Last night we had an insane adventure while transporting a 32-foot ladder after class, so I didn’t get my notes posted. D’oh!
Anyway, it was an interesting class. Three guys and two ladies this time, in a reversal of the usual pattern, and we got our petit allegro on. I was about as graceful as a gator on rollerskates, at times, but you know. We all have our off days (especially after days off).
As always, there were some strengths and some (many) weaknesses:
Strengths
Grand Battement:
I always think this looks pretty good, though.
Balance:
This is really improving.
Arabesques:
These felt good.
Weaknesses
Strength:
For some reason, I was a bit on the weakish side last night. While my arabesques held together, I really felt my effort. Likewise, I experienced trembling thigh muscles at a few points.
Arms:
Seriously, arms, we’ve talked about this. (To be fair, they are improving. They were just a wee bit, um, enthusiastic: like, repeat to yourself, this is not modern dance ).
“You do, ‘FOSSE! FOSSE! FOSSE! … but you keep it all inside.”
Also, I was a ballet ninja yesterday, because I got locked out of the changing room and didn’t have time to change my socks.
Oh, FFS, the combination:
While we were learning the combo for our petit allegro, I started too far over and ran into the window, so then I had to try to remember it without having properly marked it in the first place. I was fine up to the point where I ran out of room, but couldn’t remember the rest to save my life.
I am perpetually afraid of being that moron in class who takes forever to get the choreography straight anyway (I would love to see more about this study from Duke University in 2010), so this did not help my confidence. I hid on the back line doing the watch-n-pray the whole time.
At one point our teacher told us (me?) to stop thinking. I suspect that would help. Thinking only gets me in trouble.
As always, got some useful corrections (including the universal “stop being lazy and point that toe” tap while we were stretching at the barre). I felt almost ridiculously flexible. I didn’t want to stop when we were done, but I never do.
I want to stop when I fall down.
I guess that’s a good sign ^-^
So last week was academic spring break and this week is ballet spring break. Fortunately, the Ballet 101 video we ordered for Denis should arrive tomorrow, so we’ll be able to get our ballet fix (and I’ll be able to write a review, if I somehow manage to wrestle a few free moments from what is guaranteed to be an insanely hectic academic week).
I got out on the bike yesterday briefly and am looking forward to riding a wee bit tomorrow. Today, battling some kind of really nasty gastro-bug or possibly a bad food decision, I stayed in bed, more or less.
That’s it for now. Nothing further to report. Keep the rubber side down.
Last night we went to Play Dance Bar.
I might have had three cosmos (holy crap, they mix them strong!) and I might have broken out some ballet stuff on the dance floor. Evidently I had an audience for a while, but I didn’t notice (Denis mentioned it to me afterwards). When I go out dancing, I go to dance, and I generally dance alone. Sometimes I dance with Denis. Mostly, I just go to be absorbed into the music and let my body run free.
I might also have taken off my boots (they’re cute, but holy moly, do they ever stick to the floor!) and danced in my socks. Shhh, don’t tell.
We got home at 3 AM following a wee-hours breakfast with the Fabulous Miss Kelly and slept for 5.5ish hours before getting up for ballet class. I was quite proud of Denis for peeling his bacon outta bed to go dance some more after I dragged him out** to dance and kept him up way past what he calls “old man bedtime” last night. Nonetheless, I felt surprisingly great in class (though I did chug a cup of coffee with caffeine and everything, just to be safe). Class went quite well, with four of us plus our lovely teacher representin’ in Studio 5. Everyone seemed to be peppy this morning, too, which was pretty nice.
Today’s Strengths
Today’s Not-So-Strengths
This Is Harder Than It Looks
I feel like I’m making improvements. This is reassuring. I continue to feel like the old muscle memory is waking up and like my body is getting itself together again. Also, not having my hair in my eyes all the bleeding time does help, though I think I liked the Ballet Prince haircut I had going on before, so I might let it grow back out. OTOH, my neck being nice and cool during class doesn’t hurt.
