Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 81
October 31, 2011
How to be the audience for a great panel
This comes partly from world fantasy this year, and partly from my experience in general with panels. I have been working on my own moderating style and had some really interesting conversations with Holly Black and Ellen Kushner, both excellent panel moderators, on how to do a panel well. I also talked to a lot of the attendees and got some differing opinions. I'll do a post tomorrow on some updates from my previous thoughts.
What NOT to do when you are in the audience on a panel:
1. Make the comments you would make if you had been invited on the panel. You may be every bit as qualified as the people on the panel. I have been to dozens of panels where some people in the audience were more or at least as much qualified as the panelists. Nonetheless, you are the audience. They are the panelists. The rest of the people who came to listen to the panel came to listen to them, not to you. Also, this is just plain polite. Let others have their turn.
2. Get into a debate with the panelists. I know that there are occasions on which this can be interesting. Nonetheless, I consider it bad form. If you have a question and the panelists answer it, they have answered it. If you don't like their answer, you may complain about it privately, on your blog, or to your friends. You may even invite the panelist to talk to you about it in the hall afterward or over coffee.
3. Ask more than one question. I have been to a handful of panels where there were so few people in the audience that it would have been fair to ask another question. But otherwise, it is so impolite to think that you should be called on for another question when there are others with hands up. Share the wealth.
4. Start raising your hand before the moderator has specifically asked for questions. When the panelists are in the midst of their discussion, it is rude to start asking questions. You have come to listen to them. Don't interrupt.
5. Attack one of the panelists about something either said on the panel or that you read in one of their books. You may disagree with them politely, but going on the rampage, no matter how much proof you have assembled, just makes you look like a nasty party guest.
6. Stalk panelists after the panel is over. It is fine if you happen to see a panelist, to make a comment about the panel besides merely saying that you liked it. But don't follow the panelist into the bathroom (YES, this has been done) harranging him/her. Don't assume that you are the panelists' new best friend. If the panelist does not appear interested in continuing the conversation, let it drop as any polite person would.
What to do when you are in the audience on a panel:
1. Listen carefully to what the panelists say. I think it is nice to take the "best possible interpretation" of their words rather than the worst possible. Listening is a skill that has to be developed. If you are bored as an audience member, it may be because the panelists are boring. It may also be because you are not doing enough work listening carefully.
2. Ask real questions. This is so important. I know that it takes a lot more effort to think of interesting questions than to comment on a question. I know this because I have been a moderator lots of times and I spend hours and hours beforehand thinking about questions to ask that would be interesting and entertaining. On the other hand, when I attend a panel, I do little preparation because I figure that's the moderator's job, not mine. So take your time to formulate questions. You may even write some down and then pick the best one.
3. Stop asking questions when the time is up. Along with this goes moving out of the seats so that the next panel can start on time. If you are involved in a scintillating conversation, please move it outside and keep it down so that the conversation inside the next hour is not interrupted.
4. Say thank you to the panelists if you see them. No matter how bad you thought the panel was, always thank them for their time and effort. Ask them how it was from their perspective, if you want to know if they hated it as much as you did. Be subtle.
5. As much as possible, enter and exit the panel on time. If you must sneak in, do so quietly. Do not move chairs to make a place for yourself. Hold the door so it doesn't slam. If you leave, make sure you don't make a fuss out of it, motioning to others to come with you.
6. Turn OFF your cell phone before you sit down. Think of a panel as a business meeting. We don't want to hear your favorite song and you should not be leaving in the middle when your phone goes off.
7. Feel free to Tweet tidbits of the panel to friends who could not come. You may text as well, so long as it is quiet and not disturbing.
What NOT to do when you are in the audience on a panel:
1. Make the comments you would make if you had been invited on the panel. You may be every bit as qualified as the people on the panel. I have been to dozens of panels where some people in the audience were more or at least as much qualified as the panelists. Nonetheless, you are the audience. They are the panelists. The rest of the people who came to listen to the panel came to listen to them, not to you. Also, this is just plain polite. Let others have their turn.
2. Get into a debate with the panelists. I know that there are occasions on which this can be interesting. Nonetheless, I consider it bad form. If you have a question and the panelists answer it, they have answered it. If you don't like their answer, you may complain about it privately, on your blog, or to your friends. You may even invite the panelist to talk to you about it in the hall afterward or over coffee.
3. Ask more than one question. I have been to a handful of panels where there were so few people in the audience that it would have been fair to ask another question. But otherwise, it is so impolite to think that you should be called on for another question when there are others with hands up. Share the wealth.
4. Start raising your hand before the moderator has specifically asked for questions. When the panelists are in the midst of their discussion, it is rude to start asking questions. You have come to listen to them. Don't interrupt.
5. Attack one of the panelists about something either said on the panel or that you read in one of their books. You may disagree with them politely, but going on the rampage, no matter how much proof you have assembled, just makes you look like a nasty party guest.
6. Stalk panelists after the panel is over. It is fine if you happen to see a panelist, to make a comment about the panel besides merely saying that you liked it. But don't follow the panelist into the bathroom (YES, this has been done) harranging him/her. Don't assume that you are the panelists' new best friend. If the panelist does not appear interested in continuing the conversation, let it drop as any polite person would.
What to do when you are in the audience on a panel:
1. Listen carefully to what the panelists say. I think it is nice to take the "best possible interpretation" of their words rather than the worst possible. Listening is a skill that has to be developed. If you are bored as an audience member, it may be because the panelists are boring. It may also be because you are not doing enough work listening carefully.
2. Ask real questions. This is so important. I know that it takes a lot more effort to think of interesting questions than to comment on a question. I know this because I have been a moderator lots of times and I spend hours and hours beforehand thinking about questions to ask that would be interesting and entertaining. On the other hand, when I attend a panel, I do little preparation because I figure that's the moderator's job, not mine. So take your time to formulate questions. You may even write some down and then pick the best one.
3. Stop asking questions when the time is up. Along with this goes moving out of the seats so that the next panel can start on time. If you are involved in a scintillating conversation, please move it outside and keep it down so that the conversation inside the next hour is not interrupted.
4. Say thank you to the panelists if you see them. No matter how bad you thought the panel was, always thank them for their time and effort. Ask them how it was from their perspective, if you want to know if they hated it as much as you did. Be subtle.
5. As much as possible, enter and exit the panel on time. If you must sneak in, do so quietly. Do not move chairs to make a place for yourself. Hold the door so it doesn't slam. If you leave, make sure you don't make a fuss out of it, motioning to others to come with you.
6. Turn OFF your cell phone before you sit down. Think of a panel as a business meeting. We don't want to hear your favorite song and you should not be leaving in the middle when your phone goes off.
7. Feel free to Tweet tidbits of the panel to friends who could not come. You may text as well, so long as it is quiet and not disturbing.
review of Tris and Izzie by Orson Scott Card
A great review for Tris and Izzie went up a few days ago on-line. Some quotes:
"Think of it as a funny antidote to Twilight-mania. And this time the hero is actually a hero, and not a blood-sucking impossibility."
He also called it funny all the way through" and "great adventure."
I loved that he said "Izzie is blind to what is obvious to the reader almost at once: that her best friend is absolutely stone-cold in love with Mark." Yeah, that was what I was going for. Izzie's isn't supposed to be stupid, but clueless in the way that Emma in Jane Austen is clueless. She has the best of intentions and means the best for the people around her, but she's still figuring things out.
Here is the full review:
http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-Columns-c-2011-10-27-210043.112113-Books-As-Gifts-This-Christmas.html
"Think of it as a funny antidote to Twilight-mania. And this time the hero is actually a hero, and not a blood-sucking impossibility."
He also called it funny all the way through" and "great adventure."
I loved that he said "Izzie is blind to what is obvious to the reader almost at once: that her best friend is absolutely stone-cold in love with Mark." Yeah, that was what I was going for. Izzie's isn't supposed to be stupid, but clueless in the way that Emma in Jane Austen is clueless. She has the best of intentions and means the best for the people around her, but she's still figuring things out.
Here is the full review:
http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-Columns-c-2011-10-27-210043.112113-Books-As-Gifts-This-Christmas.html
October 26, 2011
The Princess and the Horse now available
I never really thought that I would write a sequel to The Princess and the Hound, but the world and the characters in it simply keep coming back to me. For those fans who also wish to return to that world, I have finally decided to release The Princess and the Horse, the fourth book in the Hound Saga, as an ebook. I am sorry that there are no plans for this to come out as a print book at this time.
