These blades will CUT YOU

There are really only three blades you need to consider if you are a serious speed skater. This is not as bad a state of affairs as you might think – a few years ago there were only two. Speed skating blades are fascinating things because the task they need to accomplish seems so simple, yet amazingly we have three VERY different tools built for that task and we realise that the dream of making the “perfect blade” may be more difficult than it may at first appear.

It is worthwhile to note that all three of these blades are manufactured in the Netherlands. The brands may be named “Viking”, “Maple”, and “Marchese” respectively, but they are dutch through and through. (I’ve always secretly wanted to start a blade company called “Tulip” where everything is made somewhere in Asia). For those readers unfamiliar with the ice skating world, there are many brands who manufacture ice skate blades (all based in the Netherlands) but none of those other brands make particularly good blades.

I have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to try out each of these blades. In fact, as of writing this, I own a set each of all three. “Trying them out” doesn’t just mean putting them on for a few sessions, for me it means to skate on them for several months to get used to the uniquely-different “feel” that each blade offers, and then on at least a few occasions to race on them. The racing is the most important part of the test, since it is the point at which skater and equipment are being pushed to the limit. You never really know how steady you are in the corners on a set of blades, until you have to hit a second-inner corner in a 500m in them, and you don’t quite know how easy it is to steer a set of blades until you’ve had the opportunity to try it in the dying laps of a 3K or 5K.

The Vikings

Interestingly, the manufacturing process for Viking blades hasn’t changed for a VERY long time. Even old fixed-blade long track skates from before 1996 were manufactured in the same way.

These are the blades on which I learned to skate. These are the blades on which everyone should learn to skate. They are the softest out of the three. There are three basic variations of this blade to consider – regular, PM steel, and PM with nickel tube. I always recommend the softest blades for people who are learning to skate because they give the most obvious feedback on the way you skate. I talk a lot to the skaters I coach about “ice feel”, and a softer blade will generally give you better ice feel. However, in a strict technical sense, it isn’t the ice that you’re necessarily feeling – it is the interaction between your body’s stabilisation muscles and the feedback they’re getting from what the blades are doing. The metal in the “runner” bends and flexes as you put pressure on the blade while you skate, and the way that you do this affects the shape of the running surface – that is – the point of contact between the blade and the ice, which is typically a curved line. I guess what I’m trying to say is that a softer blade allows the skater to more easily feel what that line is doing.

PM steel is simply a reference to how the blade is manufactured. PM is short for “powdered metal” in case anyone is wondering. It simply means that the blade is harder. I’m pretty sure there are actual numbers to back this up, as in Rockwell hardness and the PM steel is a three or four notches up the scale. In practical terms, this translates to more glide in the same way that a bike with higher pressure in the tires will roll better than a bike with almost-flat tires. Other practical matters to consider are that PM steel takes longer to sharpen, but will also keep its edge for longer. This is not so important for most long track races, but for a marathon skater, being able to keep sharp edges all the way to the end of a 100-lap race on not-very-nice ice is a huge advantage. The nickel-plated tube is claimed to be nothing more than a cosmetic improvement, but I am quite certain that it has a very small effect on the stiffness of the tube, and therefore also on the way that the blade flexes.

I like these blades, a lot. The ice feel in the straights is the best out of all three. Unfortunately it’s in the corners where they don’t quite do it for me. At top speed (admittedly, not so fast these days) I find that I have to carefully step through inner-corners, and I’m only forcing myself to do that because I know that it is quicker than sliding through the corner on both feet. Of course, I would much rather put power down in the corner and it is for this reason that I eventually went off them. Perhaps it is because I took up the sport so late in life that the stabiliser muscles in my lower leg can’t handle it, but the fact of the matter is that when I’m right on the limit, I can’t control these blades as well as I would like to be able. So… as awesome as they feel during practice, they are not my blade of choice for racing.

The Marcheses

these measurement lines are useful for remembering your own setup, but cannot be transferred between different blade manufacturers

Marchese is a relative newcomer to the scene, at least when it comes to ice blades. The name should already be familiar to many speed skaters since Paul Marchese has been producing some of the world’s most sought after custom boots for quite some time. The blades, being mass-produced, would not be expected to attract the kind of 9-month wait for a new set that the hand-made boots do. But are they any good?