I think this week I’m going to start a little once-a-week series covering some basic ballet stuff. Denis will appreciate that. We also found a basic ballet video that sounds promising, so I’ll probably run up a review with him, since my experience as a returning student will be very different than his as a true n00b who’s still learning the ropes.
That’s it for now.
Keep the leather side down!
Further Notes
*Okay, so not exactly “all” night. I probably only danced for 1 hour and 45 minutes total, but all night sounds better ^-^
**Actually, he suggested going out. o.O
Part the First
Let me open by saying that I really like the concept of Health At Any Size, and that people are finally saying, “Screw you, ridiculous cultural norms, I’m this size and I’m happy and this is me and it’s fine.”
Let me also state that I realize that, at times, some of what I talk about here — particularly about my particular weight-loss goals — might appear to conflict with that concept, and might even lead to some people feeling bad about themselves sometimes.
I try to choose my phrasing carefully, and I try to frame my thoughts on the topic in “I language,” since they’re specific to me — but if some of what I say comes across as hurtful, I apologize, and I will work harder to make sure my language conveys what it’s supposed to convey and doesn’t inadvertently convey hurtful messages. Nobody needs that crap.
It’s a fact that there are people who are bigger than me who ride and dance better than I do (all the people bigger than I am who out-rode me on this year’s Death March and the amazing Ragen Chastain come to mind!).
It’s a fact that merely losing weight won’t automagically improve my performance or anyone else’s in any discipline.
Practice improves performance; cardiovascular, flexibility, and strength gains improve performance; skills acquisition improves performance.
Weight loss, meanwhile, is sometimes incidental to the process that lead to gains in athletic disciplines (including ballet, which is both a sport and an art), but it’s not the end-all be all. In cycling, it can improve weight-to-strength ratio; in ballet, it reduces joint strain and can make some movements easier to do.
This doesn’t mean you can’t be a powerful cyclist or a beautiful dancer just because you’re bigger than some (or even all!) of your peers.
Likewise, too much weight loss will make you weaker on the bike and more prone to ballet injuries. Bike-wise, people with a lot of muscle mass can sometimes eke out some gains on the climbs by losing a little muscle, but beyond that, all you’re doing is taking ammo out of your own aresenal. In ballet, fatigue — which can result from undereating — is a huge contributor to injury.
Likewise, if your body is cannabilizing itself to stay alive, you aren’t going to be a fierce rider or a strong and graceful dancer for long. This is why the weights of pro bike racers vary pretty widely across the course of the year (and why coaches of amateur racers say it’s okay to gain a bit of weight during the off-season); this is also one of the contributors to career-ending injuries in ballet.
That said, I don’t want to be the size I am now — and I think that’s okay, too. I don’t feel guilty or ashamed or whatever, it’s just not how I envision my own body. I’m working on putting my body back together the way I like it, and I’m succeeding, and I’m pretty happy about that, and I enjoy talking about my process. I just want to do it in ways that don’t hurt people’s feelings.
So, basically, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m pro-Health At Any Size, which includes being pro-supporting people who want to be smaller (or bigger) for healthy reasons (that is, reasons that don’t stem from shame or guilt). I’m totally anti-fat shaming, because fat shaming is both wrong and dumb.
Shame is an ineffective “tool” that does harm and does not do good. I don’t think real, long-lasting change ever comes from feeling ashamed. Nor do I think “real, long-lasting change” should be synonymous with “weight loss.”
“Real, long-lasting change” should mean moving from being unhappy to being less unhappy to being happy to being ZOMG REALLY HAPPY! Everyone deserves to roll that way, no matter what size they are or whether they want to be a different size. “Real, long-lasting change” should mean a life spent being the best you that you can be, social norms be damned — and that definitely doesn’t have to mean being the smallest you that you can be.
So, good people of the Innertubes, here’s my question:
What is the best way for people like me to talk about our journeys without contributing to the pain of others? When I talk about my weight-loss process, am I succeeding in doing so in ways that don’t sound judgmental?
And here’s one for myself, for reflection:
Am I in fact succeeding in doing what I’m doing in spite of, and not because of our unhealthy cultural relationship with weight and fat and all that jazz?
