Week 8 Day 3

Sorry for the lack of posting — I’ve been without internet (or phone… talk about the dark ages!) for a couple weeks and I’m just getting everything caught up now that I’ve got an internet connection again.

Since I’ve used my phone to track my runs and the internet to look up the OHR schedule prior to each run, I sort of lost track of my running schedule. Probably both a positive and a negative. I estimated my distances and tried to go just a little longer on my medium and long runs. It also took me all of two days to totally forget where I was on the OHR schedule… I remembered it being a long run, so week 8’s last run seemed like a fine place to start.

Just running without a schedule I kind of enjoyed, but I also felt less motivated. Being able to track my progress like counting down the days to a birthday or something seems to make it more ‘real’ in my head and make me more motivated. I suppose having a goal rather than just an ambiguous “well, I’ll go run today, and I’ll go run a little farther tomorrow” pattern definitely helps me keep focused on running. I feel like I stuck with it pretty well without anything though and even made some progress. Based on my run for my ‘real’ W8D3, I was actually running a bit farther on my long runs during the outage. Since OHR goes by a time measurement rather than distance though, I can only estimate how that means I’ve been doing running-wise.

I’ve also found from being without a phone, which is also my source of music during runs, that while I don’t LIKE running without music or a podcast to listen to or something, I can do it. It’s tolerable. Not the miserable monotony that I’d made it out to be in my head. The time definitely passes faster with something to listen to, but I can also appreciate the world around me and the feeling of running just for the sake of running without needing headphones on. I do like the anonymity headphones give me though. It’s an easy non-asshole way to ignore everyone. I found myself more than once on those music-less runs stopping because a neighbor would say hi, having to make small talk with people riding bikes by on the trail I run, etc. Maybe I”m antisocial, or maybe running just isn’t the time for me to socialize, but I like that headphones send a quick message that you can talk to me if you want to, but I won’t even hear you.

I was pleasantly surprised with how smooth my run went, and I’m looking forward to running day 1 of week 9 and getting closer to the end of OHR (again) so I can begin to move on to longer and longer runs. I do think stepping back since my knee injury has been a bit of a letdown, but it’s also helped in that I feel like I run faster now. I’m less of a jogger and more of a runner. I throw short sprint intervals into my runs on occasion just for fun. I enjoy the feeling of picking up the pace a bit, and don’t like when I settle into a too-slow cadence. I really enjoy distance (well, time actually) first and speed second as far as what I like to try to improve in my running, but this increase in speed is kind of enjoyable. Makes me feel more ‘legit’ as a runner even though I have no desire whatsoever to ever make this a competitive endeavor beyond beating my own self-recorded times.

So that’s it… I”m sure I’ll have more to report on soon as I work towards the tail end of the OHR schedule. I’ll also be gearing this blog more towards veganism and animal rights as it progresses. What started as a way for me to keep track of my own progress has started to feel overly narcissistic, and I’d like to both explain my own reasons for being vegan and help others (runners and non-) to become more educated on animal rights issues.

Week 9 is a go for tomorrow morning… BRING IT!

OHR Week 7 and Heteronormative Values Portrayed as Science

An acquaintance of mine from the skeptical/atheist community posted this article on his Facebook page today:

http://www.youtube.com%252Fwatch%253Fv%253D4ClnMR3IgYI&h=1f1df&ree36b775&refid=0

For those who can’t open the video (sorry, no transcript at this point and I’m posting from my phone) it’s titled “Were Homosexuals Sexually Abused as Children?”

‘Studies’ like this are extremely problematic. The Angry Hippies podcast did a similar ‘Ask Science Dude’ where Sinead discusses the problem of studies claiming they have found or are looking for a ‘gay gene’. She rightly explains that this sets up homosexuality as an outlier and assumes that there needs to be an explanation for such behavior.

Similarly, the study above looks at whether homosexuality is caused by sexual abuse or whether homosexuals are just more likely to be sexually abused. While the latter question on its own may have some merit in studying or discussing the idea that it has to be one or the other, and the idea that homosexuality could be ‘explained’ as a result of PTSD or sone other coping mechanism to deal with sexual abuse is abhorrent.

Not only that, but in addition to problems that the video points out with the study’s sampling and reporting, the study also seems to be functioning under a false binary both in terms of gender and sexual preference.

As I said to the individual who I saw posting this, these studies are very problematic. At best, there is nothing to be gained by studying something that simply doesn’t have or need an answer. At worst, these studies give heterosexism a foothold by giving ‘scientific credibility’ to ideas that GLBTQ individuals are a deviant subculture that needs to be explained away. It also takes away from time and resources that could have been spent studying the elevated levels of sexual abuse among GLBTQ individuals and help figure out solutions to that problem.

