Re-Blog: Open Letter by Greg LeMond

Here's a re-blog of my first cycling crush and the only American to win the Tour de France, Greg LeMond's open letter to save the sport of cycling:

Can anyone help me out? I know this sounds kind of lame but I am not well versed in social marketing. I would like to send a message to everyone that really loves cycling. I do not use twitter and do not have an organized way of getting some of my own "rage" out. I want to tell the world of cycling to please join me in telling Pat McQuaid to resign. I have never seen such an abuse of power in cycling's history- resign Pat if you love cycling. Resign even if you hate the sport.

Pat McQuaid, you know dam well what has been going on in cycling, and if you want to deny it, then even more reasons why those who love cycling need to demand that you resign.

I have a file with what I believe is well documented proof that will exonerate Paul.

Pat in my opinion you and Hein are the corrupt part of the sport. I do not want to include everyone at the UCI because I believe that there are many, maybe most that work at the UCI that are dedicated to cycling, they do it out of the love of the sport, but you and your buddy Hein have destroyed the sport.

Pat, I thought you loved cycling? At one time you did and if you did love cycling please dig deep inside and remember that part of your life- allow cycling to grow and flourish- please! It is time to walk away. Walk away if you love cycling.

As a reminder I just want to point out that you recently you accused me of being the cause of USADA's investigation against Lance Armstrong. Why would you be inclined to go straight to me as the "cause"? Why shoot the messenger every time?

Every time you do this I get more and more entrenched. I was in your country over the last two weeks and I asked someone that knows you if you were someone that could be rehabilitated. His answer was very quick and it was not good for you. No was the answer, no, no , no!

The problem for sport is not drugs but corruption. You are the epitome of the word corruption.

You can read all about Webster's definition of corruption. If you want I can re-post my attorney's response to your letter where you threaten to sue me for calling the UCI corrupt. FYI I want to officially reiterate to you and Hien that in my opinion the two of your represent the essence of corruption.

I would encourage anyone that loves cycling to donate and support Paul in his fight against the Pat and Hein and the UCI. Skip lunch and donate the amount that you would have spent towards that Sunday buffet towards changing the sport of cycling.

I donated money for Paul's defense, and I am willing to donate a lot more, but I would like to use it to lobby for dramatic change in cycling. The sport does not need Pat McQuaid or Hein Verbruggen- if this sport is going to change it is now. Not next year, not down the road, now! Now or never!

People that really care about cycling have the power to change cycling- change it now by voicing your thought and donating money towards Paul Kimmage's defense, ( Paul, I want to encourage you to not spend the money that has been donated to your defense fund on defending yourself in Switzerland. In my case, a USA citizen, I could care less if I lost the UCI's bogus lawsuit. Use the money to lobby for real change).

If people really want to clean the sport of cycling up all you have to do is put your money where your mouth is.

Don't buy a USA Cycling license. Give up racing for a year, just long enough to put the UCI and USA cycling out of business. We can then start from scratch and let the real lovers in cycling direct where and how the sport of cycling will go.

Please make a difference.

Greg

For more on Paul Kimmage see http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/paul-kimmage-sued-cycling-governing-body-they-want-try-shut-me

For the Paul Kimmage Defense Fund see: http://nyvelocity.com/content/features/2012/paul-kimmage-defense-fund

She's Lost Control

Not to be out done by My Namasexual Guy, and foolishly encouraged by the studio (their foolishness to encourage me, that is), I just registered to take the Kids Yoga instructor course. In many ways this feels like a most natural progression as they need kid's instructors and I have 8 years experience teaching children and I love to do it. However, that 8 years of experience was gained teaching kids karate. 

Karate has discipline built into the program. There is order. There are push ups. You may recall that at  5'1", by 11 years old the average child is taller than me. Even by 9 many are looking me in the eye. In a gi (karate uniform) I gain about 6 inches or so of cloth to my slender frame and I use my theatre trained big girl voice to control a room. Plus push ups, did I mention the push ups?