That’s one I’m going to have to think about. A lot.
Part the Second
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, and I will do so at greater length later. I feel like now’s a good time to touch on it, though.
In light of a lot of the hard science out there, I’m inclined to say that my success in losing the weight I’ve gained isn’t all, or even mostly, the result of hard work and dedication.
There’s sound reason to believe that a good part of it is the result of genetics and the fact that I was a skinny kid and a skinny teenager and a skinny young adult for the vast majority of my life — not just average, skinny.
Sure, will and effort have a role, here — but part of the reason that my effort succeeds is that it’s easier for me. In short, I have a genetic and experiential head start in the race. It would not be fair for me to look at my own journey, my own success, and say, “You people should all be able to do this just as easily as I have.” (Feel free to imagine my Curmudgeonly Voice if you’ve heard me doing my Curmudgeon Impression.)
That would be both untrue and unfair. Moreover, it misses the point. People can be bigger than me and still be healthy. People can be less healthy than I am and more happy. People can be skinnier than I am and much, much less happy.
People can be any kind of size and be happier and healthier than I am — and the goal should be, first and foremost, to be happy. We are built for joy, and maximizing joy is probably the best thing we can do for the world.
I’m throwing this up here as a mental sticky note.
Exercise pretty much always exerts a positive influence on my moods. Some forms of exercise work better than others. The top five appear to be, in order:
Any number of studies have demonstrated the positive effect of exercise on mood (see, for example, Matta, Hogan, Jorrman, Waugh, & Gotlib, 2013; Steinberg et al, 1998), though some have noted that additional factors, such as a telic (that is goal-centered) or paratelic (non-goal centered) state of mind also influence outcomes (see Legrand & Tatcher, 2011).
Because I have found the impact of ballet on my mood to be both immediate and longer-lasting than that of, for example, cycling (which tends to produce an intense immediate uptick, but does not seem to support as stable a day-to-day mood as ballet does), I think it would be really interesting to explore whether that’s, you know, “just me,” as it were, or whether the effect might generalize.
Since I have a senior seminar project proposal to design, I’m seriously thinking about seeing if I can find some way to swing this sort of thing: for example, a six-week study involving randomly-selected people who will be randomly assigned to one group that does three sixty-minute ballet-based workouts a week; one group that does there sixty-minute non-dance workouts at similar intensity; and one group that doesn’t do anything (they’re the controls who don’t do any— hey, wait a minute!).
I don’t know why ballet works so well for me. That’s another question entirely. However, I do see some potential here for a therapeutic application.
Presumably, other disciplined forms of what is generally called “concert dance” could work as well — modern dance worked similarly well for me during my “modern dance is better than ballet because tradition produces stagnation” phase in high school. A sound background in ballet, however, creates a firm foundation for other disciplines, just as a solid dressage background forms a firm foundation for other equestrian disciplines — so ballet seems like a good place to start.
There are a couple of programs out there that already harness the power of dance to lift up the lives of troubled youth and other underserved populations (see Dance United and Promethean Spark International); I think some grounded scientific research might make it easier to get programs like these ones off the ground.
I can’t help but think of the positive impact that the best ranch-based programs for struggling kids have had on so many lives, and likewise the positive impacts that both dance training and working with horses have had in mind. Boiled down to their lowest common denominator, both dance and working with livestock share a surprisingly large number of features: hard physical work, rigorous mental discipline, immediate and tangible consequences, and transformative outcomes.
I feel like I might be getting ahead of myself, here, but I can’t help but think it would be really cool to take something like ballet (which is, after all, a lot more amenable to an urban setting than setting up a ranch) and make it accessible to kids in an under-served urban community or struggling youth and young adults.
I mean, sure, there are magnet school programs in some places, but I know from my own experience as an absolutely shattered thirteen-year-old who opted not to audition for a magnet program in dance that it takes a confidence that kids in difficult circumstances might not have to apply and audition and so forth. My outcome was positive because my family had resources: I wound up going to the same magnet school for a different program a couple of years later, thanks largely to a lot intervention that cost a lot of money. Where would I be now if my family hadn’t had that money?
