Summer's End

With only a few days left until I go away to university, I sat down to reflect back not on this summer, but all the summer's I've had before it. This is the first time in my life that I can remember where I did not have some crazy trip or adventure in the middle of nowhere. Last summer I did the Kanaaupscow River, in northern Quebec, before that it was the Kesagami, and in the years before it I did the Coulonge/Noire crossover, sea kayaked on the north shore of Quebec, paddled the Wind and Peel rivers in Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories, as well as the Clearwater, the White, the French, the lower Dumoine, the Spanish, Quetico. I've watched mother bears with 3 cubs wander along the river, seen a wolf cub lost and lonely on a beach, huddled in a ditch under a tarp trying to hide from a thunderstorm, seen the northern lights on a summer's night, watched the sun rise over a mountain, and visited every province and territory in Canada, even Nunavut (barely). But that's all done now. And I haven't left it behind completely, I still miss it, I miss waking up at dawn in a smelly wet tent, with rain pouring down outside and a 12 hour day on the water ahead. I miss portaging, and wet feet that never truly dry out, and cold days where every scrap of clothing you have isn't enough to keep warm. But I've made my decision, and I am pleased with it. If I want to go as far as I can in skiing, I'd have to train year round, and taking July and August off to travel just doesn't help that. But one day, I'll return. I'll return to the world of adventuring, and visit a few more places that most people haven't even heard of. I don't know what I'll do, but whatever it is, it will be awesome.

INTERCOURSE THE PENGUIN!

The above title doesn't have anything to do with the post, it is just a reflection of my love of Monty Python TV skits, in this case "Exploding Penguin on the Telly". Youtube it.

But, in any case, after a rest week, we launch into training, in a big way. 5 hours yesterday, 2 this morning and I think I might through in a couple more this afternoon, just to make things interesting. But yesterday was, as far as I remember, my single biggest day of continuous, organised training. This 5 hour day, more then any other workout I've ever done, really showed me the benefits of training with someone, in this case Pat Monette. When you need to go easy, you feel a lot more comfortable at a very low pace when you're training with someone, as, for whatever reason, it looks like this is part of some crazy high tech training system, and that your low speed is important. When it comes time to go hard, you go just that much harder. No matter how fast you can run on your own, you can run faster when there is someone chasing you. And if you're lifting weights alone, you'd never put on the extra 10 pounds for the last set, but when there is someone watching, you find you can suddenly do it.

And since we have hot and humid weather moving in after a mostly cooler and wet summer, hydration suddenly becomes an issue. In the heat it becomes vital to drink lots before going out, drink as much as you can during the workout, and drink lots later. If you lose any significant amount of weight due to sweat loss, you're in a lot of trouble. You can't focus, which not only decreases the quality of the workout, can be downright dangerous. Dehydration can cause your senses to deaden, so that car coming up from behind is awfully silent. But the trouble becomes carrying water on a long workout. Hydration systems in a backpack hold a fair amount of water, but they tend to get very hot and uncomfortable, and could also affect your ability to move your arms. I can carry up to about 2.5L of fluid with me when I ski, using a bike jersey to hold 3 bottles, plus a drink belt, but that is also uncomfortable, the bottles often fall out, and to top it all off, you look even more crazy then usual when rollerskiing. So I don't really have a solution, besides being smart about it. If worse comes to worse, just swing by someones house and ask for them to fill up your bottle for you. Just don't go inside, or their front hall will stink for weeks, and always show kindness to strangers.

I also had my first really hard workout in months this morning. I haven't had my heartrate over 185 really at all this year, but then all of a sudden I get it up to 196! Gotta love short, hard workouts.

I also feel really fit and motivated for this season. I'm getting better at sprinting, I'm so much stronger then I was last year, and just broke through that magical 60 limit on box jumps. But above all, I'm climbing so quickly. Every workout I do, regardless of how hard it is, I can just fly up the hills. It's always been my strength, but this year, I think that everything else is going to be a strength too. This year, I'll be able to keep up on the double pole sections, stay calm on the flats, and then fly up the hills. I'm so motivated. I'm also really looking forward to school, not only because I'll be living away from home and going to school and all that, but because I'll be able to ski every day. No more running through the neighborhood back in Mississauga when almost everyone else can ski. I can ski too. Snow comes in about 3 months. Can't wait.