Yoga is the antithesis (see what I did there?) to karate. It is free expression, do as you feel and all those wonderful things. Except, children feel like doing some very freaky and often dangerous things. As I prepare to embark on this journey, I think about all of the outrageous child behaviour I have had to bring under control in my years of teaching karate and I worry that when you strip away the belt, the gi and the push ups, and I am left standing with this tiny shell I inhabit, will I still be able to guide the room without my array of dojo tricks? 

Breathe 

Mind the (Generation) Gap

When people find out the age difference between me and My Guy, I usually receive high-fives, mock fawning and bowing or titles like "Queen of the Cougars". On rare occasions, though, I encounter "I could never...", which initially makes me think of a Dylan Moran bit regarding hookers and cocaine in a hotel room. I never see what the big deal is. As has already been established, My Guy is an old soul, or I'm very immature. Possibly it's a combination of both. 

For the most part, we don't notice the difference. I credit my career in fitness and a fabulous gene pool for his lack of awareness. Where I do sometimes feel like we come from entirely different worlds are in my far too numerous pop culture references. I am, after all, a Gen Xer, gratuitous pop culture references is our thing.

Once, early on in our budding relationship I made a joke, in writing, about him waking up with a horse head in his bed. Apparently, if you've never seen The God Father this is an incredibly distressing thing to read in a lively online chat. It also became apparent that he just wasn't raised right! How does one grow up in an English speaking country and not at least hear about one of the most infamous scenes in filmmaking history? And how does one then explain the scene to an already traumatized reader? Particularly when you can no longer type because the laughter has you shaking violently. Obviously he got over the shock, as we're living together (see previous blog "Stealth Cohabitation"). Though it could be a matter of precaution on his part, presuming I would not put a horse head in my own bed (he still hasn't seen the movie). Won't he be surprised when he wakes up!

*Written entirely on my iPhone so do not question any typos or spelling errors. There are no errors because iPhone autocorrect knows better than we....

Re-Blog Plus

A friend of mine just alerted me to this excellent blog post: http://www.danoah.com/2012/10/16-ways-i-blew-my-marriage.html

I have to say that reading it was both heart warming, in that I saw my current relationship in a lot of the positive advice, and chilling in that I see my former self in a lot of the don't columns. I have been ok at admitting my wrongs in the choosing of the wrong partner and staying long after I was continually made unhappy segments, but it takes two to make or break a relationship and I've had some very bad habits I have to own in order to break.

One of my worst habits was the unsolicited advice giving. Naturally I worry about the people I care about, that is a natural and good thing. Thinking that I know better what they should be doing, is not. Telling them what they ought to do instead is not and I was terrible for doing so. Sometimes unrelentingly. When I think back to the fevered email writing, sending 6-7 lengthy messages, one right after the other, I cringe. Sometimes I would feel guilty and then send another 3-4 positive messages, then go right back to the "you ought to know" writing. To the unfortunate recipients, I must have looked like a bi-polar nut job and in some respects, I was. 

Projection. I have been credited with being a very intuitive person. Sometimes I think I am and sometimes I think that when you surround yourself with people who are like you, it is easy to project your own issues onto them and be roughly "correct". A lot of the time and energy I spent trying to "fix" my partner was really an attempt to fix my own problems. By making my problems someone else's, it seemed easier to objectively view the issue from the outside. This is a double lie because, there was zero objectivity behind what I was doing and, what I was doing was not fixing anything. I was merely cataloging a long list of faults, making both me and my partners feel worse about ourselves. It is almost impossible to make changes for the better when you are feeling at your worst.

Having come from a family that turned verbal abuse into an art form, I deluded myself into believing that when I was upset, it was better not to say anything rather than risk repeating the patterns of verbal abuse I was raised in. What I was really doing was using silence as a weapon. It's a tricky situation. Sometimes I was so tired of constantly "talking about the relationship" or telling my partners that I was hurt that I just started to shut down. I withdrew into myself and threw up walls so that I couldn't be hurt further. Sometimes silence was a refuge. Other times, though it was a spiteful attempt to make others feel bad. 