This is the story of Fierce, the daughter of the hound Chala, who is angry at her mother and resentful of all things human. She remains with her pack, though she is tormented by the lead female and others, until she meets Princess Jaleel in the forest. The princess has come in search of a special black horse lost centuries ago, and she uses her wild magic to change those she think will be useful to her into any shape she thinks will keep them at her side. Fierce she turns into a human woman, the last shape that Fierce wishes to take. Fierce only want to be a hound again, but alongside Princess Jaleel, she is on an adventure to discover the truth about the origins of life and magic itself.
What happens when Fierce falls in love with Red, a kennel boy who loves hounds, but can never see them as more than animals? What if Princess Jaleel is unwilling to give up her wild magic? What of her black horse and the dark past that may make it impossible for them to find a happy ending of their own?
An excerpt of the book:
"You," said the woman, with a hand outstretched. "Come here. I command it."
Suddenly, Fierce could see the magic in the woman shimmering like waves of heat. So strong, like a wind tunnel that sucked into it trees and dirt and animals. She could not escape.
Fierce trembled, motionless, and could feel her heart beating against her ribs. The fur around her head was wet with sweat and it dripped down her back to her paws, making her feel chilled enough to shiver, though it was spring.
"You know this forest, do you not?" the woman asked.
Fierce understood more the tone of the woman's voice than the human words, but she nodded as humans nod.
"I will make you my guide," said the woman. "It is an honor not to be refused." She bent forward just a little and touched Fierce on the neck, behind her ears. Her fingers were cold and they seemed to pinch at Fierce's hound fur.
But then the woman stepped back and the pinching feeling continued. Fierce realized that it was the magic the woman had control of, cutting through her skin and entering her flesh.
Fierce could feel the cold pressure traveling down the length of her spine to her tail, and to each paw. It was a sharp pain, and she whimpered softly.
She could feel her tail being pulled back into her spine, and then her hind legs grew longer. Her paws lost their claws. She grew long, spongy pads on the ends of her paws, pale and hairless.
Her nose felt as if it had been smashed. Her ears drooped. She breathed in air, but it tasted wrong. Her tongue would not work properly to clean her mouth.
Then she began to shake as if it were in the middle of winter and she had been caught in a flood of the river, trying to warm herself instinctively, though there was no hope any hound could survive that.
But the woman held Fierce's gaze and seemed to lend her strength to get through the final wave of magic.
When it was gone, Fierce felt sore and strange. She knew that her body had changed, but she could not yet bear to look at it. She felt stretched, taller, and more unbalanced than before. She was on all fours, but she knew that she no longer belonged that way. She twisted to the side and felt the ground meet her backside. She was staring up into the sky, into the tops of trees she had never bothered to look at before.
There was no more pain. She took a breath, and then another. She closed her eyes and spoke silently to herself: I am a hound, and I will always be a hound.
She would not be like her mother, no matter what this wild magic did to her.
Here is the link to purchase the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Horse-Hound-Saga-ebook/dp/B005Z5FTD8/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1319657974&sr=8-13
This is the story of Fierce, the daughter of the hound Chala, who is angry at her mother and resentful of all things human. She remains with her pack, though she is tormented by the lead female and others, until she meets Princess Jaleel in the forest. The princess has come in search of a special black horse lost centuries ago, and she uses her wild magic to change those she think will be useful to her into any shape she thinks will keep them at her side. Fierce she turns into a human woman, the last shape that Fierce wishes to take. Fierce only want to be a hound again, but alongside Princess Jaleel, she is on an adventure to discover the truth about the origins of life and magic itself.
What happens when Fierce falls in love with Red, a kennel boy who loves hounds, but can never see them as more than animals? What if Princess Jaleel is unwilling to give up her wild magic? What of her black horse and the dark past that may make it impossible for them to find a happy ending of their own?
An excerpt of the book:
"You," said the woman, with a hand outstretched. "Come here. I command it."
Suddenly, Fierce could see the magic in the woman shimmering like waves of heat. So strong, like a wind tunnel that sucked into it trees and dirt and animals. She could not escape.
Fierce trembled, motionless, and could feel her heart beating against her ribs. The fur around her head was wet with sweat and it dripped down her back to her paws, making her feel chilled enough to shiver, though it was spring.
"You know this forest, do you not?" the woman asked.
Fierce understood more the tone of the woman's voice than the human words, but she nodded as humans nod.
"I will make you my guide," said the woman. "It is an honor not to be refused." She bent forward just a little and touched Fierce on the neck, behind her ears. Her fingers were cold and they seemed to pinch at Fierce's hound fur.
But then the woman stepped back and the pinching feeling continued. Fierce realized that it was the magic the woman had control of, cutting through her skin and entering her flesh.
Fierce could feel the cold pressure traveling down the length of her spine to her tail, and to each paw. It was a sharp pain, and she whimpered softly.
She could feel her tail being pulled back into her spine, and then her hind legs grew longer. Her paws lost their claws. She grew long, spongy pads on the ends of her paws, pale and hairless.
Her nose felt as if it had been smashed. Her ears drooped. She breathed in air, but it tasted wrong. Her tongue would not work properly to clean her mouth.
Then she began to shake as if it were in the middle of winter and she had been caught in a flood of the river, trying to warm herself instinctively, though there was no hope any hound could survive that.
But the woman held Fierce's gaze and seemed to lend her strength to get through the final wave of magic.
When it was gone, Fierce felt sore and strange. She knew that her body had changed, but she could not yet bear to look at it. She felt stretched, taller, and more unbalanced than before. She was on all fours, but she knew that she no longer belonged that way. She twisted to the side and felt the ground meet her backside. She was staring up into the sky, into the tops of trees she had never bothered to look at before.
There was no more pain. She took a breath, and then another. She closed her eyes and spoke silently to herself: I am a hound, and I will always be a hound.
She would not be like her mother, no matter what this wild magic did to her.
Here is the link to purchase the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Horse-Hound-Saga-ebook/dp/B005Z5FTD8/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1319657974&sr=8-13
October 25, 2011
Tris and Izzie review
Tris and Izzie is dedicated to Scott Abbott. Scott was my first German professor my freshman year in college. I read Tristan in his intro to German Literature class and it was a revelation. All my life, I had been struggling with boredom in classes. In elementary school it was the worst, but even in high school, I was tempted to leave a year early because I was just so bored. Boredom has to be the worst punishment in the world.
The summer before my official freshman year started, I took 3 Junior level classes, 2 in the German department, and 1 in the English department. Computers weren't quite smart enough then to tag students who hadn't taken prerequisites and I wish they still didn't do it now. It was the most amazing thing for me to be thrown into junior level classes at that age. There was no more boredom. I loved it! I remember my English teacher found out later (my picture was in the paper because of the scholarship I got) and he told me that he was sorry he wasn't giving me an A, but that if I'd taken the class after a couple of years, I would probably have done better. I told him I didn't care if I got an A and I didn't. I learned so much in that class. It was worth the lower grade.
College was this wonderful world for me where I could take any classes I wanted for any reason I wanted. It didn't cost extra. I did have to convince the dean to allow me to take more than the 18 normal maximum credit hours slowly, so that I could prove I could keep my scholarship, but I did that. I also could take classes through the mail, and I did that, too. Scott's German class was in the middle of this glorious experience of delicious knowledge. He led discussions about love and romance that made me think that literature really mattered. More than that, he made me believe that my love of romance novels wasn't necessarily a terrible thing.
My career in Germanstik didn't quite continue so happily along that path. I did eventually get my PhD, but it turned out that not everyone in university positions was as open-minded or as interesting as Scott was. He and I left the same university around the same time (give or take a few years) and went on to find careers that better suited our interests and personalities. He's still teaching. But when I went back to Tristan as source for this book, it was obvious who the book should be dedicated to. I don't dedicate books to people out of obligation. It just sort of comes to me who the book belongs to at one stage or another. My kids are still waiting for their books. And my husband, for that matter.
I realized at a certain point this year that I should probably tell Scott I was dedicating a book to him. He and I haven't been in contact for years, but I sent him an email wondering if he wanted to do lunch. We talked dates back and forth for a while, but nothing came of it. When the official pub date of Tris and Izzie came around, I put the book in an enveloped and mailed it to him with a short inscription. No letter. I was honestly nervous that he wouldn't think much of it. It's light and it's YA fiction, and well, it's romance. I didn't want him to have to pretend he was happy, and I didn't want to see his face if he hated it. So I left it at that.
