Five months to BCBR

Well it's that time again.... time to get back into a training routine in anticipation of the BC Bike Race.  When I did it in 2012 I managed to finish every day before the cut off (just barely on day 5... note to self, eat more on long days) and that was doing the challenge (shorter) course.  For 2014 I've signed up for the epic (full) course and will be doing in as a team of two with my fabulous pal Christina.  It's worth noting that Christina is a professional hockey player in her spare time, and in the past few months has been juggling her day job managing an outdoors shop with volunteering with marine search and rescue, and coaching several youth hockey teams.... oh and flying overseas to play in the European Champions Cup.  She's also almost 20 years younger than me.  In other words, I'd better get off my duff and train like crazy or she's going to leave me in the dust!

My training program for the next four weeks consists of M/W/F cardio sessions, combined with T/Th resistance (aka weights) training.  Luckily I've got a program that views resistance training as something that I can do with the mini-gym that I have set up at home.  I've learned that going to a sweaty gym in town is not very motivating for me and as such means that I often skip those workouts.

See how big my smile is even when there's hardly any snow?

The best part of the next month is that it leaves weekends open for "cross training" (no Keps, don't get excited, I'm not starting cyclocross).  In my heart I'm a snow person and this winter has been heartbreaking for me - our local alps have near next to no snow this year; Mount Cain has yet to open and Mt Washington is holding on by the skin of its teeth as this warm air aloft is not-so-slowly eating away at their meager base.  Still, on weekends I tend to be away from home in the mountains somewhere so this type of training plan should in theory work well for me.  

Also, Andy's agreed to participate and Natasha's going to be pushing hard into her spring rowing season so I figure those are bonuses in the motivation box.

How this is all going to coordinate with my new instructing gig starting in March or even the week long avalanche course I'm taking in two weeks is yet to be seen but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.  For now I'm focusing this week on developing an exercise routine without blowing up by pushing myself too hard.  

girls will be girls

You've probably seen it, the commercial for GoldieBlox, a toy company that "believes that femininity is strong and girls will build the future - literally."  Their YouTube ad has been showing up on the Facebook pages of many of my female friends who I would describe as strong feminists. 

My initial reaction to the concept was "hey great idea", then I watched the video and began to feel uncomfortable. I sat with this feeling for a few weeks, wondering why something that purports to encourage young girls to take up careers in engineering (a field that I've been in for almost 15 years) would be something I couldn't comfortably embrace.  I mean how could it be bad?  The founder of the company is a female Stanford educated engineer for god-sakes.

Slowly it came to me.... why are we pushing girls to play games and develop skills traditionally seen as belonging to boys by making the tools of that game more "feminine"?  Why are we pushing them into those fields at all?

Disclaimer: I'm not saying parents should limit toys and activities to those traditionally thought of as female or things that are pink, any more than I'm saying that women shouldn't be engineers or foresters or chose to wear pink.

This speaks to a bigger issue that I first became aware of after reading some of Ursula Franklin's essays on feminism in male dominated fields.  She tells a story of a sandbox that resonated with me.  To summarize, she says that in the beginning, the boys had their own sandbox where they built things, and girls were only allowed to stand outside the sandbox and watch.  As time went on, the boys invited the girls into the sandbox but the girls were told they were only allowed to use the boys' tools, and to build only what the boys were building.

Over time, the girls began to think that they wanted to use their own toys and build different things in the sandbox but the boys wouldn't let them.  So the girls left to play in their own sandbox and built their own things with their own tools.  The moral of the story obviously is that things can be approached from different angles and each unique result has the potential to be great.

The story resonated with me at that specific time in my career because I was struggling with trying to do things the way the men in my field did things.  To lead in the image of the men who were my highly respected mentors.  Even though it felt wrong and awkward to me I persevered, thinking that that was the way a successful person in the field of engineering operated.  After all, I had spent the majority of my adult life working in male dominated fields (first fighting forest fires and working in the bush, then in engineering) and playing traditionally male dominated sports (mountain biking, rugby, skiing, surfing).  I must be one_of_the_boys therefore what works for them should work for me...... right?  

One of my biggest pet peeves is the labeling of skills as "hard" or "soft".  To me this is the politically correct way of labeling masculine and feminine skills.  It took me many years to embrace the fact that some of my strongest skills are labelled as soft/feminine - the ability to communicate effectively by changing the delivery of the message to ensure that it arrives at that person's ears in a way that they can understand without feeling defensive, being a "fixer" by bringing off-track projects to successful completion, feeling empathy for my clients' needs, being compassionate when a coworker's personal life clashes with their career goals, etc.  I railed against these labels for years, thinking that it made me less valuable in the world of "hard" technical skills. Now that I've embraced these soft skills I'm a much more comfortable and effective, both professionally and personally.