The design of the Marchese Record is the first major rethink of the design of ice blades in quite some time. The “traditional” way to construct a blade is to begin with an incomplete tube (i.e. a rectangle) and bend it into a cylinder, then weld it onto the runner (the bit that touches the ice) rather like closing the incomplete circle onto the straight line on an electrical appliance’s on/off switch. Originally (before the advent of clap skates), the steel of the runner simply continued on to wherever the blade mounted onto the boot, but for obvious reasons, this caused the blade to flex less at points close to those mounting points, and flex more everywhere else. The tube basically moderates this effect and causes the blade to flex more consistently. There is however the issue of the strength of the tube. These days they’re spot-welded (in the case of the Vikings) or laser-welded (in the case of the Marcheses and Maples). The Marcheses have taken a different approach to the tube-runner equation by starting with a complete tube, then welding the blade directly onto that – something made possible by advances in welding technology (I’m told).

This raises some interesting possibilities. First of all, the tube can be much stronger while staying the same weight, or be the same strength while being lighter. If the tube is stronger, then the distance from the tube to the ice can be greater. The whole point of the tube is to control the extent to which the runner flexes, and if the tube is stronger, then you can make the height of the runner greater while retaining similar flex properties of a lower runner – in theory. In practice, this seems to be mostly true, but with an interesting side-effect – since there is physically more blade, even though it seems to flex a similar amount and in a similar way to a conventional blade, the amplitude of this flex seems to be greater. Remember how I talked about that curvy contact line that the blade makes with the ice? This one is curvier.

In real skating terms, this makes for an interesting blade. They made the runner metal harder because they knew that having more metal would make it flex more. This enables the blade to glide very well on the ice, while also not being too stiff (and ice blade with no flex is useless for speed skating because steering the blade is essential for generating the force needed to go fast). Having a harder metal, as mentioned above, also allows the blade to hold its edge for longer – not really an issue in long track, but a potential consideration for marathon skaters. The extra flex properties manifest themselves most notably at the end of the push – the blades “turn in” a lot. When you’re used to skating on Vikings, it can be too much. But if you’re the kind of skater who gets to the end of the push without a huge angle (from perpendicular, measured at the knee or hip) then this turn in can give you just a little bit of extra pressure for free, or save you the trouble of pressing down that extra little bit to extract the last bit of pressure from a Viking blade.

Another thing – the “pitch” of the bridge is 10mm – same as the maple blade (the pitch of a Viking is 12mm, the bridge is the thing between the blade and the boot) but the relative difference between the distance from the toe-mounting to the ice and the heel-mounting to the ice is significantly less than the other blades – there’s more blade under the toe, so your feet feel “flatter” in your skates. This may suit some people, and not others, but it’s something that everyone should be aware of. Personally, I think the Marchese blade is the ultimate marathon blade, but will only suit a small percentage of long trackers (notable among them, Bob de Jong). Personally I found it difficult to get used to how the blades behaved in the corners, and was able to skate in the straights fine, but always felt that I wasn’t extracting all that I could. They glide well, and are ideal for situations where you have to hold a high, sub-top speed. I broke old personal bests in the 1000m and 1500m in these blades, but couldn’t manage it in the 500m. As of writing, there are two variants of this blade – the regular one, and the “sprint” one, where the runner is thinner (0.95mm rather than the standard 1.1mm) which is supposed to behave more nicely – more similarly to the other blades out there.

The Maples

The dot-dot-dot (elipsis) has always puzzled me…

Last but not least is the Maple gold. “Maple gold” actually covers four distinct but quite similar models of blade manufactured by Maple in the Netherlands – the Maple Comet Laser, the Comet Laser Flex, Twin Laser, and Twin Laser Flex. The difference between the Laser and the Twin Laser is the welding pattern between the tube and the runner. The difference between Flex models and non-Flex models is the tube is constructed differently so as to allow more flex (in the Flex models).

Early in my (very short) ice skating career, I switched from Vikings to Maples. This was at a time before the flex blade existed. The corners felt much more “solid” than with the Vikings. However in the straights the feedback from the blades wasn’t great and I couldn’t reliably steer the way that I wanted. To be fair, a lot of the reason for that was my own technique, but I probably missed out on a little bit of positive feedback when I did manage to “hit it” properly.

