Race Report: The Jailbreak DFW

Friends expressed interest in the Jailbreak mud run, so I signed up to run it. None of my friends signed up. I ran alone. With a few hundred strangers.

I went anyway because I wanted the stupid t-shirt, medal, and beer. I drove an hour to Roanoake, parked a half mile from the start line, and jumped into an earlier wave to get this shit done and over. Points for free bag check (but which I think ought to be standard in the industry), shady trails, flat course, pleasant weather, decent beer (Shock Top), and a quality race shirts in women’s sizing (which also really ought to be a standard offering but is frustratingly hard to come by).

My memory card wouldn’t work, so I carried my camera the whole way for nothing.

I was pleasantly surprised to scale the first wall obstacle easily on my own. I skipped the next one because I was tired of waiting in lines so much. Later I was confused to see people ahead of me struggling to climb the tire wall, moreso when I had no trouble darting right up it.

Eventually I just got bored with such long stretches between obstacles and a half hour of queuing at obstacles and the course being a mile longer than the 5k advertised. I skipped obstacles and walked a lot. I had a triathlon the next day and nothing to prove.

I crawled through mud, got my medal, drank my beer, stood in an even longer queue for 45 seconds of “showering,” and drove home. I showered as quickly as possible, scarfed down some Ramen noodles, and dashed back out to the Jenny Lawson book signing at Half Price Books.

Which meant several more hours of queuing. But I got a cool pic and get to say The Bloggess took my virginity since it was my first ever book signing.

TL; DR: This event did nothing to entice me to get back into obstacle racing. I can buy my own beer.

Swim strife

This time classmate Miguel did not come and coach ragged on Emily the whole time and that was definitely worse than every other class.
When we went to begin backstroke drills, he instructed us to first do 50 yards just kicking and then 50 swim. He turned to me to repeat himself, saying that I had mistakenly swum when he said kick in last class. I stared back blankly. “Oh, you don’t remember, do you? No matter. This time, just kick.”

I knew he was talking about Emily’s mistake last week, which she then repeated this time. I know we’re both white girls in black sport suits, but I’m easily twice her age and wearing a neon green swim cap. And this is our fourth class together and there are only three students total.

Surprisingly, he praised the work I’d been doing to improve my form and said that was very good when I finished a lap. Then he turned to Emily and said that was “very bad, not good at all.” We thought for a moment he might be jesting, but he was serious and went on to tell her what was wrong. She became very flustered throughout class.

I just don’t get it. The rest of the time he does a gret job pointing out what individual things we should work on to improve our form and explaining them in detail, and it’s been very helpful. So why the negativity? As I said before, this is a city rec center swim class. It’s not a master’s class, it’s not a team practice, it’s not a private coaching session, no one here is training for the Olympics.

I may have very limited experience with teaching, but I’m fairly certain you’re not supposed to tell your students that their efforts are “very bad.”

Just two classes left.

Swim struggles

In swim class last Tuesday, after instructing us to swim 50 yards front crawl at 80 percent effort and I did, coach asked me in a dubious tone if I was sure that was 80 percent. To which I nodded confidently, breathless, which upon seeing he conceded. It was not an unfair question, but he’s seen my abilities with regards to speed and conspicuously didn’t ask it of my classmates.

To be honest, it was not 80 percent in that I cannot fully comprehend sprinting and have nary a fast twitch fiber in my body, but it was 80 percent in that I would maintain a challenging, gasping pace throughout class without floundering.

Yes, I am a slow swimmer. This is why I paid for a swim conditioning class. But I am only slightly and not always slower than the two young teens in my class. I push myself, really, enough that I'd probably cry except that I'd drown.
At the end of class, he said to me alone that two times a week (how often our class meets) is not enough exercise, so I cheerfully informed him that I run and bike all the other days, not mentioning my frequent two-a-days on top of that. I’m more interested in learning what I can from these sessions than challenging this man.

Later I wondered what on earth he meant by “enough.” Enough for what? It might be enough and all one has time for if she has a full time job and maybe children. It might be enough and all one has time for if she’s a full-time student with other extracurriculars. It might be enough for someone recovering from a running injury. It might be enough for someone looking to crosstrain for her sport. It might be enough for anyone at all trying to add enjoyable movement to their lives.