But last week I got a wonderful email from him. He blogged about the book, and it seemed that the dedication meant something to him, as it came when he was wondering about his teaching skills. But more than that, he liked the book. He got the humor. He got the little tips of the hat to the original. He understood how weird it was to juxtapose medeival German epic to modern high school. Of all the reviews I've had of all my books, this has to be in the top 2.
"Izzie is 16 and loves Mark, a basketball player and nice guy. She loves his butt in tight pants and loves to kiss him. When her affections switch to Tristan, she likes his butt even better. Izzie is the antithesis of the passive magic teen princess heroine. She's a real teenager. Okay, she's also got magic. Okay, the story based loosely on Gottfried's Tristan has a happy ending (although when the black sails appeared at the end I feared tragedy).
But best of all, at least for me, was that it's just plain funny. Juxtapose a tragic epic German poem with high school and, if you write well, you've got a book that makes you laugh. What a fun day it was reading this."
Go here to see the full review.
The summer before my official freshman year started, I took 3 Junior level classes, 2 in the German department, and 1 in the English department. Computers weren't quite smart enough then to tag students who hadn't taken prerequisites and I wish they still didn't do it now. It was the most amazing thing for me to be thrown into junior level classes at that age. There was no more boredom. I loved it! I remember my English teacher found out later (my picture was in the paper because of the scholarship I got) and he told me that he was sorry he wasn't giving me an A, but that if I'd taken the class after a couple of years, I would probably have done better. I told him I didn't care if I got an A and I didn't. I learned so much in that class. It was worth the lower grade.
College was this wonderful world for me where I could take any classes I wanted for any reason I wanted. It didn't cost extra. I did have to convince the dean to allow me to take more than the 18 normal maximum credit hours slowly, so that I could prove I could keep my scholarship, but I did that. I also could take classes through the mail, and I did that, too. Scott's German class was in the middle of this glorious experience of delicious knowledge. He led discussions about love and romance that made me think that literature really mattered. More than that, he made me believe that my love of romance novels wasn't necessarily a terrible thing.
My career in Germanstik didn't quite continue so happily along that path. I did eventually get my PhD, but it turned out that not everyone in university positions was as open-minded or as interesting as Scott was. He and I left the same university around the same time (give or take a few years) and went on to find careers that better suited our interests and personalities. He's still teaching. But when I went back to Tristan as source for this book, it was obvious who the book should be dedicated to. I don't dedicate books to people out of obligation. It just sort of comes to me who the book belongs to at one stage or another. My kids are still waiting for their books. And my husband, for that matter.
I realized at a certain point this year that I should probably tell Scott I was dedicating a book to him. He and I haven't been in contact for years, but I sent him an email wondering if he wanted to do lunch. We talked dates back and forth for a while, but nothing came of it. When the official pub date of Tris and Izzie came around, I put the book in an enveloped and mailed it to him with a short inscription. No letter. I was honestly nervous that he wouldn't think much of it. It's light and it's YA fiction, and well, it's romance. I didn't want him to have to pretend he was happy, and I didn't want to see his face if he hated it. So I left it at that.
But last week I got a wonderful email from him. He blogged about the book, and it seemed that the dedication meant something to him, as it came when he was wondering about his teaching skills. But more than that, he liked the book. He got the humor. He got the little tips of the hat to the original. He understood how weird it was to juxtapose medeival German epic to modern high school. Of all the reviews I've had of all my books, this has to be in the top 2.
"Izzie is 16 and loves Mark, a basketball player and nice guy. She loves his butt in tight pants and loves to kiss him. When her affections switch to Tristan, she likes his butt even better. Izzie is the antithesis of the passive magic teen princess heroine. She's a real teenager. Okay, she's also got magic. Okay, the story based loosely on Gottfried's Tristan has a happy ending (although when the black sails appeared at the end I feared tragedy).
But best of all, at least for me, was that it's just plain funny. Juxtapose a tragic epic German poem with high school and, if you write well, you've got a book that makes you laugh. What a fun day it was reading this."
Go here to see the full review.
October 24, 2011
Ogden Valley 50 race report
This is the fifth year I have run this race. Every year, I think that I am done with this race. I think that I am not a runner, I am certainly not a distance runner, and is this really fun, anyway? And then I keep signing up for it. I have fond memories of much of the race, though there are certainly difficult parts. This year, I trained differently than I have before. I was much more aggressive. In Ironman training, the standard wisdom is to do a long 100 mile bike followed the next day by a 20 mile run for the peak week's workout. This two day block was what I tried to duplicate in previous years, running 20 miles followed by 30 the next day. This year, I looked back and decided that simply wasn't enough to train me how to get through the last 15 miles of the race. The last (and first) 15 miles of this race are straight uphill and then straight downhill. Looking at 7 miles uphill after you've run 35 is really daunting. And every year, I have walked nearly all of those seven miles.
So this year, I did a three week killer build up. The first week I ran 30 miles followed by 15 (and then did an Olympic triathlon two days later). The next week, I ran 35 and then 15. This is all on the treadmill, by the way. The 35 mile week was special because I tried to duplicate the incline for the actual race at about 6 percent and 0 percent for the downill (I can't do actual downhill on my treadmill). So the last 15 miles of the training were also uphill and it was a pretty good indicator of how hard it would really get. I tried to run the first 20 miles very conservatively, at 9-10 minutes per mile. But the uphill portion of the last 35 miles was so hard that I had to take breaks every 5 minutes and walk 2 minutes. The final week was a 40 mile run which I admit that I did at 0 incline on the treadmill because I was still so beat up from the workout the week before and pretty much from my entire season on racing beginning with the Ironman in May. I also found that the last 15 miles, I shut down. I kept going, but there were long sections when the best I could do was 1/4 mile at a very slow run and 1/4 mile walking. I didn't hit 10 minute mile average, but I did finish in about 7 hours. Then I tapered and felt pretty good.
Fast forward 3 weeks later. The night before, we went out to eat at Bostons and I ordered my standard pre race dinner of Shrimp Diablo. Unfortunately there was a problem and it took an hour to get the food, so I didn't eat until 8:30. Don't know if that effected me or not. I was trying to get in a lot of carbs during the day. I realized at the end of the day that with my food tracking program, I had in fact only gotten about 350 carbs, and I was supposed to get 500. So I ate a pack of GoodnPlenty's. That helped a little. What I hadn't realized was that I had also eaten about 37 grams of fiber. I kept eating fruit thinking that was lots of carbs. And whole wheat bread, because that is what I like to eat. But it wasn't good in terms of fiber. You have to reverse all normal rules of eating in order to get ready for a race like this because you don't want to stop all the time. Anyway, I'm going to have work on that.
I slept OK, though I did take a sleeping pill. Got 5 hours of sleep, which could have been worse, and got up at 4. Dressed, put on Body Glide and sunscreen, and made some final choices about what to put on. The temps were supposed to be in the 60s which is really warm this time of year. Last year it hailed and was so cold I was shivering too hard to drive home after. I wore a long sleeve shirt with a tank and a bra top underneath, so I could peel down to that if I wanted. Then I wore shorts and long stretchy pants underneath. I ended up not bringing a hat because my head is so big I can never keep hats on. I did bring sun glasses. Also a reflective vest and light. It's three hours of running in the dark before it gets light. Then I drove over and chatted for a bit with the race organizers. And the race began.
For the first time ever, I did not start a timer at the starting line. I figured seconds don't matter here and I'd rather think about what time of day it is instead of the time I've spent running. This may sound like a silly difference, but to me I really think this is an improvement. All year, this has been my year of not making goals and trying to make my racing habit a little more low key. I did not write down a goal anywhere, though I had in mind a time I wanted to make. And of course, I always want to get faster every year. But I want to leave things flexible because race conditions change and you don't know what will happen. In the end, I have to trust myself to make decisions on the course that are the right ones at the time and not beat myself up about it afterward.
The first 10 miles of the race were really easy. Though the first 6 are a fairly steep incline, I have done them so many times now that I know all the twists and turns. I started in the front, like for the first 5 minutes, but was quickly passed by nearly everyone. This is one of those moments when I have to tell myself to just let my competitive nature go. It's not that kind of race. If these people are truly faster than me, nothing I do in those first few miles will make any difference. If they are slower, I will pass them when it's on my schedule. I have to remind myself that I've done my training and that I will be rewarded by being satisfied with my time and not by beating someone else. So up I go, in the pitch black. I have a light, but it's on my back and I can see little red lights ahead of me in a line stringing out for a while, miles really. There are spots when my footing is tricky because I don't know the road that well. But overall, it's a surprise to notice that you can actually see fairly well by starlight.