An opportunity came up for me to try out the Marchese blades, so I took them up, skated a few months on them, then raced Calgary Oval Finale. Even though I set two new PBs (including in the 1500m which was a surprise because, well… I don’t really train, and that distance requires good physical conditioning to do well) I wasn’t satisfied with the way that the blades behaved so I switched back to Vikings. I skated a whole season on them which included even more PBs and went into Oval Finale fairly optimistic. But then an opportunity to try out the Twin Laser Flex came up and I took it. Jet-lagged and jelly-legged from a crazy two months of near continuous travel I threw them on and skated expecting not-much and… they felt amazing. I had the same solid feel in the corners that I remember from my previous maples, but the straights were completely different – I could really feel them, and steer. Perhaps foolishly, I decided to stick with them only three days out from the only major competition I do in the skating season.

I broke personal records in all of the distances I skated, some by a substantial margin. Maybe I would have done the same on the Vikings. Maybe it wasn’t just the blade, but the new bridge (Maple also designed a new bridge that flexes more) as well. This is not a very scientific experiment. The only real way to do that is to do what they did when they introduced clap skates – take two randomized groups of junior skaters, put one of them on claps and the other on regular skates and monitor their progress over the course of several seasons. And who knows, this might be the only way to convince elite speed skaters to adopt a significant new technology – the sport is so technical, and the tiniest differences can completely change one’s skating experience, it’s not surprising that they are slow to adopt new technologies.

There is actually an additional variant of the series called the “3-point” where instead of two points of contact between the blade and the bridge, there are three. This causes the blade to flex less in the middle, which likely has the effect of giving the skater more “pressure” at the expense of steering ability and feel. That blade, and the Maple Comet Aluminium (the predecessor to the steel “Gold” blade) I would recommend only to people who have grown up ice skating and already have a very well-developed “ice feel” (and who also like really really stiff blades), otherwise their stiffness and steering responsiveness make it difficult to make the fine adjustments you need to make as an ice skater.

So the Maples are my blade of choice, but they are not for everyone. The Marchese blades could use a few generations of development or perhaps a few more variants, but as they are now they are still a very good blade. Highly recommended for marathon skaters, as well as skaters who don’t make a very sharp angle with the ice (like Bob de Jong, as opposed to someone like Mo Tae Bum). The Vikings I would recommend to those who really like a lot of feedback from a soft blade, and who have straight ankles (mine are very pronated, which is probably why the blades seemed to “get away from me” when I put a lot of pressure on them in the corners). Another significant consideration is the stiffness of your boot – if your boots are very stiff you may want to consider a softer blade whereas if your boot is already very soft, then a stiffer blade might be more appropriate. The objective is generally to get as much flex in the foot-to-ice interface as you can get away with while still being able to maintain stability and control over your blades. For younger skaters, I would recommend erring on the side of being too soft, whereas for a more mature skater I would just tell them to go with what they feel most comfortable with in a race.

Postscript

I am selling some old blades. I have a set each of:

Viking PM with the nickel-plated tube, size 41 bridge, 16.5 inch blade. Used for 1 full season, 400 euro

Maple Comet Laser (non-flex), size 41 bridge (old bridge), 16.5 inch blade. Used for 2 seasons, 300 euro

Marchese Record, size-165mm bridge, 17 inch blade. Used for a third of a season, 500 euro

prices are negotiable.

It is a generally known fact among my friends that I do not own a television. I find most television programming to be pretty awful with the exception of a handful of shows. These shows, I will often download from the internet or even watch online. The other useful purpose for live television – sport, only really comes around once every four years as far as I’m concerned and internet streaming is getting to the point where we will be able to watch just about any important live sport in HD, just as long as the people who decide on TV rights sort themselves out.

Unfortunately, not owning a television results in me missing out on random discoveries. Despite being a bit of a Doctor Who fan, I only discovered that it had been revived by Russell T. Davies when I saw it randomly on TV. In a foreign country especially, this can be difficult because not only do I not own a TV, even if I did, I am not particularly motivated to watch it since my Danish (I currently live in Denmark) is not really up to it. As a result, I have missed out on some high-quality Danish television in the form of “Forbrydelsen”, literally “the crime”, translated to “The Killing” for international export.

