Friday 4 October 2013

The Cold Meat and Dairy War

My guy is what I refer to as a Lazitarian, too lazy to cook, he eats whatever is laid in front of him. When he first moved in under cover of habit (see Stealth Cohabitation) he became a vegetarian out of necessity - I do all the cooking and I don't cook meet. Though he was gaining weight due to regular meals and careful attention to nutrition, his mother was sure he was malnourished and starving because...well, a person can't live without meat, especially her only child person. Eventually, he went back to eating meat when dinning out or at either of his parent's places but remained vegetarian at home.

He is a stubborn one, my guy and if pushed one way, will run the other (sound familiar to anyone out there? Hands up if you are dating one) and he can be spiteful, though rarely, just for the sake of it. It is the latter attribute that is waging a full on cold war in my refrigerator. I say "my" refrigerator because a) I bought it and b) the kitchen is my domain, much like gardening is his. It has nothing to do with gender or cultural expectations, each sticks with what they know. Food prep, weight training plans, hand-to-hand combat, plumbing and feudal weapons are my things. Bicycle repair, planting and watering things that grow, wood working, guns and grocery shopping are his. Don't even get me started on his rigorous miltaresque policies regarding bed making. I've been known to fight my way out of the restrictive covers.

When my guy worked in a factory and had access to a refrigerator and microwave, I made his lunches. Usually I just made enough dinner to ensure he had a meal for the following day. This summer he started trimming and removing trees then added landscaping and decks to his repertoire. Outdoor work that necessitated the need for sandwiches or at least foods that did not require heating. I assumed he could make a sandwich for himself, it requires very little culinary skill. That's when the luncheon meat started appearing in and contaminating my refrigerator. Then the chicken toquitos (if you don't know what those are, consider yourself lucky, microwaved there are the most offensive smell ever to waft from my kitchen). When I announced my decision to transition from vegetarian to vegan, nearly everything he brought home from the grocery store contained meat, cheese or egg. 

The cold meat/dairy war is upon us. He now even buys potato chips (my weakness) with dairy in them. Nothing gives him more pleasure than eating chocolate covered almonds in my presence and offering me one about every 3 minutes. He goes out of his way to grocery shop for things I cannot eat, even though I am the cook in the house and he knows what I prepare for us will be vegan. He has no complaint with the taste or quality of the food I prepare. He likes my cooking, even my vegan cooking. Really, my being vegan doesn't effect him at all, and yet he intentionally tries to thwart me at every opportunity. The better my diet becomes, the more processed junk he eats. He's at a barbeque tonight, stuffing his face with steak and domestic beer, while I'm home, drinking craft beer, eating a decadent cashew butter and vanilla pear jam sandwich, playing music too loud and dancing in my underwear. 

Rest well my dear, for tomorrow I reclaim my refrigerator, "Once more unto the Veggie Crisper, dear friends, once more....

Thursday 3 October 2013

Don't Look Back

I did pushups this week. At least 10 in every class I've taught. As a karate Sensei this would normally not only be considered no big deal but a surprisingly low number. I haven't been able to do pushups for nearly a year. A mountain bike crash last October left me with an impinged shoulder and a career as a karate instructor left me with enough inflammation to keep a firm lock on that impingement. 

Over the past year I've been through countless doctors’ appointments, sports medicine doctor appointments, x-rays, ultrasounds, bone scans and a cortisone shot. On a side note, the cortisone shot was at the beginning of the cycling season and though I was able to jump from 30 km rides to 110 km rides in a week without feeling any ill effects in my legs, the pain in the needle site was so miserable I cannot fathom pro athletes willingly subjecting themselves to this. Imagine having paraffin wax injected into your muscle, and then feeling it harden over the course of a week and you pretty much have the experience of a cortisone shot, all the discomfort with none of the annoying side effects like actually fixing the problem. Then suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I wasn't in pain.

Chronic pain is a funny thing, what keeps you awake at night in the beginning, becomes so familiar that you forget what it feels like not to hurt. When it disappears there's a weird period when you don't notice because you've gotten so used to just getting on with it. Other people's sympathy for your pain lasts about 2 weeks, after which no one cares or remembers anymore and if you remind them you are viewed as "milking it", so you put up and shut up. You learn to ignore the pain until you slip into bed and the full force of your over doing it during the day catches up to you.

