Arm Chair Athletes

Sasha Cohen and (a very pregnant) Me

I love the Winter Olympics as much as the next person, but one thing I do not love about them, and televised sports in general, is how it brings out the arm-chair athletes.

Using figure skating as just an example, there are people who, though they have never skated a day in their lives, feel qualified to comment on the world of figure skating as if they are a Senior level skater. While it is possible to be a knowledgeable commentator and unable to actually perform a sport as a high level, just as it is possible to be an art critic who cannot paint, you still need to have some basis for doing so. You need to understand all of the technical elements of the sport, all of the rules for scoring, as well as have a generally idea of what it feels like to do the sport, so that you understand how difficult the various aspects of it are.

If you understand these elements, you can spot fraud and cheating because you understand how something should have been scored, when it has been correctly scored and when there is room for debate.

However, many arm chair athletes lack the necessary vocabulary to comment meaningfully on a performance and so they instead delve into simplistic and misguided political analysis of the performances. Instead of noticing, for instance, that a skater, although more graceful than another, did not perform as technically difficult maneuvers which resulted in a lower score, an arm chair commentator will simply state something along the lines of “They got less points because the judges are biased!” While it may very well be the case that the judges were biased, when the commentary strays from analyzing the actually qualities of a performance, it is hard to believe the complaint has any merit. If you truly wanted to demonstrate bias you would look at the same two elements performed side-by-side by different skaters and see if they were scored the same. This is what the current skating judging system is designed to do and it is actually very complicated. (Tangentially, this is the reason I am sad about the elimination of the Compulsory Dance.)

It is no surprise to me that, while I was writing this post, when Adelina Sotnikova earned the Gold Medal, over Yu-Na Kim, there were immediate cries of Russian cheating and favoritism. So much so, that the NY Times did a side by side comparison of the jumps. However, some people might not understand that a Senior level program requires more than just jumps. It requires a certain number of items, certain types of spins and step sequences and has many other requirements regarding music and costumes and timing. In high level competitions, like the Olympics, every skater submits their proposed program prior to competing and every single element is given a rating by a technical panel, that is composed of former high level skaters, for a final total possible score. While they may change their program on the fly, they must still meet the required elements if they do, and so very few skaters do this. It stands to reason that a skater whose program has more possible points overall, has greater leeway when they make an error. This is how you can know going into a competition who the top people will likely be beforehand. Of course, you never know who is going to fall, which is part of the excitement of the sport! If two skaters' programs are nearly identical on possible points, it will come down to how each element is performed on the day of the competition. If there is bias, it will be noticeable when you go back and look at the scores. (Which are available here.)This is not the old system were they simply hold up a number on a card up to a perfect 6.

This just one example of what arm chair athletes do not understand. I wouldn’t even fathom to comment on the other Winter Olympic sports, which I know nothing about, and yet other people seem justified in doing so on every comment site and message board around. 

If you really want to know how hard these athletes work, get out your arm-chair and try some of these sports yourself. You will see how easy they make it look.

So, why not just enjoy these athletes amazing skills and how talented they all are? It is okay to simply say “I liked her skating better.” “I enjoyed the music she used.” You don’t have to be an ethnocentric jerk who disparages a whole country. That really isn’t the spirit of the Olympics at all, IMHO.

In it for the Bling

I like to run races. I particularly like to run races which give me bling aka big shiny participation medals. While it would be great to run a race and get what I refer to as an “actual medal” (you know, for winning), for now I’ll settle for bling.

Coney Island Aquathlon 2013

There has been much malignment in the press regarding participation medals and how they are setting children up for terrible horrible futures. I don’t know if that is true or not, though, I have my doubts. I don't have any ribbons, trophies or medals from my childhood and only a few mementos of my childhood sports activities, so I cherish each of them, even the ones that simply say I passed a level of swimming. I’m not a kid anymore and I’m pretty sure I know the difference between winning and not winning, so I don't think my downfall will come from getting a bunch participation medals. I am also pretty sure that at my age just participating deserves something - even if it's just a banana and a cup of Gatorade.

Part of the reason I race is that races give me a goal to work towards and keep my training on track. For example, I know that I will have to run 13.1 miles on March 22 for the half marathon I registered for, so I better not slack off before then or I’m going to be in for a world of hurt. Since this will be my first half marathon, it was also important to me that the race I register for had a participation medal. If you are new to running, or any sport for that matter, I think that signing up for a competition is a good way to motivate you. You just have to make sure that you give yourself enough training time so that you don't feel overwhelmed. I'm feeling a little of that right now as the race gets closer and the weather keeps preventing me from running.