It first came to my attention a few months ago via a BBC news article about how popular the series had become in britain. Apparently, it had gotten to the point that the distinctive jumpers worn by Sarah Lund, the main protagonist (pictured above), had become popular. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I made a note that I should watch the series, but only got around to it recently, when an opportunity came up to watch it “as seen on the BBC”. This is an important detail, since it was essential for me to be able to watch it with subtitles because, as I mentioned before, my Danish isn’t really up to it.

The series proved quite addictive. I watched every episode of all three seasons over the course of the recent Easter long weekend. It was announced around the start of the third season that it would be the last ever. The first season consisted of 20 episodes, while seasons two and three each consisted of 10 episodes. Unusually for crime series, the story arc spanned the full season, beginning with a murder and ending with the solving of that murder by Lund.

In order to maintain audience interest in a single crime over the course of a whole season of weekly episodes is achieved by closely following the stories of the police detectives, the family of the victim, as well as some politicians who are somehow connected to the murder. Even the personal life of the detectives is followed, and this attention to detail not only makes all of the characters very “real” in the eyes of the audience, but they immerse the viewer in the world of the series and help maintain the suspension of disbelief (as well as giving us insight into Danish society).

It’s a winning combination because there’s something for everyone. At the center, there is the “standard” detective story – finding clues, interrogating witnesses (who are almost never totally forthcoming at first), and following leads. But around all of this is the impact of the crime on the community, realized  by following the plight of the family/families of the deceased. And if that isn’t enough for you, there’s political intrigue on the side which is an ingenious combination really, since politicians can dependably be expected not to tell you everything, and that is a good way of controlling the flow of information about a crime in a detective story.

If I have any complaints, then I would say that it is a little bit formulaic. It’s a good formula – but I can definitely see why they decided to stop after three seasons. Certain sequences of events began to get predictable, almost to the point where episodes became mini-caricatures  of themselves. For example, there’s a few scenes in which Lund is shown wearing a partial military field uniform, including a helmet and bulletproof vest, and underneath the vest can clearly be seen her distinctive jumper which, frankly, considering the circumstances and context, was quite a ridiculous choice of wardrobe. The body count also steadily increases – a total of three people are killed in the first season (which is also twice as long as the other seasons), seven in the second, and eight in the third.

But like all good series’, it’s the writing that really grabs you. The acting is great, and the production values are film-like. Also refreshing for TV is that (owing to the structure of the series) each episode can be paced like a movie. There’s no rush to fit everything in. Despite numerous plot holes and red herrings which are often so unbelievable that you wonder why they left them in, this Danish drama is more than addictive, with each episode ending on some kind of revelation and with a story that will keep you guessing right up until the final episode. Noteworthy is Sofie Gråbøl’s performance in the lead role of Sarah Lund, who’s social-awkwardness and obsessiveness breaks from the common stereotypes of women on television (not to mention her dress-sense, which breaks from stereotypes of the Danes). Her character is complex, mysterious, and wounded, and the acting is exemplary, standing out in an ensemble of very strong performances.

I encourage all readers of this article to do yourselves a favour, and get your hands on the DVDs. I recommend finding a long weekend or other suitable break in your life-schedules to watch them a-season-at-a-time because once you’ve started on a season, it is very difficult to stop. In fact, this show has given me renewed motivation to learn the Danish language.

(p.s. the reason for “not the chicken” is because the Danish word for chicken – kylling, sounds a bit like “killing” in English)

blood doping, inexpensive and still commonly used

For the longest time, I thought that it was a losing battle. The dopers would always outfox the anti-dopers. It was simply a matter of resources – anti-doping agencies are generally poorly-funded and have to operate within the bounds of very strict rules and regulations. They have to be very sure about a person before they can bring a case against them, and even then, they had to come up against lawyers and convince judges who had no knowledge of the inner workings of elite sport, or of medicine. Athletes (at least in big-money sports) on the other hand have at their disposal far more resources, not to mention the fact that large-scale organized sport is a huge and very wealthy (entertainment) industry which takes good care of its investments, if you catch my drift.