I go over the top and start heading down. I can feel myself hitting quite a fast clip and I just let it go. It feels so good to run like that, without a timer or a treadmill or really anyone around me. A few people shift back and forth around me. I also have to make a pit stop and try to let a guy go by me. Several guys make pit stops but I don't see any other girls doing the same. There aren't enough porta potties on the course, I realize. I have accepted this already. When you have to go, you have to go. Competitors know this and take it in stride. I take in a couple of gus and keep drinking my gatorade. I had planned in advance to have a strict schedule of drinking 16 ounces every hour, but honestly, it's too much for my brain to keep track. I drink every mile as much as I feel like and take a gu every 45 minutes. Running might make my brain function better long term, but not during a race.
Down at the bottom of the hill, I turn right and start the circle around the reservoir. It gets a little lighter gradually and I am away from most of the worst traffic, which is nice. Just little cow trails. Lots of horses out in pastures, dogs barking as I go by. I make a couple of more pit stops, and take in more fuel as planned. This year, I had decided not to take in anything but gus, gu chomps and gatorade. Other years, I had tried chocolate bars, energy bars, bananas, and potato chips, but I often struggle with nausea, so I thought this might be a way of attacking that problem.
About mile 25, I start going up an unexpected hill where the course has changed from previous years. I'm hitting about 10 minute miles, which is fine, not spectacular. I can tell my heart rate is way under 140, which is my max on a long race like this. I am listening to River Marked on my iphone, a Mercy Thompson book. It keeps my interest, though I have trouble when my husband calls to ask how I am doing. I've taken off my long pants and my long sleeved shirt but my fingers are still so cold that they are stiff and I have constant gatorade dripping down my legs because the bottle I brought to carry in my fanny pack isn't leakproof, apparently. Sticky and yucky, but really not more than an inconvenience. I walk up the worst of the hills and keep going.
Mile 35 hits (there are mile markers every 5 miles) and I realize I have slowed to about 11 minutes per mile. I also can't run more than 1 mile at a time. Before that I had been able to do running for 2 miles and walking for a minute. Now it's 10 and 1. All good. All within the parameters I set in training. I start counting steps at this point, as well. The goal is to do 1000 steps and take a break. I'm telling myself that I just have to make it to mile 40 and I'm going to be OK. At mile 40, my husband was waiting to run the last 10 miles with me, to bring me new shoes and socks and encouragement. When I looked up those last miles of uphill, I'd have someone with me to keep me going instead of just walking.
Mile 40 and I could see his car, which was great. I made a pit stop at a real porta pottie (see how luxurious those can seem?) and then I take off my dripping fanny pack and all my stuff. I had thought I would make my husband carry it, but he brought his own, so I figured I would make him carry it and I could drink what he had. He was fine with that. I told him that my plan was to run 2 minutes and walk 2 minutes. He is almost 6 feet and I think he struggled a bit to run as slow as I was. In fact, it wasn't very hilly the first little bit, so I ran nearly a mile.
But after that, it was 2 minutes on, 2 minutes off. We were absolutely silent for the first mile and then, during a walking break, I explained to my husband a little testily that it was his job to talk. He was not to ask questions. I didn't have energy to talk. I didn't care what he said, but he had to distract me or encourage me. After explaining that clearly, he obliged me with a constant stream of random conversation over the next 2 plus hours. I'm not sure how much of it I will remember, but by then I was tired of my book on tape and wanted real human voices. I don't think I said a word the rest of the time we were out there. The only time I got annoyed was when he spent a few minutes talking about whether or not he wanted to sign up and run the race with me next year. Not what I wanted to think about then. All I could think was that I never wanted to do this again. When the support vehicles stopped to offer fuel, I kept going and let him catch up to me.
We hit the summit at last, after doing 4 miles at about 16 minutes per mile straight uphill. I am really proud of that. I never quit. There were a couple of times when I was ready to start crying with that exhausted cry I get when I physically push myself past all limits. In addition to the normal pain in my legs, I could feel two of my toenails being torn off with every step. Downhill is easier on the heart, but it was worse for those toes. I had changed socks from my toe socks, which help a little on the blisters, to my Ironman socks, which are taller on the ankle and help prevent chafing there. This is when your mind literally cannot process all the kinds of pain you are in, and in a way, that is a good thing. But the tiny increment of 200 steps was enough to keep me going. I kept telling myself that I only had to go 200 more and then I could walk for 2 minutes. If I really hadn't been able to do that, I could have done 100 steps, too.
I will admit that in years when I walked to the top, I was probably faster running the last miles to the bottom than I was this year. But I was able to keep running one mile at a time for the final 6 miles to the finish line. I took 1 minute breaks at each mile marker and my husband's GPS kept beeping at 1/4 mile increments (though it was off, as it often is--my own sense of where the mile breaks were was probably more accurate after all these years.) I didn't try to sprint across the finish line, just kept up the 12 minute per mile pace and gladly sat down with my medal and finisher's T-shirt in bright orange. I drank a couple of glasses of chocolate milk, a couple of water, and had a little chicken broth (I'm not that vegetarian!).
This was when I realized that I had left my car keys in the car my husband had brought to the 40 mile marker. And he had only the key to his car. Ha! So he called 17 and she came out to pick us up. I took home the automatic for ease on my legs after I had worked on a baked potato. I felt pretty good about the fact that I could eat after the race. I haven't done that previously. Just felt too tired even to eat for a few hours. I went home, took a nice bath, and then ate a big piece of Chocolate Tower Truffle Cake that I had been threatening the kids to leave for me after my race. It was very, very good.
That was also when the endorphins of the race wore off and I felt like crap. Worse than crap, really. The only thing that is similar is childbirth in terms of pain. I took some Excedrin, but was still hurting so much that even while lying down in front of the TV, I hurt too badly to let my legs touch each other. I kept having to move them using my arms, and it still was very painful. Nothing to be done about it but get through it. I have dear friends whom I convinced to invite the family over for dinner that night for more pasta and cheesecake, so we went over there and I ate food and tried to play bridge. I think I actually won, despite the pain. When I went home, I worried that I wouldn't be able to sleep at all, but I took more painkillers and I did sleep. For 10 hours.
Today I'm still hobbling around. I was limping a bit at church, but I don't know that most people noticed. Or if they did, they just figured I'd done one of my normal crazy things. 16 told me as I moaned and crawled up the stairs, "Mom, you're kind of masochistic." I said. "Only kind of?" You don't get an award for this, do you? Lots of people think that doing an Ironman is the worst kind of pain imaginable, but I honestly think this 50 miler is worse. In an Ironman, the first parts of the race are swim and bike, which don't impact your joints the way that running does. Running is just brutal on the body. Your joints give out before your heart does. It just tears you apart. You couldn't have a running race that is as long as the Tour de France, so many hours every day. Humans can't do that. Biking is smoother. Swimming is a lot smoother. So yeah, this race is in many ways harder to recover from than Ironman. It takes longer after an Ironman to get ready to race again, but it hurts in the knees less.
Oh, and I almost forgot. My finish time was 9:28, almost 45 minutes off my best time. See how that was an after thought? As it should be.
So this year, I did a three week killer build up. The first week I ran 30 miles followed by 15 (and then did an Olympic triathlon two days later). The next week, I ran 35 and then 15. This is all on the treadmill, by the way. The 35 mile week was special because I tried to duplicate the incline for the actual race at about 6 percent and 0 percent for the downill (I can't do actual downhill on my treadmill). So the last 15 miles of the training were also uphill and it was a pretty good indicator of how hard it would really get. I tried to run the first 20 miles very conservatively, at 9-10 minutes per mile. But the uphill portion of the last 35 miles was so hard that I had to take breaks every 5 minutes and walk 2 minutes. The final week was a 40 mile run which I admit that I did at 0 incline on the treadmill because I was still so beat up from the workout the week before and pretty much from my entire season on racing beginning with the Ironman in May. I also found that the last 15 miles, I shut down. I kept going, but there were long sections when the best I could do was 1/4 mile at a very slow run and 1/4 mile walking. I didn't hit 10 minute mile average, but I did finish in about 7 hours. Then I tapered and felt pretty good.