Spartan Sprint 2012

Having a medal to remember the events I do is definitely important to me, and is more about sentimentality than anything else. Some people are not at all sentimental and don't save anything. Me, I have boxes full of memories. It is nice to have a souvenir and to look back at each of the items and think “Hey, I did that!” Sure, I would still be able to remember my races without a medal, but having something tangible helps. While I like t-shirts, sometimes the t-shirt that is given out at a race is ugly or uncomfortable, so I don’t wear it. I'm not a fan of tech shirts, for instance, which have become very popular nowadays. With medals I don’t have that problem. I place them on my display and there they are, to remind me how far I've come and where I'd still like to go.

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Virtual 5K

I also like Virtual Races, where you only get a medal. For a virtual race, you sign up and run the distance on your own and then you get a medal. These races are more like training runs, but they can still encourage you to get out and exercise, which is always a good thing! I have done a number of virtual races with my son and he really enjoys getting into the theme and having a medal to show off.

Sometimes, I will sign up for a virtual race because the medal itself is cool, like my Doctor Who 50^th Anniversary medal and sometimes I will sign up because I am running to celebrate a special event, like my Very Merry Run-Birthday medal, which I ran for my 40^th Birthday. I think all of these things are a good way to get active and to take some pride in it.

That said, once I've done something, I don't really need another medal for it. I have run a bunch of 5Ks so I don't really worry about a medal for those, just setting a PR (Personal Record). Although, come to think of it, I do really like my Hangover Run Sweatshirts, so maybe I need to find more 5ks that offer a sweatshirt. *grin*

On Fitness and Weight

I want to address my feelings on weight in relation to fitness. Similar to my post about how exercise should bring you joy, I feel that your body should be respected and that you should try to live as healthfully as you can. This means doing my best to eat healthful foods and to not ingest things which are harmful for my body. I believe very strongly that when we love ourselves, we do not harm ourselves, either physically or mentally.

As a person who struggles, and has struggled for years, with depression, I know that whenever I start doing unhealthy things (drinking too much alcohol, eating poorly, being sedentary, etc.) it is because I am not feeling very good about myself mentally. And consequentially, doing these unhealthy things makes my feel worse about myself, so it becomes a vicious circle of self-hate. I try very hard not to go down that path and to be mindful of my choices every day.

As a result of this, I also choose not to focus much of my attention on how much I weigh, because frankly the number on the scale says nothing about who I am as a person and what I am capable of.

I find it very disturbing how much focus people put on weight and looks and particularly the weight of other people. Without a healthy state of mind to evaluate this, a girl could easily let all the societal judgments slung around ruin her self-esteem. On comments sections, every day I see overweight people regularly called “gross”, “fatty”, "disgusting”, underweight girls called “skeletor” or “anorexic” and muscular girls labelled as “manly”, “beasts” or "unsexy". You really can’t win if you try to live up to other people’s standards.

In addition, I don't go in for fad diets, cleanses or any sort of short-term thinking. The idea of measuring exercise in terms of how many calories I burn doing it, how much weight it will cause me to lose or how it will make look are just not ideas which resonate with me at all.

 

If you were simply to judge me based upon my weight and how I look, you would easily see that I have extra fat on me (approximately 30 pounds worth.) From a health perspective, however, aside from BMI I have “good” numbers. I have a small waist to hip ratio, good cholesterol numbers, normal blood pressure and my blood sugar is normal. My body fat percentage, taken by itself, does not make me “unhealthy.”

I am not ashamed of my weight. Why should I be? My weight has little to do with how good a person I am, how I perform in life or what I am capable of. A person can be overweight and an Olympic athlete. These things are not mutually exclusive, as some people like to believe.

It has never been a goal of mine to “be skinny” or to be “good looking”, and frankly, I don’t understand these goals. There are plenty of skinny people who eat horribly, smoke, do drugs or who starve themselves. Thin, just for the sake of thin, is not something to strive for, in my opinion, nor is it a good idea to try and conform to society's idea of "good looks", particularly since this ideal changes over time. You could make your body over into today's beauty only to find that tomorrow you look out-of-date like an 80s kitchen. We all have seen plastic surgery horror stories and people who have ruined their natural beauty by trying to do this. Neither of these goals are healthy and done out of self-love.

My only concern about my weight is in relation to how it effects my performance. It is not mere speculation that if I lost the extra fat, I would be able to run faster or that I would be able to do pull-ups easier. This is just science and is similar the circumstance in my last post about bicycles, that if you have a lighter bicycle you can go faster. A lighter body is easier to move around. However, while it would be better to not have the extra weight slowing me down, I am not willing to get to there through unhealthy means.