This is a city rec center swim class. It’s not a master’s class, it’s not a team practice, it’s not a private coaching session, no one here is training for the Olympics or any other competition for that matter. I’m here for triathlon but not to compete; I wanna make sure I can knock out the swim on race day and have something left for the bike and run.

There are three classes left in this session; I don't think I have it in me to sign up for the next. I hate that these are so late in the evening and am really looking forward to going back to my 5 a.m. practices. I’ll keep training through the winter and think about classes again after the New Year.

I support abortion on demand. But I didn’t always.

I was raised Catholic and was vociferously pro-life throughout most of my teenage years. I believed everything the youth group leaders taught me about a woman’s responsibility to carry a child and to sacrifice her life for it if need be, about abortion being a “Holocaust,” all of it. I wore the ABORTION IS HOMICIDE t-shirt to school and believed myself a crusader for those who had no voice. I twice attended the March for Life in Washington, D.C., with my youth group, shouting all those cheers (Hey hey, ho ho, Roe v. Wade has got to go . . .) and praying for the little babies unfairly robbed of their “right” to life, “the lost generation” they called it.

I moved away from home for college and tried to attend church on campus with a new friend but immediately realized I’d only been going for so many years to spend time with my friends from the church youth group. Then I understood that I only believed what I’d been taught and had no idea at all what I really believed. I stopped attending church and started exploring other faiths.

About the same time, I had a revelation: because abortion is a really hard choice and an unwanted pregnancy a tough position to be in, I couldn’t help but respect and admire the women who made the right decision for themselves in that situation, no matter what their decision was. As I became a woman, other women suddenly became humanized to me; more than mothers, martyrs, and murderers for the first time ever.

It was a few years more before I adopted a pro-choice viewpoint, and even then I thought I should advocate for “reasonable restrictions” and oppose late-term abortions because I still thought of them as barbaric as the pro-life movement had taught me. But when I tried to reason with pro-lifers, certain there could be a middle ground; I’d been wrong. They had no interest in being reasonable; I was only ever a baby killer to them.

In early 2013 I sat in a presentation by a woman who explained how becoming a mother moved her from pro-choice to pro-abortion, and I adopted the pro-abortion identifier, too. She loves her kids and being a mom, but she spoke about the realities of the pain and dangers of pregnancy and childbirth and how experiencing them herself helped her understand that no one should ever be forced to go through that. She also explored our culture’s weird fetishization and glorification of motherhood and the silencing of any negative feelings anyone has about her own pregnancy, birthing, and postpartum experiences. And how this culture is a lie designed to pressure more women to bear children without their fully informed consent.

I’ve also learned that restricting and criminalizing abortion does nothing to decrease abortion rates but does cause more deaths of people with uteri. It doesn’t matter if one believes life begins at conception. The ways proven to decrease abortion are to increase access to contraception and comprehensive sexual education.

I’ve learned to accept that I was indoctrinated and brainwashed as a child. I try not to dwell on the harm I caused during my pro-life days, and I’ve learned to embrace the challenge of spending the rest of my life atoning for that. I enjoy doing advocacy work: writing, donating, debating, educating, and fundraising.

I support abortion without restrictions. I support abortion on demand. I support abortion for everyone who wants one for any reason at all. Abortion is a social good. Humans have a right to bodily autonomy, even and especially if they have a uterus.

Celebrate Bisexuality and Visibility Day

I wrote a piece for the South Florida Gay News. Check it out.

“Ironically I’m writing this piece about Celebrate Bisexuality Day, a day I'd never even heard of before receiving the assignment. As a bisexual woman all too familiar with bi erasure, I’d been looking forward to Bi Visibility Day, which Google now informs me is the same thing as Celebrate Bisexuality Day and is also called Bi Pride Day. My ignorance of the holiday dedicated to honoring my own sexuality seems an apt similitude for the bi erasure endemic to our society and serves to highlight the necessity of CBD.”

On Depression and Training

CN: depression
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My depression meds spontaneously stopped working a few weeks ago* and this week has been really really hard. But I'm fighting really hard and want to share.

Saturday I ran in the morning, took a nap, and then struggled to get out of bed again, succeeded in arriving at the pool fifteen minutes before close and getting in a mere five laps just to get it done. Sunday I got in a decent run and swim.