In short, quite probably, dead.
I keep thinking about this in the context of my own experiences, both growing up and right now: I was lucky because I could afford to take ballet classes, and I am still lucky because I can still afford to take ballet classes.
However, there are a lot of people out there who could benefit just as much as I can or even more, but who can’t afford it, even at LBS’ extremely-reasonable rates. And, of course, health insurance doesn’t cover the cost of ballet classes (and even if it did, a $25/co-pay would be a higher per-class rate than I’m paying right now!).
I also think that opportunities like this shouldn’t just be available to kids, but making them available to kids is a good place to start.
Maybe getting ahead of myself isn’t such a bad thing. That’s how you come up with goals, right?
I know I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting behind a desk. I also know that I am too much of an interfering busybody to keep from trying to find a way to make everyone else on earth try ballet 😛 Perhaps there’s some way I can turn all this into some kind of meaningful thing that would be useful to humanity.
So, anyway, this is far longer than I ever intended it to be. That’s it for now. Keep the leather side down!
References
Legrand, F. D., & Thatcher, J. (2011). Acute mood responses to a 15-minute long walking session at self-selected intensity: Effects of an experimentally-induced telic or paratelic state. Emotion, 11(5), 1040-1045. doi:10.1037/a0022944
Mata, J., Hogan, C. L., Joormann, J., Waugh, C. E., & Gotlib, I. H. (2013). Acute exercise attenuates negative affect following repeated sad mood inductions in persons who have recovered from depression. Journal Of Abnormal Psychology, 122(1), 45-50. doi:10.1037/a0029881
Steinberg, H., Nicholls, B. R., Sykes, E. A., LeBoutillier, N. N., Ramlakhan, N., Moss, T. P., & Dewey, A. (1998). Weekly exercise consistently reinstates positive mood. European Psychologist, 3(4), 271-280. doi:10.1027/1016-9040.3.4.271
First, On Unhelpful Thoughts
If you do ballet, you already know that ballet class affords very little time for indulgent mental wanking. Especially when you’re new, or “re-new,” as I currently am. However, because our minds are capricious, every now and then an unhelpful thought finds its way in.
Like, for example the following:
This is the unhelpful thought that I had last night. It actually wasn’t judgmental or anything … just. You know, like, WTF? Because my butt was all, like, pointy and triangular in profile in the mirror while we were doing something facing the barre (I can’t even remember what, now!). I didn’t know butts could even be pointy and triangular, but there you go.
I don’t remember any other random, unhelpful thoughts from last night, so there probably weren’t any. But that one was amusing enough to last a good long while.
And Now, the Round-Up
Strengths
Weaknesses
Chaines: Scourge of the Universe
I asked Denis last night what he’d like to see in a beginning ballet blog, and he asked for explanations of basic positions and stuff with links to videos, so I think I might put together a wee series of that sort of thing.
That’s it for now. I must go forth and clean, then try to learn not to fall over whilst executing chaines.
Notes on the Notes
*Unfortunately, we do not yet have a surface at home on which one can practice more than two chaines at a time, because I cannot do chaines small enough to fit more than two in our tiny kitchen, any everything else either has carpet or huge area rugs. We are in the process of planning a studio for the basement, and — come to think of it, there’s always the storage room and my backup slippers.
The nice lady at the front desk at LBS took this for us, which was totally lovely of her. If I was a better person, I might have some idea what her name is. I really should have pointed my foot and squared myself up and so forth … but, hey, it’s more ballet picture than I had before 😀
Oh, and here’s the goofier version. I have no idea what’s going on with my head:
The number of things that are wrong with my arms in this picture cannot even be enumerated.
After a winter characterized by minor mental breakdowns, a minor mental breakthrough is a welcome thing. So here’s mine for today:
When you’re marking movements, don’t forget about your arms*.
