, no matter how fit we try to be.

A grainy picture of a woman in a blue dress and wearing a headscarf. She is seated in front of a table loaded with loaves of bread.
Jennifer in her element — in the kitchen, doing some sort of craft, and laughing. Photo courtesy of Michael Cohen.
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The Swimmers

Diane Harper

The Swimmers is a 2022 movie about real-life sisters Yusra and Sarah Mardini, Syrian refugees who swam alongside a sinking dinghy full of refugees in the Aegean Sea on their way to the island of Lesbos. Eventually they reached Germany and Yusra went on to swim at the 2016 Rio Olympics as part of the Refugee Team.

What does this have to do with feminist fitness? Not much really. I watched the movie with the idea it might be worth reviewing for a blog post. It’s not a bad movie, but not much of a feminist fitness angle.

However, there was some pretty amazing swimming. Yusra Mardini swam butterfly competitively, and there were plenty of sequences showing very fast, efficient butterfly stroke. At every swim practice since I watched the movie I have tried to recreate what I saw on the screen.

Do I look like this?

Nusra Mardini, wearing a white swim cap and pink swim goggles is reaching forward with her arms outstretched in butterfly stroke. She is in bright blue water with water splashing up around her head. Photo was taken at the Tokyo Olympics in July 2022, by AFP.

Not a chance! But for a few moments each length – if I’m lucky – I feel like I look like this, and that’s what matters to me.

Reflections on freewriting in my fitness journal
ADHD · fitness · habits · motivation · self care

Reflections on freewriting in my fitness journal

Christine Hennebury1 Comment

On Sunday, I made my first entry in my fitness journal and I was surprised to find myself enjoying the process of reflection. 

Back in January, I was musing about what I wanted to include in my fitness journal but given the chaos of last month, I never did come to any conclusions.

But, seeing as I have decided that February is self-contained (and is the only real month at the moment), I felt free to just write whatever the hell came to mind (a.k.a. freewriting!) and to not worry about whether I was gathering useful information for my future self. 

I just set a timer (to free my ADHD brain from the worry that I would end up writing forever) and got started.

A photo of the decorated top section of a journal page
Image description: a photo of the top of the first page of my fitness journal. I coloured the top of my page pink and wrote the words ‘February Fitness 2023‘ in gold marker before outlining them in black. Under the words is a line of narrow washi tape (red with gold dots) and I drew a gold heart outlined in black on each end of the horizontal line of tape and one in between the words February and Fitness.

I wrote about how I was surprised that my evening hip exercises have revealed that my left hip is tighter than my right one, even though my right hip is the one that I have to be careful with. 

And I wrote about how I accidentally left my watch timer going on Friday so it seemed like I had done more yoga than I had, which was annoying but which prompted me to take off my watch and do several shorter sessions of yoga and stretching on Saturday so the exercise tracked would match the exercise I had actually done. 

That, in turn, prompted me to write about which of those sessions I had found most useful and which ones I would do again. 

That made me wonder about the yoga sessions in Apple Fitness + and whether I wanted to try those which reminded me that I chose a longer rowing session in the program the other day. That session was great but I did have to pause a few times – that felt like an important note for my future self. 

Writing everything down helped me to feel that all of my efforts were, indeed, part of the biggest picture – my own well-being – even if they weren’t all stepping stones towards a specific outcome.

A GIF of Snoopy looking happy while fireworks go off around him.
Yes, I will have a big celebration for anything. Snoopy knows what’s up! Image description – a GIF of Snoopy, the dog from Peanuts comics, smiling as fireworks go off behind him and the word ‘YAAAAY!’ appears above him.

And, intriguingly, I had no self-judgment crop up at all in the process – it just felt like a celebration of what I had done rather than a measurement of what I did against what I had planned.

Note: I am always aiming for that celebration feeling but the questions of ‘Was that enough? Why didn’t I do more? Why can’t I stick to a plan?’ still crop up for me sometimes even though I have lots of practice in self-kindness. 

Even though I didn’t have any specific questions in mind when I started, my first foray into reflective fitness journaling worked out marvellously. 

I have everything I need for future reference – a few notes about what I did last week and how I felt about it – and – bonus!- I feel gently inspired for the week ahead. 

Realistically, I only plan to write in my journal once a week, while continuing to give myself the freedom to follow my train of thought wherever it leads.

However, now that I have established a ‘container’ for that kind of thinking, I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up putting a few thoughts into it more often.

Women’s Hockey Inspiration
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Women’s Hockey Inspiration

Diane Harper1 Comment

Earlier this month, I went with my friend Vicki to a Professional Women’s Hockey Player’s Association (PWHPA) game. It was awesome!

Tennis legend and PWHPA Investor Billie Jean King made the ceremonial puck drop. I got to see some of my favourite Olympic players, including Brianne Jenner and Sarah Nurse. I also got to watch crowds of girls excited to see their heroes and dream that they might might someday join them as professionals. Every single official was a woman.

Billie Jean King drops the puck as players from both teams look on.
A crowd of girls in winter coats and hats are pressed up against the glass as Olympian Brianne Jenner skates by.

It was so much fun to see Vicki’s enthusiasm too. She spent the entire weekend at the arena, watching several games and doing the adult skills clinic. For her, seeing the players up close and watching how they move on the ice was a real dream. She is pretty sure she smiled for the entire time she was doing drills and asking questions; she couldn’t stop grinning during my time watching the game with her.

Vicki wears her new PWHPA jersey and gives the thumb’s up while standing in a hockey arena.

For me, the best moment was when Vicki told me about a discussion at the end of the skills clinic. Participants had a chance to talk to the players and one of them, Emerance Maschmeyer, told her that while they enjoy hosting clinics for young girls what they really look forward to are the clinics for adult women. She said they are inspired to see the women learning new skills and having such a huge passion for the game. When Emerance found out Vicki’s age (50), her response was that Vicki is old enough to be her mom and “it makes me want to get my mom out playing hockey!”

Sometimes on this blog we get frustrated with all the inequalities that still exist in women’s sport. But things really have changed since Vicki and I were kids. Vicki’s parents tried to enrol her in hockey when she was a kid in Saskatchewan but they were told “girls don’t play hockey”. I wanted to play on the newly-formed girls team when I was about 13, but my parents were the ones who said “girls don’t play hockey”.

Now we have professional players and role models, even if they are paid a pittance compared to the men. There are mixed and girls/women-only leagues. it’s still hard to catch a women’s game, but it is no longer weird.

Vicki Thomas is a former competitive cyclist who now swims, bikes and plays hockey for fun in Ottawa. You can keep up with her here https://ottawa.cx or on Twitter.

Diane Harper lives and swims in Ottawa. Her recent enthusiasm for cycling is due to Vicki’s influence.