The pain is gone, and now I have to deal with the weakness. Weakness is not something I deal with very well. I'm a very small female, the grade school girl who was picked last for soccer baseball - a made up sport for weaklings. I have devoted most of my adult life on not being delicate, not fitting the mold of the "delicate China doll" (which I have been called). I take great pride in surprising people with my strength and "toughness". Needless to say, struggling through some rather mediocre pushups doesn't sit very well with me. 

This is where professional me and personal me have to sit down and have a serious conversation. Professional me says that loss of strength is to be expected after such a lengthy recovery. That I should take my rehabilitation one day at a time and celebrate the successes along the way, "look, you did over 70 pushups this week, 3 weeks ago you couldn't do one." Just like I would say to a student in my situation, and I would mean it! Personal me spends a lot of time looking back at where I used to be. Personal me remembers the 100 push up warm-ups and clapping push up days. Personal me gets frustrated by my weakness. Both professional me and personal me have a lot more empathy for others than I do myself.

I've seen this scenario played out many times with friends and clients alike. People who used to be athletic, who got away from their sport and then stayed away because when they tried to re-enter it, their ego couldn't handle not being at the top anymore. That is exactly what it is, ego. The only person judging the number or quality of my pushups is me. No one else is thinking, "yeah, she's a nice person, very professional, takes pride in her work...but...have you seen her pushups lately? What is going on there?” The fact that so many people I know have quit after absence from sport due to ego scares me. I am a very humble martial artist, by an ego maniac about my strength - for my size or any size. I don't want to become another quitter. I don't want to be frustrated.


I'm trying very, very hard to breathe deeply, enjoy the journey back and to not think about asking, "are we there yet?".


Wednesday 2 October 2013

Do Good Guys Wear Lyrca? - Another New Dawn in Cycling

Cycling fans we can smile again! Pat McQuaid has been ousted from UCI presidency and replaced by the UK’s Brian Cookson OBE. Cookson was endorsed by just about every cycling/doping critic around, but we’ll have to wait and see what he delivers. (You can read Cookson’s Manifesto here:
http://www.briancookson.org/files/6313/7208/9499/Manifesto_BC_English.pdf)
Now, my first cycling crush and the only American to ever win the Tour de France, Greg LeMond is back designing bicycles!

For those of you who aren't familiar with the LeMond bicycle, it was originally distributed through Trek until a certain litigious, chemical driven, bully on wheels used his then considerable clout and hatred for Greg to get the line dumped. Call it Karma, call it delayed justice, but the tables have turned. As the bully sits at home in Texas buried under an avalanche of lawsuits, LeMond is relaunching his brand through Time Bicycles.

This is the stuff of Fairy Tales, the Hollywood happy ending! The bullies and the corrupt leaders have lost in disgrace. The Cutters win the race, Dave Stoller gets the girl, the college degree and the pro contract. (If you are a cycling fan but you've never seen the movie Breaking Away, shame on you!).

The problem is, life is not so clear cut; good guys sometimes do bad things, bad guys sometimes do good things and our expectations that everyone has to stay on one side or the other leads to disappointment, pessimism and ambivalence. Look at the riders who admitted to cheating (without getting caught), confessing in order to help move things forward in a positive way. Which side of the good-bad divide do they belong on?  How many times have you said, “What’s the point, they’re all cheaters anyway”? All of them, really? The neo-pro barely making $30, 000 a year? The team that let the most skeptical of cycling journalists travel with the team with 100% access? What about Christophe Bassons? Surely he wasn’t an anomaly. He was racing at cycling’s nadir of doping and yet he remained so true to his ethics that he quit the sport rather than capitulate.

What cycling needs is what life needs, a healthy dose of cynicism tempered with optimism, a commitment by the critics to not just complain but do something about it and hordes of Dave Stollers and Christophe Bassons leading the way.

And if Time Bicycles or Greg LeMond needs someone to write a product review on the new LeMond bikes, just give me a call!

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