Fast forward 3 weeks later. The night before, we went out to eat at Bostons and I ordered my standard pre race dinner of Shrimp Diablo. Unfortunately there was a problem and it took an hour to get the food, so I didn't eat until 8:30. Don't know if that effected me or not. I was trying to get in a lot of carbs during the day. I realized at the end of the day that with my food tracking program, I had in fact only gotten about 350 carbs, and I was supposed to get 500. So I ate a pack of GoodnPlenty's. That helped a little. What I hadn't realized was that I had also eaten about 37 grams of fiber. I kept eating fruit thinking that was lots of carbs. And whole wheat bread, because that is what I like to eat. But it wasn't good in terms of fiber. You have to reverse all normal rules of eating in order to get ready for a race like this because you don't want to stop all the time. Anyway, I'm going to have work on that.
I slept OK, though I did take a sleeping pill. Got 5 hours of sleep, which could have been worse, and got up at 4. Dressed, put on Body Glide and sunscreen, and made some final choices about what to put on. The temps were supposed to be in the 60s which is really warm this time of year. Last year it hailed and was so cold I was shivering too hard to drive home after. I wore a long sleeve shirt with a tank and a bra top underneath, so I could peel down to that if I wanted. Then I wore shorts and long stretchy pants underneath. I ended up not bringing a hat because my head is so big I can never keep hats on. I did bring sun glasses. Also a reflective vest and light. It's three hours of running in the dark before it gets light. Then I drove over and chatted for a bit with the race organizers. And the race began.
For the first time ever, I did not start a timer at the starting line. I figured seconds don't matter here and I'd rather think about what time of day it is instead of the time I've spent running. This may sound like a silly difference, but to me I really think this is an improvement. All year, this has been my year of not making goals and trying to make my racing habit a little more low key. I did not write down a goal anywhere, though I had in mind a time I wanted to make. And of course, I always want to get faster every year. But I want to leave things flexible because race conditions change and you don't know what will happen. In the end, I have to trust myself to make decisions on the course that are the right ones at the time and not beat myself up about it afterward.
The first 10 miles of the race were really easy. Though the first 6 are a fairly steep incline, I have done them so many times now that I know all the twists and turns. I started in the front, like for the first 5 minutes, but was quickly passed by nearly everyone. This is one of those moments when I have to tell myself to just let my competitive nature go. It's not that kind of race. If these people are truly faster than me, nothing I do in those first few miles will make any difference. If they are slower, I will pass them when it's on my schedule. I have to remind myself that I've done my training and that I will be rewarded by being satisfied with my time and not by beating someone else. So up I go, in the pitch black. I have a light, but it's on my back and I can see little red lights ahead of me in a line stringing out for a while, miles really. There are spots when my footing is tricky because I don't know the road that well. But overall, it's a surprise to notice that you can actually see fairly well by starlight.
I go over the top and start heading down. I can feel myself hitting quite a fast clip and I just let it go. It feels so good to run like that, without a timer or a treadmill or really anyone around me. A few people shift back and forth around me. I also have to make a pit stop and try to let a guy go by me. Several guys make pit stops but I don't see any other girls doing the same. There aren't enough porta potties on the course, I realize. I have accepted this already. When you have to go, you have to go. Competitors know this and take it in stride. I take in a couple of gus and keep drinking my gatorade. I had planned in advance to have a strict schedule of drinking 16 ounces every hour, but honestly, it's too much for my brain to keep track. I drink every mile as much as I feel like and take a gu every 45 minutes. Running might make my brain function better long term, but not during a race.
Down at the bottom of the hill, I turn right and start the circle around the reservoir. It gets a little lighter gradually and I am away from most of the worst traffic, which is nice. Just little cow trails. Lots of horses out in pastures, dogs barking as I go by. I make a couple of more pit stops, and take in more fuel as planned. This year, I had decided not to take in anything but gus, gu chomps and gatorade. Other years, I had tried chocolate bars, energy bars, bananas, and potato chips, but I often struggle with nausea, so I thought this might be a way of attacking that problem.
About mile 25, I start going up an unexpected hill where the course has changed from previous years. I'm hitting about 10 minute miles, which is fine, not spectacular. I can tell my heart rate is way under 140, which is my max on a long race like this. I am listening to River Marked on my iphone, a Mercy Thompson book. It keeps my interest, though I have trouble when my husband calls to ask how I am doing. I've taken off my long pants and my long sleeved shirt but my fingers are still so cold that they are stiff and I have constant gatorade dripping down my legs because the bottle I brought to carry in my fanny pack isn't leakproof, apparently. Sticky and yucky, but really not more than an inconvenience. I walk up the worst of the hills and keep going.
Mile 35 hits (there are mile markers every 5 miles) and I realize I have slowed to about 11 minutes per mile. I also can't run more than 1 mile at a time. Before that I had been able to do running for 2 miles and walking for a minute. Now it's 10 and 1. All good. All within the parameters I set in training. I start counting steps at this point, as well. The goal is to do 1000 steps and take a break. I'm telling myself that I just have to make it to mile 40 and I'm going to be OK. At mile 40, my husband was waiting to run the last 10 miles with me, to bring me new shoes and socks and encouragement. When I looked up those last miles of uphill, I'd have someone with me to keep me going instead of just walking.
Mile 40 and I could see his car, which was great. I made a pit stop at a real porta pottie (see how luxurious those can seem?) and then I take off my dripping fanny pack and all my stuff. I had thought I would make my husband carry it, but he brought his own, so I figured I would make him carry it and I could drink what he had. He was fine with that. I told him that my plan was to run 2 minutes and walk 2 minutes. He is almost 6 feet and I think he struggled a bit to run as slow as I was. In fact, it wasn't very hilly the first little bit, so I ran nearly a mile.
But after that, it was 2 minutes on, 2 minutes off. We were absolutely silent for the first mile and then, during a walking break, I explained to my husband a little testily that it was his job to talk. He was not to ask questions. I didn't have energy to talk. I didn't care what he said, but he had to distract me or encourage me. After explaining that clearly, he obliged me with a constant stream of random conversation over the next 2 plus hours. I'm not sure how much of it I will remember, but by then I was tired of my book on tape and wanted real human voices. I don't think I said a word the rest of the time we were out there. The only time I got annoyed was when he spent a few minutes talking about whether or not he wanted to sign up and run the race with me next year. Not what I wanted to think about then. All I could think was that I never wanted to do this again. When the support vehicles stopped to offer fuel, I kept going and let him catch up to me.
We hit the summit at last, after doing 4 miles at about 16 minutes per mile straight uphill. I am really proud of that. I never quit. There were a couple of times when I was ready to start crying with that exhausted cry I get when I physically push myself past all limits. In addition to the normal pain in my legs, I could feel two of my toenails being torn off with every step. Downhill is easier on the heart, but it was worse for those toes. I had changed socks from my toe socks, which help a little on the blisters, to my Ironman socks, which are taller on the ankle and help prevent chafing there. This is when your mind literally cannot process all the kinds of pain you are in, and in a way, that is a good thing. But the tiny increment of 200 steps was enough to keep me going. I kept telling myself that I only had to go 200 more and then I could walk for 2 minutes. If I really hadn't been able to do that, I could have done 100 steps, too.
I will admit that in years when I walked to the top, I was probably faster running the last miles to the bottom than I was this year. But I was able to keep running one mile at a time for the final 6 miles to the finish line. I took 1 minute breaks at each mile marker and my husband's GPS kept beeping at 1/4 mile increments (though it was off, as it often is--my own sense of where the mile breaks were was probably more accurate after all these years.) I didn't try to sprint across the finish line, just kept up the 12 minute per mile pace and gladly sat down with my medal and finisher's T-shirt in bright orange. I drank a couple of glasses of chocolate milk, a couple of water, and had a little chicken broth (I'm not that vegetarian!).
This was when I realized that I had left my car keys in the car my husband had brought to the 40 mile marker. And he had only the key to his car. Ha! So he called 17 and she came out to pick us up. I took home the automatic for ease on my legs after I had worked on a baked potato. I felt pretty good about the fact that I could eat after the race. I haven't done that previously. Just felt too tired even to eat for a few hours. I went home, took a nice bath, and then ate a big piece of Chocolate Tower Truffle Cake that I had been threatening the kids to leave for me after my race. It was very, very good.