But this belief has changed. Why has it changed? It has changed because things are actually changing for the better, but also and not insignificantly, because I lived with a very talented analytical chemist for a year. Not only can I now give her PhD presentation word-for-word, but I have learned a great deal about analytical chemistry techniques – not just the chemistry, but the actual means by which chemists detect things. Xenia‘s thesis was about Fluorinated Compounds, and without going into too much detail about those (click the link if you would like to know more), part of the challenge of the research was detecting very small amounts of those chemicals in food. It doesn’t take a genius to see how this kind of knowledge can translate to detecting performance-enhancing drugs in a person’s body, either through a urine sample or a blood sample.

For a very long time, there was only testing at competitions. This was very easy to get around – simply don’t dope during competition. Any good athlete knows that most of the important work is done in the years and months leading up to a major competition and doping during that time is a very effective way to get a performance advantage on the day of the competition when you would present for a test and be clean. They eventually got around this by introducing out-of-competition testing, which is exactly what it sounds like. When done properly, at random times an agent from a nation’s anti-doping agency would show up at your door and demand a sample. This makes it exponentially more difficult to carry out any kind of systematic doping regime. There are, of course, ways to get around this and there are flaws in the system (which I cover in more detail in my previous article about doping in sport), but the most obvious way to circumvent this is to take a drug for which no test exists. For a very long time, there was no test for EPO and indeed, a sample from the first year that Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France was later found to contain it so this avenue seems thoroughly explored.

It is at this point where I usually throw my arms in the air and give up hope on there ever being “clean” sport. Sure, you can keep people’s samples for a long time and hope that the number of substances which are being tested for expands enough to catch them before it becomes prohibitively expensive to store so many old samples, but that’s not a great way to be. The next significant advance was the introduction of the biological passport. This is simply taking a blood sample and monitoring a number of parameters. We know enough about our biology to know what the “normal” bounds for these biological markers are, and also how much those markers can fluctuate. The beauty of this system, is that you don’t actually have to detect any performance enhancing substances to be able to catch a drug cheat. The test measures the effect of those substances on your own body (and they do have an effect – otherwise nobody would take them).

At the same time, that can be problematic. In my previous article on doping in sport, I mentioned speed skater Claudia Pechstein. To their credit, speed skating introduced the biological passport at exactly the right time to remove her from the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games in 2010. Rumour has it that her biological markers were all over the place, and that everyone kind of knew that she was on the juice. However, since they never detected a banned substance in her blood, they could never pin anything on her. When the passports were introduced, she was instantly pegged and banned for two years. She filed an injunction which allowed her to skate for just long enough to make an attempt at qualifying for the games, but the damage had already been done, and she missed out. However, the court case dragged on, and it went all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne (sport’s highest court – that’s not a joke) where it was argued that she had a rare genetic condition which caused her markers to be what they were. Then it was proposed that her father be tested, and if his biological markers were similarly zany, then she should be let off the hook. They eventually got around to testing him, sure enough his markers were similarly strange, and since no banned substances were ever detected in her blood or urine, she launched an appeal through the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. Thankfully, the court eventually rejected the appeal, and upheld the ban, proving that lawyers aren’t all bad.

Perhaps she does have a rare genetic condition, after all, Olympic athletes, especially gold medallists, are genetic freaks… but I don’t buy it. This is just a little bit too weird. The genetic condition cited was a special kind of blood anaemia – a type which would make your blood less able to carry oxygen than a normal person’s. Five Olympic gold medals, two silvers, and two bronzes, spread over five Olympic Games (six if she had managed to make it to Vancouver, and she was plenty good enough to do it) is not the skating resumé of a “normal” person, much less someone with anaemia. After serving her ban, she won a bronze medal in the 5000m at world single distance championships in Heerenveen at the age of 41, and continues to perform well at the highest level of competition. Of course, the fact that catching someone with the biological passport doesn’t require the detection of banned substances can be problematic. There will always be some latitude for appeal, and maybe we will magically learn that high performance athletes have an unusually high frequency of rare genetic conditions.

So this is where my new knowledge of analytical chemistry comes into it.