On Saturday, in class, I failed to mark the jetes effectively. In particular, I forgot that I had an upper body, never mind that my upper body had been doing brilliantly a moment before. Thus, whenever we did a pass, my upper body was like, “WTF?!” And then my legs were all, “ZOMG, upper body, get with the program!” And then everything fell apart more or less literally.
When you mark movements, you’re wiring your brain to do them (why didn’t I think of this in class? I should know this stuff!). Thus, you need to make sure to incorporate all the limbs and so forth.
Even though you’re not going all out, you are enchaining the circuits that should be firing together and, if you use visualization, harnessing them to a kind of mental 3D movie of David Hallberg executing whatever movement you’re marking**.
Research has demonstrated that good visualization activates the nerves in both the brain and the muscles, so when you mark and visualize, you’re practicing. What you mark and what you picture will influence what you do at the barre and on the dance floor.
For what it’s worth, I’m realizing that it might take a little while to remember how to be a dancer when you’ve taken a sizeable break and concentrated deeply on a very different athletic discipline. It’s cool, though, because I now have an opportunity to develop an intellectual understanding of something I only grasped by instinct earlier in my life.
In other news, I lost about a pound over the last few days. Hecks to the yeah!
That’s all for now. Leather side down!
Notes
*So, yeah, this should be obvious, right? I blame cycling, “The armless sport.”
**Okay, and also David Hallberg, because if you’re going to visualize technique, you might as well visualize exceptionally solid technique…
First note: if you travel to class with your partner, always bring your partner’s dance belt (or shoes), even when he claims he isn’t going to dance. Denis thought he didn’t want to dance today but I had all of his stuff except for his dance belt, and when we got to LBS, he decided that maybe he might be able to dance after all.
I didn’t want to seem pushy, so I had left his dance belt at home (even though all of his other stuff was already packed in our mutual dance bag). On the other hand, he did get an opportunity to pick up a few pair of jeans to replace those recently lost to attrition. Since he wears jeans to work, an adequate supply makes a huge difference.
Anyway, Denis will be back in class with me on Monday (I already promised our teacher he would ^-^).
Onward!
So today I felt like my arms were much better, probably because I have spent the past four days thinking about them and working on trying to make them move gracefully and attempting to remember which arm positions go with which foot positions.
For some reason, my core felt kind of wiggly today. It did funny things to my sous-sus, which is a wee bit half-baked anyway because “huge cycling quads + still kinda fat for a dancer = fugly sous-sus.”
Seriously, I thought cycling provided reason enough to trim down, but I’m lean enough that I’m not in my own way on the bike. In the ballet studio, my thigh chubs are still, you know, kind of intrusive.
Beyond that, though, barre went fairly well, except for the bit where I got behind the count during degages and made this rather hilarious attempt to catch up. SOME DAY I WILL LEARN TO COUNT. Thouh, by that time, I will most likely be back in a place where I’m comfortable enough with what I’m doing that I sort of auto-count.
Oh, and the part where for some reason my upper body decided to do first arabesque left while my lower body did first arabesque right. Evidently, the small brain that is supposed to relay information from my head area to the end of my tail wasn’t — oh, wait, I am not actually a stegosaurus, even if I dance like once sometimes.
I enjoyed a little chasse-saute exercise we did across the floor, and felt like I kind of almost actually looked like a dancer finally, instead of a big sack of awkward in a dance belt and expensive slippers (or a dancing stegosaurus).
On the other hand, my jetes were terrible. I felt like a baby deer trying to learn how to lope along on big ol’ gangly limbs. I sounded like an elephant (or maybe a stegosaurus). At least I didn’t fall on my face, though.
This is particularly frustrating in light of the fact that I used to love all flavors of jete, especially tour jete, and right now I can’t seem to get my arms and legs to work together in a plain ol’ vanilla chassez-chassez-brushthroughleap combo.
It was at least this bad. Probably worse.
So I shall spend this week firming up my chaines turns and remembering how to jete (I think I’ve sorted myself now; on the way home from class, I realized I was doing some kind of chasse-gallope-jete crap). (Edit: I decided to mark my jetes this afternoon in order to get my arms coordinated with my legs. It seems to have helped, and my arms got all dancer-y, which was kind of exciting in its own way — they were like, “Oh, you mean we’re doing this! We remember this!”. I will have to open up and try jetes for reals downstairs in a bit. We totally do not have a jete-way in our upstairs right now.)
