“One of my favorite meditation spots” by Jay Thompson from Flickr (Creative Commons License)
My hip pain flared up at the end of last week, and Coach
David benched me for three days. I don’t even have a good story. It just
started hurting. Only things I can do are stretch, heat, and strength work that
doesn’t engage the hip. (My apologies in advance to anyone I converse with
while I’m on the sidelines. I get moody and opinionated when I don’t workout.)
Yes, this is the same hip injury I’ve been dealing with off
and on for over a year. It’s the one body part I didn’t blow out as a gymnast
(except for a few pulled groins), so they’re making up for lost time.
Coach David has been increasing my workouts painfully slowly
– like increasing my running distance by ¼ of a mile each week. (The standard
is a runner can increase their mileage by 10% each week.) I’ve pushed myself
hard the last few weeks, but I didn’t think I was going too hard.
As always, Coach David uses a practical and logical approach to dealing with injuries. It’s better to take a couple of days off now – over six months before race day – than to push through and be triaging a worse injury closer to race day. This morning David lovingly said, “Your body needs a vacation.â€
Thankfully, I was already ahead of schedule in regards to my training, so taking a few days off isn’t a setback in terms of that. It’s just a challenge for me to be forced to sit on my tush.
I’m starting to wonder if the line between pushing hard and
pushing too hard is razor thin. It’s frustrating to constantly have to deal
with the possibility that my hip could flare. I felt like we were doing
everything right. I was slowly gaining speed, strength, and confidence.
I was pushing myself, but not that hard.
Challenging myself, but not killing myself.
Over the last week, I spent a lot of time sitting as I was sending 500+ emails promoting my first online course on the legal side of photography. I wonder if that has something to do with this most recent bout of soreness.
Rosie’s trying to teach me how to relax.
Regardless of the cause, I’m spending three days sitting on
my heating pad, trying to get the muscles to relax and the joint to calm down. (I
have two heating pads – one at home and one in the office.)
I’m on board with the plan that it’s better to deal with a
minor setback now than to deal with worse pain later.
I don’t like things touching the front of my neck.
I don’t own turtlenecks.
I don’t wear kerchiefs or fashion scarves around my neck.
When I go to the salon, I ask them to make the drape one
snap looser.
Sometimes I can’t even wear crewneck t-shirts because – you
guessed it – the edge of the shirt barely touches my neck.
When I picked out my wetsuit, I got one with the lowest
neckline I could find. It still touches my neck. Actually, my wetsuit is snug
around my neck. It’s snug around every part of my body. That’s how wetsuits
work.
When I’m wearing my wetsuit and I go from being vertical and
walking into the water to horizontally swimming in it, the discomfort becomes
more intense as going face down puts extra pressure across the front of my
neck. (If past lives are real, I’m pretty sure I either drowned or was
strangled in one of them.) Add in being hit by other swimmers and unable to
find my swimming cadence, and it’s enough to make me panic.
Heading into Ironman Mont Tremblant, I’m
trying to work on this. I don’t want to start this race with a panic attack.
I can’t control how choppy the water is.
I can’t control other swimmers bumping into me.
What I can do is force myself to get used to swimming with
something snug around my neck. (I know some athletes cut their wetsuits to
lower the neckline, but I don’t want to do that.)
My chokers, courtesy of the junior section at Target.
I bought myself a set of five stretchy choker necklaces,
popular among tweens and young teens. I look like a person having a mid-life
crisis when I wear them.
Before I leave the house for the pool, I pull one of these
things on, and I don’t take it off until I’m back. I figure the more I wear it,
the sooner I’ll get over the heebie
jeebies of having something touching my neck.
For my first day wearing a choker to the pool, I opted to
wear the red one so if the feeling of it touching my neck was too much and I
ripped it off mid-lap, I could easily find it in the water and not litter in
the pool.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen. I don’t notice it when I’m
swimming. Once I’m fully used to wearing one necklace, I may try wearing two,
then three, at a time, so I can get used to the material covering more of my
neck.
Hopefully, this exercise will teach me that I can have something snug against my neck without feeling like I’m choking myself.