EPIC RAIN!!!

There is something incredibly special about the rain. I know I've made mention of this before, but I will again. Today, rollerskiing, we met thunderstorms, which brought along heaps of rain. We had almost no visibility, but oddly enough, no wind. But in honour of all the rainstorms I've trained in, here's The Cult.

A Spanish company released announced a doll recently called the Bebé Glotón, or Baby Glutton. The interesting thing about this doll is what it does. It cries when it's hungry, and wants to be breastfeed. That's right, a doll aimed at little girls wants to suckle. If you want to know more, just Google it. But seeing this made me think, after my initial shock and horror, when should kids start to think about being parents? Some pundits said that the baby teaches young girls that their sole purpose in life is to become mothers, while the makers of the doll claim the support of a national organization promoting breastfeeding. So the debate continues, creepy or educational? Personally, I think it's creepy. I've always found dolls creepy, and this particular one seems more like the thing they hand out in parenting classes in high schools. What self respecting parent would buy something like this for their daughter? Why not buy something plastic and inflatable from an adults only store and give that to the kids while you're at it? Yes, kids have always pretended to be grown up, but there are limits. But then, maybe this is just the next logical step in the hypersexualization of children. We can already dress up little girls in fishnets and miniskirts, why shouldn't we make parenthood as real as possible.

I think this also highlights the major differences between the upbringing of boys and the upbringing of girls. Boys never seem to get told they are going to reproduce, while a disturbingly large number of parents tell their daughters that their most important goal in life should be to settle down and raise a family. Look at organizations like Quiverfull, which hates all forms of birth control and promotes reproduction on as large a scale as possible. And then I have to ask, is our urge to reproduce a natural instinct, or is it taught? As increasing numbers of couples decide to forgo children entirely, and more and more people seem uninterested in having kids, I have to wonder if we actually want kids. Yes, human beings are sexual, but being sexual and wanting to reproduce seem to be increasingly different things. Take a look at Helen Memel, the protagonist of Charlotte Roche's debut novel Wetlands, who is incredibly sexual but has herself serialized once she turns 18. Plus, we have an incredibly over populated planet, we are running out of food, out of space, out of air. Nature kicks in and takes away our natural urge to nurture. So maybe it's taught. Or maybe I'm insane. Either way, it's interesting.

So do we naturally want to have kids? I have no idea. But is a doll that teaches little girls to breastfeed creepy? If it isn't, I don't know what is. Here's hoping it's some elabourate prank.

Solo

Since I've been living alone for most of the summer, I've learned a number of interesting things about life, mainly cooking. I've never had to cook for myself day in day out for any extended period of time. My only experiences with any large amount of cooking have been my old Wanapitei trips, and those were quite different from my current situation. Firstly, a group of 9-14 eats a lot more then just one person, even if that person is me. Hungry trippers will devour massive amounts of food and still want more, so accordingly we had a lot of food. A couple kilograms of pasta per meal, for example. But that cooking was done on a firebox, with only what we had. If we ran out of food, we couldn't saunter over to the local grocery store and stock up. But with Wanapitei, everything was set out beforehand, so all we had to do was make it. But since one person really doesn't eat that much, up here it's a lot harder to tell how much food to make. The meal I'm eating as I write this has enough pasta for two people and vegetables for one and a half. As a result I won't have to make a lunch tomorrow, but it really didn't look like a lot of food when I made it. The meal is spaghetti with canned sauce, two cut up small chicken breasts and an assorted beans/carrot frozen veggie mix. The pot I made the pasta in was small, and there was a lot of room left, I just dumped the remaining carrots and beans into a dish, and the chicken breast looked so small and lonely in the frying pan, so I gave it a friend. I'm compassionate like that, but it means I have the honking plate of pasta in front of me and no real motivation to eat it. And it tastes fantastic, that's the worst part. I've put Parmesan cheese and pepper and hot sauce on it, and everything just looks so tasty, but I can't eat it. That may be because all I did to today was ride to work and back, and that doesn't use a lot of energy. If I had some big distance thing today I'd have eaten this plate of pasta with gusto, then finished off the ice cream in the freezer, then made myself a smoothie to repent for the ice cream. But I guess that's what happens on easy weeks. I eat the way non-racers do.