Got a few useful corrections, which was cool. I like our ballet teacher.
In other news, next Saturday I definitely need to eat a better breakfast (Today’s breakfast? ONE LITTLE APPLE. Because in the morning, I can be kind of dumb.) and pack a lunch. I definitely found myself in Food Crisis Mode during the epic shopping trip that followed class this morning. I had to tell myself out loud and repeatedly that I did not need an entire 1-pound bag of M&Ms. I did make it home and we had leftover spaghetti for lunch, so that worked out okay.
That’s it for now. Keep the leather side down.
First, the Review
I owe a number of longer-term reviews on a number of topics. I figured I’d start with my most recent major bike acquisition, the 2013 GT Karakoram 2.0 now lovingly dubbed “Mountain Monster.”
At first glance, the Karakoram seems as unlike my Fuji Roubaix (AKA “The Fearsome Fuji”) as it gets. It is not really all that light (though it’s also not all that heavy). It’s much more upright. It has clearance for some pretty big tires. In short, it’s a mountain bike — and its mountain-bike breeding really shines through when you take it off-road.
That said, some of the qualities that make the Karakoram shine on the trails are qualities it shares with the Fearsome Fuji: sharp handling and the kind of mind-reading feel that make the Roubaix my absolute favorite road ride.
You can absolutely fly this bike by the seat of your pants. It responds brilliantly to countersteering. I relish the experience of railing sharp turns on the Karakoram by dropping my weight deep into the outside pedal and then just letting the bike kind of lie down towards the inside of the turn*. Exceptional balance means you can give it a lot of lean before you begin to feel like you might be risking road rash.
In short, the Karakoram is wildly nimble. I am far from being an accomplished off-road rider, but during this year’s Death March attempt, I rode the Karakoram through and around and over all kinds of stuff. At one point, my rear wheel slipped on a branch hidden under some muck and the bike’s responsive handling saved me from careening into a tree. A better rider would even have made it out of that tight spot without stopping (again, I’m pretty half-baked off-road). Simply put, the bike is well-balanced and responsive: ideal qualities in any road or off-road ride**.
This nimble handling also translates well to an urban environment. While I don’t think the Karakoram will ever be my go-to century bike, as an urban on-road commuter, it actually gets the job done with a fair bit of elan. Road obstacles can be smartly avoided, and the hydraulic brakes’ stopping power comes in mightily handy when oblivious pedestrians or drivers fumble into the road without looking.
That said, in terms of rider experience on the commutes, there’s a trade-off involved: a more upright position offers an awesome visual field and helps keep you visible to drivers, but it also means that you catch wind — lots of it! Even when tucked down over the bars, I’m still in a more upright configuration than I’m used to, and I definitely feel the air resistance. In less-aerodynamic winter kit, it can feel like riding in a parachute.
Coupled with Maxxis’ 2.10″ Aspen tires — which are fantastic on trails but can really soak up your effort on the road — this means that the bike is slower to accelerate and slower on the climbs. Yesterday, on a Karakoram commute, I rode a not-insignificant overpass climb into a stiff headwind and found myself really fighting to maintain a pace above 10 MPH. Make no mistake — this bike climbs, but it does so slowly, and seems to prefer to do so in tiny little gears. That said, in the right gear combo, pretty stiff climbs can seem fairly effortless — as long as you’re not pushing for speed. I suspect the right tires could go a long way towards mitigating this effect if you plan primarily to commute or tour on-road on a Karakoram 2.0.
Commuting-wise, between geometry and fat tires, the Karakoram encourages its rider to spin smaller gears. That’s good for me, because I remain an inveterate masher, and spinning will indubitably leave more in the legs for ballet class 😛
Coupling a high cadence with a low gear, it’s not difficult to maintain a 14 – 16 MPH pace on the flats on this bike once you’re up to speed. Likewise, the enormous gearing range means you can basically ride it up a wall, albeit slowly. Still beats the heck out of walking. Moreover, the bike descends like a freaking rocket.