If you asked me “Would you starve yourself for $250,000?” the answer would be a resounding “No.” This would be like asking me “Would you smoke for a movie?” or to be more extreme “Would you drink this poison if I paid you enough?” Hell-to-the-no. The Machinist is a great move, but what Christian Bale did to his body for that film is insane, in my opinion. No amount of money would persuade me to do that to myself.

Some people say that if you eat healthy and workout, you will naturally drop any extra weight, but I have not found this to be true personally. When I don’t count calories and simply eat healthy, I stay the same weight. My body has a natural intuition about how much it wants to weigh. I need to actively count calories in order to lose weight. Unfortunately, when I do so, I tend become more than a little compulsive. So, for my mental health, I find it better to avoid doing so, even if it means being overweight and a little slower.

As for looking good, I think we all want to look our personal best, but honestly, I don’t really think about this on a daily basis. (This is obvious to anyone who knows me from the fact that I never wear makeup, always wear my hair in a ponytail and wear yoga pants daily!) I like the way that I look most of the time and my husband still finds me sexy after 15 years of marriage. I'm not trying to please anyone else, or to attract a mate, so why worry about it? I’ll never look like anyone else, nor do I want to. Healthy happy people look the best to me no matter their shape or size and that is what I strive to be and what I strive to help others find in themselves. This is not to say I am perfect, or that I live every day perfectly. In fact, I struggle with depression and I have to take every day one day at a time. Some days I eat poorly and some days I sleep all day. But on whole, I try not to make it a habit to do so. I also try very hard not to beat myself up when I do or get mired in negative self-talk.

Every one is worthy of love and everyone should be loving of themselves. Taking care of your body, in my opinion, is one of the greatest acts of self-love that you can do.

Bikes, Bikes and More Bikes

Ready for my first triathlon.

I am still on the quest for a bike. It will be the biggest triathlon purchase I make, so I have been careful to take my time and do as much research as I can.

It is has been a steep learning curve, since I basically knew next to nothing about bicycles, except maybe some general things, like that there are different types such as comfort/cruiser bikes; mountain bikes, road bikes and triathlon/time-trial bikes. I also knew that a seat is called a saddle. (Why is that?) But, aside from that I’ve been having to learn everything else, like “What is a “stem”?” and “What is a “derailleur”? Honestly, I still don’t understand a lot of it, but I am learning little by little.

I now understand, for example, why my cruiser is the completely wrong bike for racing. It was fairly obvious whenever I would go up a hill that it was not a racing bike, but now I know that it is because with its fat tires, a heavy frame and an upright riding position, it just does not have low enough gears and is not at all aerodynamic. It is the opposite of everything a triathlon bike is, and is basically the Ford Granada of bicycles, instead of the Bugatti Veyron of bicycles.

Triathlon and time trial bikes are lumped into together and from what I can tell are basically the same thing – bikes which are meant to go really fast. So, you will typically see special handle bars (aero bars) attached to the front, which allow the rider to form a more aerodynamic position, but which allow for a little less control over the bike. Triathletes are also really obsessed with the weight of the bike (aluminum vs. carbon frame) and the accessories attached to it, which are meant to make for fast transitions, but not slow down the aerodynamics. There are even special triathlon water bottles which try not mess with the aerodynamics.

I don’t think I need to go that far, since I know that even with a $12,000 bike and a $70 water bottle I still wouldn't be anywhere near the lead at any race I enter, so I have just been looking for a decent road bike that I can use and learn on. My personal preference is for curved handle bars, rather than flat ones, because I like to be able to switch between leaning over and leaning up. (Back in the day, I used to have what was known as a "10 Speed", so I know this from experience.)

My original price range was about $300. However, from searching I found that unless I knew exactly what I wanted and was willing to buy a used bike, that price was not going to cut it. I have upped my budget to $800 maximum. This has put me solidly into the “Entry Level Triathlete Bike” category and it seems like I will have several choices available to me, depending on where I look and their available stock. They are:

• Specialized Dolce Compact
• Trek Lexa C
• Felt ZW100
• Giant Avail 5, Defy 3 or Defy 5
• Cannondale Synapse 8

These are all aluminum frame road bikes and all seem to have decent reviews. Which of these bikes I end up with will depend on which one ends up fitting me best and which I find most comfortable. I am a short girl (5’2”) and it seems like I will end up needing approximately a 49-50 cm frame size. Many shops do not have the smaller frames in stock, which will limit my choices. I was going to go back to the local bike shop this week before the snow hit, but now it will have to wait. I have also been looking at used bikes and trying them out as they become available. I think that when I go back to the bike shop I will get a better idea of what I like in each model. I may also have to go to a few area shops to see what they have. Thankfully, I live in an area where there are quite a few shops around.