And so I'll leave you with a quote from a fantastic book by Tim Krabbe, a book called The Rider, a kilometre by kilometre account of an amateur bike race, which covers not only the race, but the history of the rider and of the sport of cycling in general. Krabbe is a cycling and chess enthusiast who based the book on his own experiences. If you're a competitive athlete, you will appreciate this book, and if you know a competitive athlete, and everyone does, The Rider will help you understand why they do it. So, without further ado, the second line of the The Rider:

"Non-racers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

Racing!

Today I had my first proper race since nationals in March. Almost 5 months without racing is a long time for me, so it was nice to get into this. Nick and I did Crank'd, an 8.5 kilometre trail, which was fairly easy, on a mountain bike. However, Nick and I did the race on cyclocross bikes, and since the course was mostly flowing single track, this was interesting, especially for me, as I have almost no bike handling skills, especially on narrow single track. We had pretty bad starting spots behind a lot of slower people, as we showed up fairly late to the start. As a result, I ended up getting forced off to the side trying to pass people, and had to dismount, and had to chase my way back up. I was as high as 5th or 6th at one point, but ended up losing a lot of time in the technical sections, which was annoying as when we got onto the double track or easier single track, or whenever we climbed, I was far stronger then anyone else around. However, i got more confident as the race moved on and started taking more risks, and got a lot faster. I was feeling really good, but that came to a halt as I hit a tree. As I entered the final section of single track my drop bars hit a small tree, flinging the bike around and I flew off down the trail, sans bike, only to come to an abrupt stop when i hit the ground. I got up, felt my shoulder, which was sore but otherwise undamaged, and ran back up to get my bike. I lost a place in that crash, and rode the final single track section rather gingerly. I won a sprint for 9th, holding off someone coming up from behind, and that is one of the advantages of a cross bike, in that it is so much faster when it's open, as you have bigger gears and drop bars and a stiffer bike is easier to sprint on, since there is no suspension. So I finished ninth, not bad for my first mountain bike race. If only I knew what I was doing, I could have done so well.

The Skinny/Dogs

In 2004, 23.1% of Canadians were obese, and another 36.1% were overweight. That number has surely gone up since then. Which raises the question, WHERE THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE? If nearly 1/4 people in Canada are obese, why doesn't this match up with the people I know? Do fat people just hide out in the basement, or, in a more sinister move, what exactly does being overweight mean? Having a BMI of 25 or more makes you obese, according to Health Canada. I've got a BMI of 21.0, which is considered healthy, but look at this warning from HC:
"Although the BMI is useful for healthy adults (ages 20 to 65 years), it does not apply to infants, children, adolescents, pregnant or breastfeeding women, endurance athletes, highly muscular people and adults over 65 years of age." So people who are Mesomorphs could be considered obese, even though they are just muscular. Mesomorphs easily gain weight, be it muscle or fat. The majority of Mr. Universe winners are mesomorphs, and few people would say that a body builder is obese. A freak of nature, yes, but fat, no way. Body types are in fact very fascinating, and they fall into three basic categories. Ectomorphs, like myself have low body fat percentages, but also have a great deal of difficulty in gaining muscle, espescially superficial muscles. Ectomorphs, interestingly enough, are also more succeptiable to the weather, wearing less when it's hot and more when it's cold. Lower body fat and a greater surface area relative to weight make ectomorphs react more to the cold. Mesomorphs, as mentioned above, gain weight easily and also tan easily, unlike ectomorphs, who typically just burn, espescially if they're of nothern European descent. Lastly, there is the endomorph who typically has underdevelopped muscles and gains body fat easily. It is interesting to note that until about 150 years ago, when industrialized farming made food widely available in the western world, having endomorphic traits was desirable, as you could survive a long period of famine, while ectomorphs couldn't keep going. Weird eh?

Also, dogs are annoying. When you're out rollerskiing, and a large dog runs at you, it doesn't matter if it just wants to play, if you get hit by 80 kilograms of muscle, you go down hard, and you could break a bone, or three. So don't be offended if I scream at your uncontrolled dog. It's nothing personal, I just like my collarbone in one piece, thank you.