My Choice - My Challenge!

Having done a lot of mulling and moaning during the past couple of month or so, I have now put a new focus on my sport activities. It was a matter of remembering what it was that brought me to Incredible Ladies in the first place, what it was that made me feel happy and successful and healthy. So on one hand I am doing this for myself, but on the other this brought me back to thinking about the charity side of things as well.

Oh my, I have been so grumpy and jealous, seeing all these celebrities running marathons, climbing mountains, waterskiing through the Channel. All these examples of overcoming fear and challenge taking I found more off-putting rather then inspiring. How is a normal person supposed to compete with that? How am I to measure my success against theirs? I am bound to fail miserably. These guys have a public face, they have a team helping them, they have the best of equipment, and of course they are raising huge amounts of money. Why should I work my bud of, almost killing myself in a challenge, if only about 5 people will pat my shoulder, and if I am lucky I may raise 500 quid. One celeb can cover the efforts of about a thousand of normal people. Under efficiency point of view we should let the celebs do all the fundraising.

And actually, it is not just me claiming the same praise for a similar effort; one is getting measured against these achievements. “What? You only did one marathon? Well, here is a pound, but you know - Eddie Izzard has been running 50 of them in one go – THAT is great innit?”

To be honest: I feel like a resentful arsehole now. Because it doesn’t matter how I compare to those guys... and the poor bloke really did suffer!

It is important that

• I like what I am doing,
• that I achieved something that I couldn’t do before, what gives hope that I can replicate that and become even better the next time, and
• that whatever people give me as sponsorship goes to the charity that matters most to me.

Oh, and there we are with the next rant! The choice of charity – I did Race for Life, Cancer Research; after three years it was almost impossible to get people excited about it: ‘We know that you can do it, why are you doing it again?’

Does it matter? I am collecting money for a worthy cause, for crying out loud!

And then I came across the orangutans and I just knew that is what I want to support. Well now I have to defend my choice because I am not helping humans or children. The extinction of a species... hmm, aren’t their more pressing problems in the world?

Fighting extinction – why does it matter?

I don’t have one of those official, scientific answers to that – all I have is a story.

When I was a kid at school we went to a history museum and all of a sudden I found myself face to face with a strange stuffed bird in a diorama: A Dodo. I always was into wildlife and wanted to visit all the places to see all the animals, and so I asked the teacher where they live. He pointed me to a little label that said: Extinct.

I didn’t know what that meant, and so he explained that there is not a single place in this world where this animal is still alive. That they all got killed hundreds of years ago and that the stuffed ones are all that is left of them. It was the first time that something that grand hat hit my little brain. I had not been travelling at all back then, for me this world was an endless resource; how on earth could it happen that something just vanished. I felt for the first time what it means to be ‘too late’, I felt deprived of an opportunity, and later when I went to university they had a museum with a stuffed Dodo. I visited him often and imagined how nice it would be... just once to see him waddling along between trees.

Later my imagination got caught by Jane Goodall and her Chimpanzees, and of course I wanted to travel to Tanzania and live in the rainforest. And of course I didn’t. Well and many years later I bumped into the orangutans on the telly and edged my way closer to the scene of people actually doing the rescue work. I learned a lot about all the issues which make them an endangered species, and I would not be able to bare the thought, that one day a child would be standing in a museum in front of a stuffed orangutan and asking the same question I asked about the Dodo, only to find the same label attached to it.

And knowing what I know now, about evolution, habitat, gene pools, and so on – Now I know how easy it is to make something extinct. We may be next.

And that is why it matters!

Related Links:
Orangutan Land Trust (OLT)
Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS)
Interview with Michelle Desilets about OLT

Sport and Food

Get the choice right

Now, THAT is interesting!

When Detlef looked up from his Sunday newspaper to tell me that according to an article he just read one develops particular food cravings depending on the chosen sport, I dived up from my fish tank cleaning and spontaneously said: Oh, like after swimming all you want is fries.

His answer: Yes, exactly!

Slightly confused from getting something this random right I asked for confirmation; ‘So, you mean: fries particularly after swimming and other stuff after different kinds of sport?’

Yep! Apparently I had got it right! And back my mind floated to the blissful university years where we had figures like goddesses, just that we didn’t know it. We thought we were fat, needed sport and figured that swimming would be fun. We actually did do some swimming and kept the girlish water splashing and flirting with boys activities short. But then the whole effect was reversed due to our rumbling stomachs and the chip shop in the pool’s amenity area.

The first one of us to get out of the changing room had the task to order a big portion each – German style – with loads of mayonnaise and ketchup, or better known red/white. These feasts were just divine since we were really hungry and hence thought: ‘Well, the body seems to need it.’ Just that the shaping up never happened, so clearly something was wrong with this conclusion.

And now, eventually 25 years later a newspaper article would reveal it all, would once and for all explain why I had developed an unconscious dislike of swimming.

It seems that – again – there is some silly hormone called Ghrelin involved. Telling you: Never underestimate these little buggers! This stuff influences hunger, the more of it there is the hungrier one feels.

At the moment they are trying to find out what it is that influences the hormone levels. One thought I that when the body has to work hard to stay warm – like swimming in water that is colder than body temperature - the Ghrelin levels are higher compared to when running on a warm day. Hence the hunger for greasy stuff like fries or heavy butter biscuits.

However, that would explain why one is more peckish after swimming than running, but not why one should be differently peckish. And it is true: After running I never want to eat heavy stuff but just fresh things while after weight lifting you can easily treat me with an egg or chicken.

So it is suggested that your brain guides you to the right food. If you are running you need to be light, no fat and slim muscles hence watery foods like fruit. If you are lifting weight you need big muscles thus everything protein and when swimming your brain might tell you to get a nice protective layer of blubber – like a seal.

Hmmm…

Given that the swimming itself is fun, but not the packing and unpacking of swimming bags, that long wet hair is a nuisance, that one smells like chlorine for a week and that I usually get the allergic sniffles from inhaling the water, I herewith decide that the ‘getting peckish’ bit tips it over the edge and that I henceforth will withdraw from swimming – except if provided with a wet suit and dolphins as swimming companions.