When all is said and done, I have done my share of sabotaging my relationships. I regret the pain my actions caused to those I cared about. However, that is not the same as saying I wish I could go back and do things differently. Each of those relationships were absolutely wrong for me, though I admit my share in their destruction. Hopefully, both sides have learned and grown from the experience.

I have read and heard much lately about not looking to the past as you can not change the things that have already happened. Though I agree that thinking too much about the past, living with constant regret, is detrimental, I also know that failure to deal with past issues always makes them come back larger. With this post I put my past relationships in their final resting place. I have learned what was useful and now it is time to let go of everything else. 

To all the boys I've loved before, I genuinely wish you well, but I shall think on you no more. Adieu

To My Guy, without you I could not have come to this place of acceptance and forgiveness of both myself and the people of my past. You have taught me the true meaning of Love!

My Life As A Letter Writing Crank

Update: Nike responded to my email with a statement of regret regarding their decisions to sever ties with Armstrong. Nothing takes the wind out of your comedic sails like a form letter email that refuses to acknowledge your sarcarsm

I sent an email to Nike head office the day they announced they would stand by Lance Armstrong, suggesting they could use this opportunity to re-brand. Here are some of the slogans I suggested:

Nike - Cheat to Win
Nike - No Needles, No Gain
Nike - Just Do Drugs, Libel, Slander and Perjury
Nike+EPO

It perplexes me that they would change their minds and drop their sponsorship and association with Armstrong rather than use my suggestions.

I've Crea-dated a Monster!

I was very pleased with my initial (resounding, I might add) success in hooking My Guy onto Power Yoga, not your gentle nap time yoga, this style kicks ass. He now regularly attends class with and often without me and tells anyone who will listen how great it is. He's always been rather a one man sales and marketing team but now he's on a mission. Last week he got his first pair of proper yoga pants (yes they make them for men) from a major manufacturer of yoga wear that I can't afford. This week he was asked to come in for a job interview with that very same major - with a capital MA - manufacturer of yoga wear. A sales position of course. His mother, yoga instructor and countless friends have already laid claims on his staff discounts and I'm told to go to the back of the line.

So here I am being out yogied by Mr. Fancy Pants, breathing in his shadow and down dogging my way through life in inferior yoga wear.

Namastuff It!

Messy is the New Black

I love training in a Japanese martial art. The precision, the history and the pageantry are all part of the attraction for me. If you train in a Chinese Art or a Sport version of karate, you are taught that technique is personal expression. Not so much with a Japanese Art, technique is an historical expression performed the same way it was in the beginning and always shall be, anon. I have a Japanese Sensei who has more in common with the strict, "tough love" caricature you see in old movies, berating students for making mistakes, sometimes with his voice, sometimes with a stick across the legs, back, whatever was nearest.

It was only recently that I came to understand that, though his approach had made me a very good karateka indeed, it had severely depressed my ability to try new things that I was not immediately good at. When you get yelled at (and hit) enough for making mistakes, you learn to avoid doing things you may screw up. This caused me tremendous stress when I was mountain biking, taking a new class, and most recently in Yoga. I thought I hid this well (except for the mountain biking, anyone who ever rode with me could tell that it was a very stressful endeavor for me), until a yoga instructor called me on it in my first class saying, "that one got messy on you, you don't like it when things get messy do you."

Since then I've started to focus on these hang ups and change them so I can get back to the more carefree approach to trying new things that I had before karate, and most of all trying to bring that sense of play and adventure back into my method of teaching karate. The more I examine this issue, the more I realize it certainly isn't just me. I notice that many of my friends have hang ups about being witnessed doing anything less than well. Even things that don't seemingly matter. We work hard to do some things tremendously well, but when it comes to something new, if we suck, we are less likely to stick with it. Given that it takes ten thousand hours to master any skill, how any of us could expect a better outcome is incomprehensible.

My challenge to myself and to all of you is to go out and try something new, strange and out of your comfort zone, go into it with an open mind and an "empty head". Quiet (or in my case, muzzle) the inner voice that criticizes you and just have fun learning something new with all the wonder and good nature of a child. Get Messy, its very hip!