That was also when the endorphins of the race wore off and I felt like crap. Worse than crap, really. The only thing that is similar is childbirth in terms of pain. I took some Excedrin, but was still hurting so much that even while lying down in front of the TV, I hurt too badly to let my legs touch each other. I kept having to move them using my arms, and it still was very painful. Nothing to be done about it but get through it. I have dear friends whom I convinced to invite the family over for dinner that night for more pasta and cheesecake, so we went over there and I ate food and tried to play bridge. I think I actually won, despite the pain. When I went home, I worried that I wouldn't be able to sleep at all, but I took more painkillers and I did sleep. For 10 hours.
Today I'm still hobbling around. I was limping a bit at church, but I don't know that most people noticed. Or if they did, they just figured I'd done one of my normal crazy things. 16 told me as I moaned and crawled up the stairs, "Mom, you're kind of masochistic." I said. "Only kind of?" You don't get an award for this, do you? Lots of people think that doing an Ironman is the worst kind of pain imaginable, but I honestly think this 50 miler is worse. In an Ironman, the first parts of the race are swim and bike, which don't impact your joints the way that running does. Running is just brutal on the body. Your joints give out before your heart does. It just tears you apart. You couldn't have a running race that is as long as the Tour de France, so many hours every day. Humans can't do that. Biking is smoother. Swimming is a lot smoother. So yeah, this race is in many ways harder to recover from than Ironman. It takes longer after an Ironman to get ready to race again, but it hurts in the knees less.
Oh, and I almost forgot. My finish time was 9:28, almost 45 minutes off my best time. See how that was an after thought? As it should be.
October 21, 2011
Friday Tri: Will Girls Ever Be As Fast As Boys?
I am a child of Title IX. I was born in 1970, and my experiences in high school sports are clearly different from the women of even a few years before me. I never felt as if I was not allowed in sports. Yes, there was football and basketball where the girls and boys competed separately, but I have never particularly cared about those sports. I love running and swimming, and the teams were integrated there. Yes, the races were separate, but we trained together. An older woman friend of mine, when I was rhapsodizing about the glories of Ironman and triathlon in general, shook her head and said that she wished she could think like I do about sports, but she felt as if she had just been born too late, and could never make up the difference in mindset.
A male friend of mine also complained to me during college about the effects of Title IX on male sports that were not football. He was a swimmer and pointed out that he would never get the kind of scholarship that any mediocre football player would have, but he believed that female swimmers got tons of money. I don't know firsthand if this was true or not, but I have certainly seen a lot of articles in the past few years documenting that this one friend was not an odd man out. Many male athletes in sports other than football are very angry about Title IX. Just like white men are angry about what they call quotas for blacks and women and other minorities in college and job applications.
It wasn't until I was at Sirens a few weeks ago that I felt self-conscious about what had previously been an eternal assumption of mine, that women will never be faster than men. Maybe at a few things, but never at things like the world marathon record, or sprints or the things that matter to me. I beat my husband, yes, but I don't beat men at large. I had never even considered the possibility of thinking of men as my competition. When I pass men, I think, we aren't even in the same race, dude. But what if we were?
Malcolm Gladwell tells about an experiment early in the 1900s in which blind auditions for orchestras were held in a particular case, and to the astonishment of everyone, the more blind auditions were held, the more even the distribution of positions held by women and men and different races. Previously, there had been easy assumptions that certain instruments were more suited to women (violin, flute) and others were more suited to men (bass, horns). But when someone finally did a real fair test, it turned out it wasn't true at all.
Thinking about this in terms of women in sports, I suddenly began to wonder why it is that letting women compete in their own league is supposed to be "fair." We are being patronized. Just like when blacks were moved into the "Negroes Only Leagues" for baseball during the 1800s and into the 1900s. Yes, there were certain advantages to the Negro Leagues. Yes, more blacks were probably able to play. But the disadvantages were also huge. When at last blacks were admitted to the major leagues, things changed dramatically. Now instead of people talking about how whites are naturally superior physically, it's the opposite.
What would happen if we lived in a world where men and women competed in the same field, in every sport? What are the reasons we are not doing this already? Is it really because we're afraid that women will be injured? Is it because we think men and women working together physically so closely will have problems (think of the military)? Is it because we think that women are really being given an advantage by playing in the minor leagues? I don't have proof that women can compete with men physically. But I don't think the experiment has been done yet. Who knows what we might discover if we did it? It's possible that there are certain sports women are better than men at, and some the reverse.
It is also possible that women are never going to be as good as men until they--
1--are expected to be as good as men. The best sports programs that I have seen are ones that have intense competition. The new revolution in American running right now has been about setting up elite training camps so that the best runners are training with the best runners. They spur each other on to new heights. Women are taken out of this dynamic largely.
2--have the same training advantages as men. I am talking about money here. Let me tell you, one of the first things I learned as a triathlete was that you could definitely pay to go faster. Better gear means minutes in time saved. But it's compounded and complicated by other training advantages that may be even more costly. Boys are in general trained far earlier than girls are to be physical. Advantages of years can be hard to negate later. There are also questions about coaching advantages, team advantages, and on and on.
3--simply evolve on an evolutionary scale to be as physically strong as men. This might take thousands of years. Or it might not. I don't know about this one.
4--are paid as well as men are paid to participate in sport. The WNBA certainly draws some women to the sport, but how many are we losing to things like modeling and other more traditionally well paid women's careers? I think American running suffers a lot for this, as does American soccer, because we as a country care more about some sports than others. Football and basketball are where talented male sports figures go if they want to make money, not running or triathlon. How much does that affect children's early choices about what they are going to do when they grow up?
5--imagine a future in which they are as fast as men. I don't mean this in a flippant way. I'm not saying women need to want it more. But imagination is a very powerful thing. Imagination in science fiction is part of what has made our technological world advance so quickly, in my opinion. It doesn't happen on a case by case basis. But there is still a global effect.
6--sports changes so that the sports that women compete well in are more popular. Though this may not happen until all of the others above happen and our society is so radically transformed that it may not seem to be the same society at all. In the running world, there is a bit of a debate about really long distance running. For a while, women held a lot of the ultra marathon distance records above 100 miles. I think that has changed now, but it did make people wonder if women's bodies had advantages for certain sports that weren't being noticed because since men had power for so many centuries, they were the ones who chose which sports would be interesting. Should pain endurance be a sport? Sometimes women argue that childbirth should win them the same kind of awards that the World Series does. I don't know. I tend to start being nervous when we back off the demand for equality and start to say that men and women are separate but equal.
I watch my daughters and wonder what a different world they live in. Sexism still exists, certainly, and it may be even more insidious than in my generation, when I still had teachers who openly told the girls in the Calculus class that they should "keep their biscuits in the oven and their buns in bed." He didn't care if we took the Calculus test, but he didn't believe we would ever do anything with that knowledge because only boys would go into real math and science careers in college. And that's the way it should be because girls belonged at home. (This teacher actually was a good Calculus teacher, though he was later fired, if I recall correctly, for sexual harassment.)
I think my girls believe they can have any career they want. But if they want to be mothers, the reality is, they will take a career hit for that across the board. How will that change how they see the world? What will make them angry enough to campaign against? What will the new feminism be like? I don't know. I am waiting to see.
A male friend of mine also complained to me during college about the effects of Title IX on male sports that were not football. He was a swimmer and pointed out that he would never get the kind of scholarship that any mediocre football player would have, but he believed that female swimmers got tons of money. I don't know firsthand if this was true or not, but I have certainly seen a lot of articles in the past few years documenting that this one friend was not an odd man out. Many male athletes in sports other than football are very angry about Title IX. Just like white men are angry about what they call quotas for blacks and women and other minorities in college and job applications.
It wasn't until I was at Sirens a few weeks ago that I felt self-conscious about what had previously been an eternal assumption of mine, that women will never be faster than men. Maybe at a few things, but never at things like the world marathon record, or sprints or the things that matter to me. I beat my husband, yes, but I don't beat men at large. I had never even considered the possibility of thinking of men as my competition. When I pass men, I think, we aren't even in the same race, dude. But what if we were?
Malcolm Gladwell tells about an experiment early in the 1900s in which blind auditions for orchestras were held in a particular case, and to the astonishment of everyone, the more blind auditions were held, the more even the distribution of positions held by women and men and different races. Previously, there had been easy assumptions that certain instruments were more suited to women (violin, flute) and others were more suited to men (bass, horns). But when someone finally did a real fair test, it turned out it wasn't true at all.
Thinking about this in terms of women in sports, I suddenly began to wonder why it is that letting women compete in their own league is supposed to be "fair." We are being patronized. Just like when blacks were moved into the "Negroes Only Leagues" for baseball during the 1800s and into the 1900s. Yes, there were certain advantages to the Negro Leagues. Yes, more blacks were probably able to play. But the disadvantages were also huge. When at last blacks were admitted to the major leagues, things changed dramatically. Now instead of people talking about how whites are naturally superior physically, it's the opposite.