I saw this reverse-role pressure when Natasha was in grade 11 and she decided to focus on the social sciences and humanities instead of the "hard" sciences and math pathway.  There was surprise, and often barely hidden distain for the fact that she's a girl who's really good at math and science, and yet she's turning her back on it.  It feels as if people think she's somehow a traitor to feminism by not following through in these male dominated fields. She once said to me that she'ss really good at math and science, but is passionate about the social sciences and humanities - law, global issues, history.  As she's stretching her arms to embrace adulthood I see her eyes looking around at the injustices/imbalances in the world and choosing university programs based on international relations, not engineering, not pure scientific research, not math.

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to expose our children, both male and female, to a variety of toys and skills throughout their childhoods and raise them to be confident enough to follow whatever they're passionate about?

I'm proud that I've raised a daughter to believe that whatever career paths she decides to follow, she should embrace all of her strengths - analytical reasoning, conflict resolution, aggressiveness, speaking and listening from the heart, empathy, compassion - and know that none of them is more valuable because it's labelled male or female, hard or soft.

And just in case anyone is wondering, yes I bought her Barbies and yes she loved dresses.  And no, I won't be buying the GoldieBlox toys for Andy's nine year old daughter as a way to encourage her to be more like the boys.

times they are a changin'

It's crazy how things in your life can seem totally overwhelming one day, then the next the sun figuratively comes out and all is well.

Last week was hard as it started to sink in that my Dad is really and truly gone. Not in the hospital. Gone.  I had a vivid dream about him early last week in which he was showing me his new teeth…. he looked healthy like he was years ago and was so happy.  I think that's my brain's way of letting me know that he's not suffering anymore.  

Am heading to my Mom's tomorrow to hang out for a few days, cook turkey and celebrate her 70th with my sis, hubbie and nephew (we didn't have the chance to do that previously because that's when my Dad passed away), rework the bed in the back of my truck for the coming ski season (there's a pretty big kennel back there now), network and generally keep my Mom company.  Feels like the first "moving forward" weekend in long, long time.

On Sunday I finished my EMR course after spending the past seven weekends in Victoria. I've loved it for the most part but am glad at least this part is over; there's still licensing to do (which I hear is a harder exam) but for now I'm enjoying being done the class portion at least.

And then today I found out that the daughter of my close friends who has been at Children's Hospital for the past month is being released in the next day or two. That means the whole family gets to move back to their own house, their own community.  I'm feeling a huge sense of relief, I can't image how wonderful it is for them!

Or maybe my increased happiness factor is tied in with the fact that Andy and I took Juno into the mountains for her first taste of snow…. and she LOVED IT!  I'll upload the video soon as she doesn't really look that happy in this photo. But for those of you who know anything about Chesapeake Bay Retrievers you'll know that this is a very typical expression. 

Life may not be all settled yet but at least today I'm feeling like it's moving in the right direction.

small island isolation

Being on a small island has its pros and cons. One of the pros is that I live steps from the ocean so Juno and I can walk the beach with ease, and the view is amazing.  One of the cons is that it's sometimes hard to motivate myself to get off the island and into town.  I'm starting to get creative in the kitchen as the cupboards are becoming bare (although I did manage to make a pretty awesome black bean chilli to take to Don and Sarah next week).  I figure I can probably avoid grocery shopping for at least another week or two as long as I don't mind living on lentils, refried beans, rice, potatoes and the last of the turnips, beets and apples.  Recipe suggestions anyone?!

At least I get out of the house to walk the dog and interact with my neighbours or I'd go completely stir crazy. Having said that, it's easy to start spinning around in my head especially when I'm surrounded by stacks of EMR books and chart paper covered in first aid protocols.

life interrupted

Good friends of mine are pretty much living at Children's Hospital while their 4yr old daughter undergoes treatment for leukaemia.  

IT_FUCKING_SUCKS

I feel like I've been here before. When my friend Karen died of breast cancer many years ago I wasn't sad, I was super freakin' angry.  Angry that an amazingly smart woman who lived a super healthy life and was a new mom was sick, and then was gone. I wanted to lash out at anyone who was complaining about petty things, to yell at them, punch them in the face.

And this is now how I feel about their daughter having cancer.  Not only is she a pretty fantastic kid, but she has pretty much the best parents I know.  Why is this happening to them?!  