Arizona
has joined the number of states that has proposed legislation that would ban
male-to-female transgender athletes from competing in female sports unless
they have a doctor’s note that proves that they’re female. This law would
impact athletes at every from level from K-12 schools to community colleges and
state universities.
Photo by Ted Eytan from Flickr (Creative Commons License)
Why
We’re Having This Debate
The
surge of proposed laws followed news stories last year where a female track and
field athlete claimed that male-to-female transgender athletes were unfairly allowed
to compete in the girls’ division. The trans athletes finished a race higher than
she did, which she claimed cost her the opportunity to compete at the regional
race, which could impact her ability to get a college scholarship.
What
I didn’t like about the reporting of this story is that most reports didn’t
state whether the trans athletes were on hormone blockers and/or on hormone
replacement therapy which would have made it a more level field than a
cisgender male competing in a female sport. By the way, they’re
both on hormones replacement therapy.
School Athletics May be the Only Option
My
first thought when I heard about this proposed law in Arizona, was that trans athletes
should bypass political issues in school and compete on club teams. A teacher
friend pointed out that club teams are often very expensive, so the only option
to participate in sports is to play on a school team.
Is
It Talent or Testosterone?
Transgender
girls are girls. They should be allowed to participate in girls’ activities,
whether we are talking about Girl Scouts, entering a nunnery, or playing
sports. Forcing a transgender girl to participate in boys’ activities or be left
out is discriminatory and potentially devastating to her mental health.
In
the situation of athletics, I wonder how much of is this outcry based on
fairness and how much is based on transphobia. Are girls afraid of being beaten
by someone they view as less than a girl?
It’s
worth asking how much of these trans athletes’ success is based on talent or
testosterone. History suggests that cisgender men have physical advantages over
women in many sports. In looking at Olympic Records where men and women both
compete in same types of events (e.g., track and field, weightlifting, etc.)
the record held by the man is higher, faster, better than the women’s record. That’s
why we created Title
IX – to give women equal access to participate. But once a trans athlete
has the same hormone level as their cisgender counterparts, I wonder if the
cisgender athletes are claiming it’s unfair, but they’re using the competitions’
trans status to complain that they didn’t win.
It’s
Time to Re-Examine Division in Sports
It’s
time we re-examine how we divide participants in sports. With growing
acceptance that there are more
than two genders, which is backed by law in at least
17 states and Washington D.C., the traditional division of boys/men and
girls/women is no longer sufficient. I’m a non-binary
athlete (with a birth certificate to prove it), and when I sign up for a
race, I rename the divisions “testosterone†and “estrogen†and select
accordingly.
The
International Olympic Committee (IOC) has guidelines regarding male-to-female athletes
and the testosterone level they must have to compete in the women’s division. Lower
level sports should adopt similar rules and require every athlete to have their
testosterone level checked, and only those with a level above the threshold should
be allowed to participate in the testosterone division.
(A
friend suggested that the athlete’s sensitivity to testosterone should also be
tested for it is possible for a cisgender woman to have a high testosterone
level and body that is completely insensitive to it, so she won’t reap any athletic
benefits from having this higher level.)
Photo by tableatny from Flickr (Creative Commons License)
Where
Change Should Start
In
thinking about this issue, if we want schools to change how athletes are
divided instead of using gender in the U.S., the National Collegiate Athletic
Association (NCAA) should be the leader. If NCAA schools change from men’s and
women’s sport to divisions based on hormones, public and private high schools
will follow suit since many of the best high school athletes aspire to receive
scholarships to compete in college.
I
sent an email to the Chair of the Board
of Directors for NCAA Division I, encouraging them to modify the classification
of athletes instead of using gender identity. I don’t expect a response beyond
a cursory, “Thank you for your message,†but hopefully it will plant a seed
that change is needed.
Sister
Laws for Access to Trans Medical Care
If
states are going to pass laws that will limit male-to-female trans athletes
from participating in sports, they need to a pass sister laws that allow for adequate
and affordable access to medical care for transgender people, including the
ability to access care without parental consent, and laws that allow non-binary
and transgender people to change their birth certificates and driver’s licenses
to reflect their gender.