Shifting is crisp and responsive (and continues to function, with varying responsiveness, even in mucky conditions). Braking is nigh miraculous: the hydraulic disc brakes that come stock on the Karakoram 2.0 are both powerful and nuanced. You can modulate speed with great sensitivity and still stop fast enough to scare the crap out of yourself.
Maintenance-wise, the bike seems to be pretty much “wash-n-wear.” After the mudfest that was Death March, a good bath and a shot of chain lube got it shifting perfectly again. Shifting adjustments should be no sweat (I haven’t needed to bother yet; I took the bike in for a full shop tune-up before the race); braking adjustments will be more involved due to the hydraulics. I plan to pay someone else to mess around with those, for the most part. There are limits to my expertise, and I’m fine with that.
At around 30 pounds, the Karakoram could be lighter (and, indeed, you can lighten it up considerably with a few easy-but-pricey upgrades: lighter wheels, etc.); however, it doesn’t feel heavy when you’re riding it.
Experienced off-road racers looking for race bikes should probably look elsewhere, but for beginning-to-intermediate mountain bikers, the Karakoram offers a lot of bang for the buck. Likewise, experienced off-road racers looking for a fun bike for non-racing rides could enjoy the heck out of this machine.
In summary, the GT Karakoram 2.0 is a very solid bike at its price point (especially if you can snag one on clearance, like I did — I paid $500 for mine). As an entry-level off-road 29er, it’s stellar; likewise, it shines as a slowish-but-steady urban assualt bike. For gravel racing, I’d reserve it for races with true off-road sectors; drilling away for hours on gravel climbs or flats really asks for a less upright position.
For loaded long-distance touring, I’d say that GT’s Karakoram 2.0 is quite admirably suited (and comes drilled for a rear rack), but if you’ll be any distance from places where you’re likely to find good bike shops, you might want to swap out the hydraulic brakes for a set of mechanical ones***, which are better suited to field maintenance. Nobody wants to carry around a bleed kit and hydraulic fluid on a backroads tour of anywhere.
The 29″ wheel size could potentially make finding tires and tubes harder in some parts of the world, but the Schrader-drilled stock rims offer flexibility: more retailers carry Schrader tubes than Prestas, and you can inflate them at gas stations, with most readily-available air compressors, and with cheap, widely-available hand- and foot-pumps. You can also use Presta tubes if you snag a couple of those little converter sleeves to go over the stems. Though I actually like Presta valves better, my imaginary “world-touring” rig is specced with Schrader-friendly rims for all of these reasons.
If you’re seriously considering the purchase of a Karakoram 2.0, go ahead and pull the trigger. I doubt you’ll regret it — for the price, you’re getting a reliable, capable bike that can be dressed up for racing or down for touring in rough country, not to mention a metric shedload of fun.
Next, the Miscellany
Things to remember for Saturday’s ballet class:
This is great when you’re supposed to be on the balls of your feet — like in relèvé, for example — but kind of a bad idea when your heels are supposed to be on the ground. I suspect this is the child of my favored gymnastic discipline — floor exercise — coupled with cycling, though I’m also one of those freaks who run on their toes. Or, well, jog. I don’t know if you would call what I do these days “running.” Anyhoo! I remembered on Monday (after class, of course ._.) that standing flat-footed with your weight in your toes doesn’t work so well in ballet.
If your foot is flat on the floor, you want to keep your weight in your heel; it stabilizes the whole column. If your heel is on the floor but your weight is in the ball of your foot, all kinds of craziness happens, and then you sprain your ankle.
Other things to remember:
In other news:
That’s it for now. Keep whatever side down is supposed to be down 😛
Notes
*Sure, I’m gonna lose some knee skin this way sooner or later, but the soaring feeling is worth it.
**…Also great qualities in a life partner or best friend.
***You can’t go wrong with Avid’s BB7s.
YouTube: BOSU Balance Series
danseur ignoble 