When I visit them at the hospital I try to be upbeat, to talk about other things besides "how's she doing?".  Her dad and I joke about my latest gear purchases (although he has yet to harass me directly about buying a puffy jacket for my dog….wait for it….), talk about Natasha, who he's quite close with, and generally avoid any potentially weepy, touchy-feely topics.  But I feel his sadness in his hugs when I leave.  I want my hug back to say "she's going to get through this and we're all going to go camping and hiking and skiing together again really soon."

Then I leave and generally cry the whole way to the truck, narrowly avoiding punching anyone who might complain about their coffee from Second Cup (oh wait, that was me doing that last time) or the price of parking at the hospital (oh wait, that was also me).  Heaven help me if I ever run into the anti-abortionists that sometimes protest in front of the hospital….

Last time I was there Natasha was with me.  A few times when she and the dad were talking I looked at the little form curled up in the institutional hospital bed and tried, in some kind of hippie-dippie psychic way, to send healing energy to her. I'm a scientist, I know that's dumb, but I don't know what else to do to just_make_her_better.  It's times like this that I wish I was deeply religious and could believe that it was higher power that was screwing with us and there was nothing I could do except have faith.

I don't

When I made soup for them I tried not only to use the best ingredients I could, but tried to think positive thoughts the whole time I was making it.  Yes, I feel quite stupid writing that now but at the time it seemed like it couldn't hurt.

Her illness, combined with my Dad's recent death, me going through a career change and sending Natasha off on her first solo trip has me feeling like my whole world has completely turned upside-down. The only thing that gets me through it all is the hope that as this all shakes out, I'll take time to appreciate life more. To be more passionate, and not in that cheesy #YOLO way.  That's the hope anyways.

running is fun running is fun running is fun

For those of you who know me well know that I really don't like running -- to be more specific, my knees and IT bands positively hate running. This is why I initially got into cycling 25 years ago.

One of my inspirations to keep trying it is my friend Keps who seems to be able to find a way to enjoy running (even in Ironman comps!) despite feet and knees that just weren't built to do that. 

"What do you mean that's it?!"

Other amazing women who keep me positive about running are Denise, who cheers on my attempts at running despite me still being at a 1 min run, 4 min walk pace, fellow islanders Frances and Stephanie, who cheer me on regardless of what I'm undertaking, and Michelle, a fellow dog handler in Trail who by posting her run stats on Facebook makes me realize that it's worth it to "only" run 5km.

I managed to get in 35 minutes at the 1:4 pace this morning, even encouraging myself to sprint in the lame one running minute. Juno of course loves it when we run, although is still learning not to grab at the leash, and often gives me this look when we stop.

My goals for this winter are to be able to keep up with my daughter Natasha when she's back from her non-fitness related adventures over the winter, and to go into MTB training in the spring with a much better cardio base.  Christina and I are doing BC Bike Race 2014 as a team so I'm going to need to be in a lot better shape than I was for BCBR2012 in order to keep up with her!

letting the arrow go

It's amazing to me that I'm not curled up into a little ball right now… the past two months have been testing me on many levels but none more so than dropping off my 17 year old daughter at the airport two days ago for her gap year backpacking trip to India, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Her loose plan has her back to Canada in the spring; it's the longest we've ever been apart.  

I realize that on so many levels this sounds lame….. the negative self-talk has been on high drive -- "get over it, she's growing up", "you're the one who has been pushing her to do this for her whole life", "this is normal, you're being an overprotective mom"…

At my Mom's house before we left for the airport, and again at the security gate, I held her while she sobbed and sobbed in a way that I've rarely seen her do before.  She's so mature in so many ways, yet still just a 17 year old who wants to hang out on the couch watching movies with her mommy.  She's now arrived in New Delhi, slept (finally!) after 24 hours of being in transit, has had her first puking session, and has started to explore the immediate area around her friend's apartment complex.  She's questioning her ability to undertake this adventure but also realizes that it's understandable to feel fearful of the unknown.  

I am SO GLAD that we went to Nepal in 2011 so that she's not arriving in India without any idea of the "chaos" of being in a developing nation.  I'm also so glad that her travel partner is an equally worldly young lady who lives in New Dehli so understands the subtleties of Indian culture.  

Many years ago I heard a parenting analogy that really spoke to me.  It likens raising a child to building a bow and arrow, placing the arrow and aiming.  As the builder and archer all you can do is make sure you use the best materials, pull with just the right amount of tension, and aim with as much accuracy as you know how to.  At some point however you need to let the arrow go and trust that all the work you've put into it will be enough.

I think I let go of the arrow when I dropped her off at the airport.  In my heart of hearts I know she can do this…… and so can I.  Go be excellent Monkey.