What would happen if we lived in a world where men and women competed in the same field, in every sport? What are the reasons we are not doing this already? Is it really because we're afraid that women will be injured? Is it because we think men and women working together physically so closely will have problems (think of the military)? Is it because we think that women are really being given an advantage by playing in the minor leagues? I don't have proof that women can compete with men physically. But I don't think the experiment has been done yet. Who knows what we might discover if we did it? It's possible that there are certain sports women are better than men at, and some the reverse.
It is also possible that women are never going to be as good as men until they--
1--are expected to be as good as men. The best sports programs that I have seen are ones that have intense competition. The new revolution in American running right now has been about setting up elite training camps so that the best runners are training with the best runners. They spur each other on to new heights. Women are taken out of this dynamic largely.
2--have the same training advantages as men. I am talking about money here. Let me tell you, one of the first things I learned as a triathlete was that you could definitely pay to go faster. Better gear means minutes in time saved. But it's compounded and complicated by other training advantages that may be even more costly. Boys are in general trained far earlier than girls are to be physical. Advantages of years can be hard to negate later. There are also questions about coaching advantages, team advantages, and on and on.
3--simply evolve on an evolutionary scale to be as physically strong as men. This might take thousands of years. Or it might not. I don't know about this one.
4--are paid as well as men are paid to participate in sport. The WNBA certainly draws some women to the sport, but how many are we losing to things like modeling and other more traditionally well paid women's careers? I think American running suffers a lot for this, as does American soccer, because we as a country care more about some sports than others. Football and basketball are where talented male sports figures go if they want to make money, not running or triathlon. How much does that affect children's early choices about what they are going to do when they grow up?
5--imagine a future in which they are as fast as men. I don't mean this in a flippant way. I'm not saying women need to want it more. But imagination is a very powerful thing. Imagination in science fiction is part of what has made our technological world advance so quickly, in my opinion. It doesn't happen on a case by case basis. But there is still a global effect.
6--sports changes so that the sports that women compete well in are more popular. Though this may not happen until all of the others above happen and our society is so radically transformed that it may not seem to be the same society at all. In the running world, there is a bit of a debate about really long distance running. For a while, women held a lot of the ultra marathon distance records above 100 miles. I think that has changed now, but it did make people wonder if women's bodies had advantages for certain sports that weren't being noticed because since men had power for so many centuries, they were the ones who chose which sports would be interesting. Should pain endurance be a sport? Sometimes women argue that childbirth should win them the same kind of awards that the World Series does. I don't know. I tend to start being nervous when we back off the demand for equality and start to say that men and women are separate but equal.
I watch my daughters and wonder what a different world they live in. Sexism still exists, certainly, and it may be even more insidious than in my generation, when I still had teachers who openly told the girls in the Calculus class that they should "keep their biscuits in the oven and their buns in bed." He didn't care if we took the Calculus test, but he didn't believe we would ever do anything with that knowledge because only boys would go into real math and science careers in college. And that's the way it should be because girls belonged at home. (This teacher actually was a good Calculus teacher, though he was later fired, if I recall correctly, for sexual harassment.)
I think my girls believe they can have any career they want. But if they want to be mothers, the reality is, they will take a career hit for that across the board. How will that change how they see the world? What will make them angry enough to campaign against? What will the new feminism be like? I don't know. I am waiting to see.
October 19, 2011
Link
to the workshop wrapup from this weekend in Cedar City:
http://erinshakespear.blogspot.com/2011/10/notes-from-writing-workshop-with-rick.html
http://erinshakespear.blogspot.com/2011/10/notes-from-writing-workshop-with-rick.html
Writing Wednesday: Listening to Feedback
When my oldest daughter was younger, we would occasionally have a problem where I yelled "Everyone, be quiet" or something like that, and she burst into tears, saying "But I was quiet." I would tell her that I wasn't talking to her, even though I said, "everyone," and she would say that I shouldn't say "everyone" then. The problem was that she wasn't able to hear a criticism and not apply it to herself. I have thought about this frequently and how it relates to problems I see when writers receive feedback.
There are two kinds of writers who get feedback.
Writer A is the writer who keeps changing everything about the manuscript because s/he thinks that EVERY suggestion that is ever offered anywhere must be applied to this manuscript. This is a writer who has difficulty seeing the good parts of the manuscript and tends to underestimate his/her own strengths as a writer. I am this kind of writer. I have tried to explain to the people who give me feedback (editors, agent) that I actually need to know what they liked in my manuscript not because I like me ego stroked, but because I actually will not assume that they liked anything and will change things they did not want me to change if they don't tell me not to change them. They have started to believe me after a few instances in which I returned an edited manuscript that bore no relationship to the one they had previously seen except maybe a title and a few character names.
Writer B is the writer who thinks that any criticism applies to everyone else and not to him/her. I meet this kind of writer all the time. Rarely are these kinds of writers successful, because they aren't able to see what needs to be changed and therefore don't make the changes necessary to get a manuscript ready for publication. If they get a little farther along the track and actually sign a contract with an editor, they can be a terrible pain to work with because they are so insistent that their way is the right way and they won't change a thing. The problem here is the same as above, but in reverse. I wonder if the same problem extends to other parts of this writer's life. I suspect they do, because I know my problems extend into other parts of my life. You see these people all the time on various reality talent shows, people who are so clueless about assessing their own talents, and who apparently have never believed anyone who has told them the truth. Which means that they have to have a fairly limited circle of friends who don't tell them the truth or can't see the truth, either.
At root, this is simply the lack of proper ability to assess one's own strengths. I don't know how to solve the problem. I think we are probably born with this. I know that my second daughter, who struggled with ADHD and oppositional/defiant disorder went to a psychologist who evaluated her and told us that he thought she would be very successful in life, primarily for one reason. She had an absolutely correct assessment of her own abilities. He did a bunch of tests on her and then asked her how she saw herself in relation to other students in her own classroom. She knew exactly where she stood, and he said that this was one of the most important things in life, knowing your true standing in the world. He also recommended that we take her word for things more often and I have tried to do so since. I am actually envious of her.
I suppose in a way, 16 is a Writer C. She is someone who takes criticism when it is merited, who is frustrated when the criticism is useless or she knows it is just plain wrong. I am not saying that life is easier if you are C rather than A or B. I am not sure that it is. Everyone has their own problems. But this is one trait I wish I had more of anyway. It certainly helps when you are listening to feedback to figure out what is right and what is wrong. I am working on it.
There are two kinds of writers who get feedback.
Writer A is the writer who keeps changing everything about the manuscript because s/he thinks that EVERY suggestion that is ever offered anywhere must be applied to this manuscript. This is a writer who has difficulty seeing the good parts of the manuscript and tends to underestimate his/her own strengths as a writer. I am this kind of writer. I have tried to explain to the people who give me feedback (editors, agent) that I actually need to know what they liked in my manuscript not because I like me ego stroked, but because I actually will not assume that they liked anything and will change things they did not want me to change if they don't tell me not to change them. They have started to believe me after a few instances in which I returned an edited manuscript that bore no relationship to the one they had previously seen except maybe a title and a few character names.
Writer B is the writer who thinks that any criticism applies to everyone else and not to him/her. I meet this kind of writer all the time. Rarely are these kinds of writers successful, because they aren't able to see what needs to be changed and therefore don't make the changes necessary to get a manuscript ready for publication. If they get a little farther along the track and actually sign a contract with an editor, they can be a terrible pain to work with because they are so insistent that their way is the right way and they won't change a thing. The problem here is the same as above, but in reverse. I wonder if the same problem extends to other parts of this writer's life. I suspect they do, because I know my problems extend into other parts of my life. You see these people all the time on various reality talent shows, people who are so clueless about assessing their own talents, and who apparently have never believed anyone who has told them the truth. Which means that they have to have a fairly limited circle of friends who don't tell them the truth or can't see the truth, either.
At root, this is simply the lack of proper ability to assess one's own strengths. I don't know how to solve the problem. I think we are probably born with this. I know that my second daughter, who struggled with ADHD and oppositional/defiant disorder went to a psychologist who evaluated her and told us that he thought she would be very successful in life, primarily for one reason. She had an absolutely correct assessment of her own abilities. He did a bunch of tests on her and then asked her how she saw herself in relation to other students in her own classroom. She knew exactly where she stood, and he said that this was one of the most important things in life, knowing your true standing in the world. He also recommended that we take her word for things more often and I have tried to do so since. I am actually envious of her.
