I’m not the greatest at cycling uphill. Unless I’ve been training specifically for it recently I quickly lose my uphill speed.
A month ago Chris and I had gone out for a quick spin on our local 30 mile route. We’d decided to do the hilly version because we’d not been out for a while. At one point on the route there is a superb long downhill, with several satisfying bends, which then swoops up into a not-too-steep but-incredibly-long uphill climb to get onto the neighbouring ridge. Being a lot lighter than Chris this should mean that I get left behind on the downhills, because for all the tight tucking in the world that I do his additional weight adds that extra bit of gravity pull to his descent, but I should fly past him on the uphills when his additional weight is a hindrance. Of course, my poor uphilling means that I only get to flash past him on the uphills when we’ve been cycling on steep hills for several consecutive weeks.
On this fateful ride I noticed that his back wheel was wobbling a little, providing some resistance to the motion and needing some attention. As I, unusually, went flying past him on the descent I shouted over, “your back wheel needs mending. It’s very slow on the downhills.”
Of course, I should have kept quiet. Moments later, Chris sped past me on the uphill. As he whizzed past on his quest for a convincing victory on the hill he shouted, “your legs need mending. They’ve very slow on the uphill.”
And with that, on to this week’s links.
- I’ve mentioned before on a links post about my concerns about what chemicals can be found in cosmetics and moisturisers. This led to a great tip from one reader (thanks, Cara) to try mixing olive oil and water in a spritzer bottle and use a few squirts of this instead of moisturiser. If you want to learn more then this Time magazine article will point you in the right direction.
- Jason Ferruggia went all soppy a few weeks ago about his fiancé Jen. However, for a bit of inspiration then the pictures that he includes, taken at a recent photoshoot of Jen, are fantastic. Go, feel the obligatory flutter at the lovely things Jason says and then be inspired by the pictures to get yourself back in that gym and put that cookie in the bin. Oh, and his advice is spot on. Life is so much easier and more complete when the person you share your life with also shares your diet and fitness enthusiasm.
- Seth Roberts did an interesting experiment recently and found that he could significantly impact his fasting blood sugar levels (eg. blood sugar levels first thing in the morning) by taking a walk the evening before. Is there any coincidence that Chris has been getting us out doing a walk at the end of the day more often since we read this post?
- I like to think that I’m not a bad cook. I’m certainly improving since I started posting up a recipe every week on this blog. However, if you have some concerns about your cooking skills (and really, the basics that you need to make some pretty awesome meals are very very easy to master) then learn more about Surf & Turf, a 13-week online cookery course. Thanks to Richard Nikoley for the heads up on this one!
- I’m comfortable with my decision that I don’t want children. However, I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of strange or disbelieving comments when people find out. It was really comforting to read an article in the BBC Magazine on this very topic of why women may choose not to have children. It genuinely seemed to be trying to take the stigma out of it.
- What do top female athletes eat on a training day? Amy Williams, a bob skeleton athlete took some time out to tell the Daily Telegraph. I particularly liked her 5pm meal and the 10pm bedtime!
- Witness Winnie the Hulk! I can’t really say more.
- I’m interested in the omega 3/6 ratio. If you still aren’t convinced by all the fuss then it’s interesting to read about Susan Allport’s experiment, summarised and linked to on Seth Robert’s blog. Shame on O magazine for not publishing the final article. If you want to learn more about omega 3 testing then Mike T Nelson interviewed Dr Doug Bibus about the subject:
- I’ve got a couple of treats for the menopausal ladies out there. To start with, I had a lovely email from someone asking me to share CoolJams with you all. These look really good so I’m happy to tell you all about them. Nightwear to keep you the right temperature all night long. Apparently a recent study conducted at University of Massachusetts Medical School
found menopausal women who meditated as part of a stress reduction program experienced significant relief from hot flushes and night sweats. The study’s participants’ average age was 53.6 and they experienced an average of at least seven moderate to severe hot flushes each day. The stress reduction program involved classes in body scan meditation, sitting meditation, and mindful stretching. The women also participated in guided meditation at home six days a week for 45 minutes. At the end of the study, the
frequency of the women’s hot flushes decreased an average of 39% and the average severity of hot flushes dropped 40%. Additionally, most participants reported being better able to deal with their hot flushes. Here’s where the advertising comes in: Cool-jams Wicking Sleepwear along with meditation master Sue Davey have developed a special meditation specifically for cooling the body. They’ve told me that you can get a complimentary cooling meditation download from the website. - Secondly, Charles Poliquin (a true guru in the fitness nutrition industry) has been providing some tongue-in-cheek advice about how to help with the menopause (and how to help menopausal women lose fat). There are some really quotable lines in there (the seven dwarves of menopause will stick with me for years to come) but I can’t recommend strongly enough that everyone, menopausal or not, reads parts one and two.
- Have you ever wondered why promiscuity is as big a problem as it is? Perhaps you haven’t but for those who want to take the primal living to the full then perhaps you would be interested in reading Sex at Dawn, using various not-quite-directly-linked evidence to consider what our sexual heritage may have been. There’s an interesting review on Melissa McEwan’s blog. I must say, it looks like an interesting read, but perhaps it’s not something for the Christmas present wish list!
- There were some posts about pregnancy last week. Here’s one more about human breast milk and some of the positive reasons why, in the long term, it’s great and not a bad thing from the inflammation perspective.
- I’m a fan of step ups (as I am a fan of all gluteal exercises) and if you are quite new to them then you may find this explanatory post helpful. However, if you want to see what really hard step ups look like, and in fact see a really really tough glute workout (I’m feeling terribly inferior now, like I need to get back to the gym immediately) then I strongly recommend that you read this post from Glute God Bret Contreras and watch the accompanying video.
This is an extremely cute video of a miniature pig, though there’s definitely not much bacon on him:
Related posts:
I caught some of the Woman’s Hour programmes about being ‘child free’ (‘childless’ apparently carries stigma, who knew?). It was quite revelatory I must say, as I can’t remember ever being called upon to justify my own child free state. I had no idea I was a social stigma!
It’s really quite bizarre. I didn’t think it was a social stigma until lots of people at work started having babies recently. Saying “we’re not going to have children” was met with incredulity and “oh, you’ll change your mind” when asked the inevitable question of when I would have children.
I’ve been thinking about the whole question of what you say when people tell you that you are denying your biological potential by choosing not to have children. My conclusion has been that the best response would be to tell them that by spending all day sat in a chair they are denying their body its physical potential and that when start choosing to shun chairs and instead squat or kneel when resting and move about more I’ll start listening to their comments about my biological potential.