Monday I'd planned to do the same but woke up dead tired and had to call it a rest day. I struggled to get out of bed at all. Tuesday I struggled to get out of bed and went into work late but ran after despite a tummy ache and swam hard in swim class that evening. Wednesday I struggled to get out of bed and went in to work late but swam after.

Today I got up early and went for a bike ride but cut it in half because my tires were low and bugging me. I racked the bike on my car and was overcome with inexplicable overwhelming despair, so I decided to walk a bit since it was pretty outside. I stopped in the dog park for a few minutes to watch puppies play. These things should have cheered me up but didn't. As I headed back to my car, I realized I probably should have locked my bike or put it in the car, but no harm no foul and no use berating myself for failing at higher functioning in this state. I couldn't get past the strong urge to cry for no reason at all, though, and decided to call in to work.

I'm missing swim class now because of a migraine and feel bad about that because these classes are important to me. But tomorrow is another day.

I made an appointment today to see my doc, but he doesn't have any openings til next Friday, so that fucking sucks. #thanksObama** And I have a sprint tri the following Sunday and would be worried about the 750m OWS (my max OWS to date being 500m), but I just don't have any spoons/bandwidth to stress over it.

#justkeepswimming #perseverance #fuckdepression #journeynotdestination

*It took me two weeks to figure out what was wrong and another week of hoping it might be temporary. This is the fourth week, and it took til today to gather spoons to make the appointment with my doctor to ask about changing meds. The first available appointment was Friday afternoon next week. And we're looking at several weeks after that to see if something new will work for me. The thought is daunting, but my anxiety is well managed at present and I lack extra spoons/bandwidth to stress over it.

**Over a week to see my GP has been new since the ACA took effect. I can walk in for acute things like strep, but I don't know whether my doc might be out of town now and I'd have to see another practitioner if I try to walk in, and I've never seen the other doctors at this practice and fear they'd tell me to wait for my doc anyway to change my prescription. It could be worse; it's a minimum 2.5 months to get an appointment with my OB/GYN since the ACA, so here's hoping I don't get a yeastie or STI outside of my pre-scheduled visits. That's a rant for another post.

A Weird Cramp

Last week I started a twice-a-week swim conditioning classes at a local pool. Thursday I was lucky enough to have a one-on-one session with the coach to work on my form since the other three students did not attend. The classes are capped at nine students, so we’re all pretty lucky to have a small class in the first place.

But a weird thing happened at class last night that has me really confused and still uncomfortable today. Near the end of practice, after doing 150 yards of front crawl sprints with short rests between each length, I got a stitch in my side and told the coach I had a cramp. I’m a slow swimmer and have never practiced sprints before, so I wasn’t surprised by the development. I mentioned it because I wouldn’t be able to continue swimming hard for the last few minutes of class.

‘A cramp? Where?’ he asked, confused that I pointed to my side, right where you get them while running too. A pool employee came over and asked if I was sure it wasn’t in my legs. No, I told him. Side cramp, pain. And they both vociferously assured me that wasn’t a cramp, couldn’t be a cramp; you could only get cramps in your legs; you don’t even use those abdominal muscles while swimming. It must be your liver or lack of oxygen due to poor fitness. Definitely not a cramp.

I didn’t want to argue with them, one of whom I know is a swimmer with many accolades to his name; I just wanted to not sprint full tilt against my classmates anymore for the last five minutes of class. So I nodded, got some water, sat out a lap, and took the kickboard to do a slow cool-down lap.

I was confused and uncomfortable because I know it is a cramp. I’m among the 70% of runners who have experienced side cramps; I just hadn’t had one while swimming laps before. It’s a diaphragm cramp caused by a combination of too shallow breaths/too little oxygen plus movement and sometimes weak abs. Swimming is a full-body workout, and my abs sure are feeling it today. I just learned that all strokes engage your abdominal muscles. I struggle with swimming because I run out of breath long before my muscles fatigue, and sprinting surely exacerbates the issue: movement + shallow breathing/insufficien oxygen.

So it makes sense that I might get a stitch in my side while swimming several hard laps. What doesn’t make sense is the complete refutation that it could even be possible. Cramp or no, the logical conclusion is that something about my form needs improvement. And the coach had been continuously telling me what I could focus on and improve in each lap.

I worked hard, I pushed myself, and I got a cramp. Why was it such a big deal?