So that’s what I had brewing in my brain during my run today. I started week 7 of the OHR program today and it was a nice smooth 30-minute run. A little more actually as I was close to the end of the trail I run and figured I’d go all the way to the end before turning back. I ran barefoot today and I really live it being cool enough to run without my vibrans and not feel my feet roasting.

Also, I’ve started a bit of an upper body workout in addition to my running. Even though I mostly just run for my health and to exercise my busted knee, my more vane side is realizing that months of running has given me a pretty muscular set of legs in comparison to my soft torso haha. So I downloaded the ‘Two Hundred Pushups’ app in my iPhone and am going to use that to start getting my upper body in a bit better shape. I’m also using it for pushups, which seems like too much too fast except that it’s not because I can only do pushups on my knees because of my knee problems, and I already have a fairly strong upper body from years of manual labor. All is going well so far with the program and other than sone expected soreness I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes!

I’m baaaaaack!

So last night I was feeling a bit ranty so I posted this on Twitter (which I’m new to by the way, so follow me! @runveganrun):

Sometimes I wonder why I’m friends with speciesist people. I mean, I would be quick to call out someone for racism/sexism/homophobia/heterosexism/etc. and short of an immediate apology would quickly write off the friendship. So why is speciesism any different? In my head at least, I rationalize it by telling myself these aren’t BAD people — just uneducated. The education against all the other -isms is so readily prevalent that to live in our society one has to REJECT what they’ve learned about equal rights to continue to follow those oppressive paths. The education for non-human rights just isn’t as prevalent yet so one could easily go her entire life without her speciesism being confronted.

Maybe I’m just not ready to give up my non-vegan friends. Maybe I see the deeper good in them and still have hope for them to have a speciesist consciousness-raising and go vegan. I’m not sure which it is — likely somewhere between the two — but I do know that suffering isn’t quantifiable. The reason I have non-vegan friends is NOT because I think speciesism is any less wrong than other rights violating -isms.

I wonder if the way we abolitionist vegans feel in the prevalence of speciesist thought is how anti-human-slavery abolitionists felt before the paradigm shift (in the West at least) towards more equal rights for humans. Or would they have taken a more militant stance and rejected anyone promoting racist thought full-stop?

I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on the subject…

Still not sure how I feel about it, I just know how it IS right now for me. maybe that will change, maybe not. I’m hardly a new vegan, but I’m pretty new (3 years or so) to the abolitionist mindset. I don’t think I would have classified myself as a welfarist before then, and I was very educated on veganism… I just hadn’t been approached by abolitionism yet and didn’t know anything about the harms of welfare reform, single issu campaigns, etc.

I essentially had an attitude of “It takes all types of activism” so while I didn’t agree with sexism in the movement or happy meat or whatever I still didn’t feel comfortable confronting someone about it because I figured (wrongly) that if those tactics would move some people towards veganism and my tactics got others in that direction that’s great.

In running-related stuff: I took a week off while I was on vacation and didn’t run at all. Instead I enjoyed beaches and vegan food and relaxing… it was great even if I I did miss running!

I recovered for a day and restarted week 6 of OHR. It’s going better than I expecte after a week off. I’m not sure whether to credit it to the weather cooling down, having a week break, or what but it’s awesome. I did day two today easily and even alternated running a near-sprint every other block half the way home!

In other news my knee is regaining a lot of flexibility and I can now ride my bike again so cycling ‘cross-training’ can commence. Quotes because I ride my bike for transportation really an not exercise, but I do ride a fairly substantial amount.

Hope everyone is having great runs in this weather, and if you get a chance during your day (or during a run!) to reflect on my thoughts above please let me know what you opinions are either via Twitter, the comments here on the blog, or email (barefootveganrunner at gmail dot com).

Week Five done.

Ran day 1 of week 6 today. felt pretty good. A bit stiff and awkward but I’ve been working
long hours so I think that’s to be expected. Week 5’s last run felt GREAT. I’m loving getting back to distance runs. I was worried because even my half hour runs still feel like a bit of a workout, but my long run went well. My crazy work schedule lately haseant earlier runs than usual which I’m loving. The lack of sleep isn’t so great, but the cool morning runs make up for it a bit!

I’ve been reading a lot in the news lately about this mosque business. I seriously can’t believe Americans are such idiots to argue over it. The constitution is clear-cut. While I do think religion is harmful and Islam is full of ideology that I think is crap, if one religious center is allowed all must be. And NONE should be getting any money from the government. Simple as that. Why is that so hard to understand?

Just something I was thinking about news-related while running.

OHR W5D1

Did the first day of week 5 today. Nice and smooth. It finally felt close to what a half hour run should feel like! I’m excited about doing day 2 in the morning. I’m flying through OHR this time because I’m running 4-5 days a week instead of 3 but whatever. When I finish OHR and start OHR 2.0 I’ll throw an extra half hour run in per week to try to balance it out. I really don’t feel like I’m overdoing it by running more than three days a week now.

Day two in the morning!