I suppose in a way, 16 is a Writer C. She is someone who takes criticism when it is merited, who is frustrated when the criticism is useless or she knows it is just plain wrong. I am not saying that life is easier if you are C rather than A or B. I am not sure that it is. Everyone has their own problems. But this is one trait I wish I had more of anyway. It certainly helps when you are listening to feedback to figure out what is right and what is wrong. I am working on it.
October 18, 2011
The Winter's Tale
I saw The Winter's Tale this weekend in Cedar City, Utah's Shakespeare Festival headquarters. This is my all-time favorite Shakespeare play from college, but I haven't studied Shakespeare in years and I wondered if my memory of the story could be lived up to. I really loved it all over again. I thought the production was superb, which is nice for Utah, since we don't always get great theater options up here. (The Shakespeare Festival is almost always high quality, though). The king was played by the Festival director, Brian Vaughn, and I wondered if I would feel like he did the part justice. He really did. I found myself aching for his stupidity in the first half of the play, reminded of how much I hate Othello and its ending and wondering if this play was Shakespeare's attempt to rewrite that play so that it ends better, and Othello has a chance to pay for his mistake, and is also punished properly. I wept at the end, though I knew it was coming. I found myself wondering all over again why Shakespeare would choose not to show the scene where Perdita discovers her identity and the king discovers his daughter is restored to him. But then the scene with the statue would not have had as much force, I think, so it makes sense as a writer. But above all, I loved the character of Paulina.
Paulina is by far the most powerful, most interesting of all of Shakespeare's women. Even if you do not interpret the resurrection scene at the end of the play as magical with Paulina in charge of the magic, she curses out the king when no one else has the guts to do so. She saves Perdita, the baby daughter, and she remains with the king throughout the next sixteen years of his penance, continually reminding him of his mistake, refusing to allow him to remarry until SHE agrees with the choice. LIkewise, she remains unmarried after her husband has disappeared trying to help the baby Perdita and she hears nothing of him. I love the scene where she thrusts baby Perdita at the king. I love the scene where she manipulates him, telling him every step he must take if he wants to see the statue of his wife, and warning him against doing anything she does not tell him to. She is powerful, magical, wise, fierce, determined, long-suffering. She is never less than a woman, and always more than a man. If I were an actress, I would want to play Perdita when I was old enough. I may have to think how to write her into a book with my own spin on a story.
Paulina is by far the most powerful, most interesting of all of Shakespeare's women. Even if you do not interpret the resurrection scene at the end of the play as magical with Paulina in charge of the magic, she curses out the king when no one else has the guts to do so. She saves Perdita, the baby daughter, and she remains with the king throughout the next sixteen years of his penance, continually reminding him of his mistake, refusing to allow him to remarry until SHE agrees with the choice. LIkewise, she remains unmarried after her husband has disappeared trying to help the baby Perdita and she hears nothing of him. I love the scene where she thrusts baby Perdita at the king. I love the scene where she manipulates him, telling him every step he must take if he wants to see the statue of his wife, and warning him against doing anything she does not tell him to. She is powerful, magical, wise, fierce, determined, long-suffering. She is never less than a woman, and always more than a man. If I were an actress, I would want to play Perdita when I was old enough. I may have to think how to write her into a book with my own spin on a story.
October 17, 2011
Monday Book Recs--Lerner and Levine
A Tale of Two Castles by Gail Carson Levine
I love me a good middle grade novel, and this is one of them. It has a lot of elements of typical middle grade fantasy: a young girl who is thrust out of her home into the world, has no family to protect her, and a wish for her future but none of the skills to get there. She gradually acquires friends, meets enemies, and discovers a purpose that leads her forward to save the world and then herself. She finds out who she is along the way, part of what she thought before, but also with some differences. She shows herself valiant, and in the end, evil is punished, and all is set right again. There are dragons, a shape-shifting ogre, and an evil princess (trying not to spoil too much here). But Levine is the queen of making all old things new. She doesn't need to make her fiction dark to make it interesting. Her characters aren't abused, and the tone of the book is rather light, though earnest. I love that there are cats all over the place, and there are little twists and turns that will keep a young reader on the edge of his or her seat. Because I love fairy tales and shape-shifting ogres, that was probably my favorite part of this book. But I also very much enjoyed the "mansioners" because I have an 11 year old who also wants to grow up to be an actor, so she says now, and I liked how the profession was portrayed. Of course, there are wonderful stories within stories here, as well. A delightful book written by a delightful woman.
A Lily Among Thorns by Rose Lerner
I read this on a recommendation and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It avoids so many of the typical romance stereotypes, and plays with others. There's a missing identical twin brother who reappears, alive. But not quite restored to what he was before. There are secrets to be revealed, and a dark past that the heroine is blackmailed about. Or at least people try to blackmail her. It doesn't work very well because she is so strong and simply cannot be hurt anymore by that. She's past it now. I liked that she was a prostitute and that it is simply part of her past. She was formed by that past, but she wasn't ruined by it. We don't have to hear about all the details to know that it was bad, that she chose it for her own reasons, and that she might do it again, if she had to. She takes the world on her own terms, makes her own choices and compromises, and she accepts what happens as a result to her reputation. I also loved that the hero was a clothier, of all things. He kept making the funniest comments about her hair, the color of cloth she should wear, and lots of things that our culture tends to mark as "female." And he didn't have any sense of the power of her dark world, but he didn't simply step aside, either, and bite his knuckles. He wasn't forced to show his manliness by punching men out, though he sometimes did so. She was annoyed by this at times, and at times attracted by it. My favorite part was the way the secret of the hero's recipe for a certain dessert the Prince Regent loves is used. And well, the scene in the chapel. And the way his family treat her when they meet her at the end. Not your typical Regency romance, though if you love The Scarlet Pimpernel, he shows up here a little older, and just as funny as ever.
I love me a good middle grade novel, and this is one of them. It has a lot of elements of typical middle grade fantasy: a young girl who is thrust out of her home into the world, has no family to protect her, and a wish for her future but none of the skills to get there. She gradually acquires friends, meets enemies, and discovers a purpose that leads her forward to save the world and then herself. She finds out who she is along the way, part of what she thought before, but also with some differences. She shows herself valiant, and in the end, evil is punished, and all is set right again. There are dragons, a shape-shifting ogre, and an evil princess (trying not to spoil too much here). But Levine is the queen of making all old things new. She doesn't need to make her fiction dark to make it interesting. Her characters aren't abused, and the tone of the book is rather light, though earnest. I love that there are cats all over the place, and there are little twists and turns that will keep a young reader on the edge of his or her seat. Because I love fairy tales and shape-shifting ogres, that was probably my favorite part of this book. But I also very much enjoyed the "mansioners" because I have an 11 year old who also wants to grow up to be an actor, so she says now, and I liked how the profession was portrayed. Of course, there are wonderful stories within stories here, as well. A delightful book written by a delightful woman.
A Lily Among Thorns by Rose Lerner
I read this on a recommendation and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It avoids so many of the typical romance stereotypes, and plays with others. There's a missing identical twin brother who reappears, alive. But not quite restored to what he was before. There are secrets to be revealed, and a dark past that the heroine is blackmailed about. Or at least people try to blackmail her. It doesn't work very well because she is so strong and simply cannot be hurt anymore by that. She's past it now. I liked that she was a prostitute and that it is simply part of her past. She was formed by that past, but she wasn't ruined by it. We don't have to hear about all the details to know that it was bad, that she chose it for her own reasons, and that she might do it again, if she had to. She takes the world on her own terms, makes her own choices and compromises, and she accepts what happens as a result to her reputation. I also loved that the hero was a clothier, of all things. He kept making the funniest comments about her hair, the color of cloth she should wear, and lots of things that our culture tends to mark as "female." And he didn't have any sense of the power of her dark world, but he didn't simply step aside, either, and bite his knuckles. He wasn't forced to show his manliness by punching men out, though he sometimes did so. She was annoyed by this at times, and at times attracted by it. My favorite part was the way the secret of the hero's recipe for a certain dessert the Prince Regent loves is used. And well, the scene in the chapel. And the way his family treat her when they meet her at the end. Not your typical Regency romance, though if you love The Scarlet Pimpernel, he shows up here a little older, and just as funny as ever.
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