I heard through some chemistry friends that Alberto Contador’s blood tests, apart from occasionally turning up clenbuterol also contained small amounts of phthalates (plastic softener). Where do these plastics come from, you ask? Take a look at the bag in the picture above. The amount of clenbuterol found in Contador’s sample was very low, far too low to have a performance-enhancing effect (and it would seem careless that a rider would take such an easily-detectable substance during the tour). It’s far more likely that he had taken it during training, and there was a small amount of it left when he removed some of his own blood for blood doping later (which also explains the plastic softener in his blood). The contaminated beef story is total bullocks, since clenbuterol is banned in the EU and all of the randomly-tested beef in Spain contained none.

That’s where the future of anti-doping lies – in detecting the things that happen around the doping itself. Luckily, the methods available for detection have expanded significantly and we are now at a point where we can really begin to envision a world of sport that is doping-free.

In the past, the only tool available to anti-doping chemists was called “target analysis”. It is simply looking for specific things. You were only able to test for things which you knew the chemical structures of. Now we have non-target analysis.¹ That means that you don’t need specific “targets” – this method detects everything. Of course, in a blood or urine sample, one can expect to find a LOT of things, and most (if not all) of those things will not be performance-enhancing. For example, if you eat a lot of microwave popcorn, you can expect to find trace amounts of fluorinated compounds in your bloodstream, or if you drink a lot of bottled water, you’ll find bits of plastic from the bottles (most of that stuff is completely harmless, by the way… ok… not fluorinated compounds, they’re endocrine disruptors, but that’s a completely different discussion). To filter the information overload that non-target analysis would give you, there is a tool called “semi-target analysis” whereby the chemical signatures of known ions are extracted.

Now you’ll still have signs of a whole lot of things you don’t know about which might be irrelevant to your doping-search, but here’s where we can be very clever. You can take these results and store them in much the same way that the biological passport works. Then, in subsequent tests, you can use a computer to superimpose the results and look for differences. When used in combination with the biological passport, this could prove to be the ultimate tool. The biological passports are already a really excellent idea, but they suffer from the problem of not being able to detect anything directly, but instead reveal anomalies in an individual’s biological markers. With this additional chemical analysis, we can “pair up” abnormal fluctuations in biological markers with differences in results between tests. We have now narrowed the field so-to-speak, and have only a small number of “suspicious” chemicals to isolate.

But then what? You have a suspicious fluctuation in the biological passport – one whose chances of occurring naturally are one in a million – but the people in the decision-making bodies of sports often flunked mathematics, so they don’t even know what that means. Next, you have the one or two chemicals we isolated which correspond in the time-series to those abnormal fluctuations. If any of those chemicals are known doping agents, then it’s game-over. But what if there’s a new designer drug, one that has been purposefully manufactured so as to be unrecognizable to anti-doping authorities? What then?

In that case, we have an ace in the hole. It comes from the world of toxicology and goes by the name of “in-vitro toxicological screening”.² What does it do? This tool is primarily used to test chemicals (e.g. food colouring) to determine whether or not they are harmless, and determine whether or not they have biological effects. What do I mean by biological effects? I mean questions like – are they endocrine disruptors? do they activate certain protein receptors? do they stimulate so-and-so system in the body. It is obvious why toxicologists would be interested in a test like this, and it should be obvious why a test like this would be of interest to anti-doping authorities.

So now, not only can we detect the effects of a doping substance on the body using the body’s own biological markers, not only can we now detect ANY anomalous “new” chemical in the blood corresponding to these fluctuations, and not only are these tests sensitive enough to detect the plastics used in the bags used for doping, now we can EVEN isolate those substances and determine the mechanisms by which they act on the body and improve performance. In my previous article about drugs in sport, I said that in the long-term, it would eventually disappear because ultimately it was driven by money in sport, and money in sport only would push people to take these enormous health risks if there was a lot to be gained – for example if you lived in poverty, or were from a country with gross income inequality. However, as Lance Armstrong has shown us, there will always be psychologically “different” people who are basically sporting-sociopaths who will convince themselves of anything, tread on anyone, and possess a desire to win which defies what we might think of as “rationality”. In any case, thanks to science, and with the help of some very nifty (and expensive) new technology, we may finally be able to end doping in sport once and for all. Obviously, human ingenuity seems boundless, and it would be easy to believe that eventually somebody will figure out a way around these methods. However, the lengths to which you would need to go, and the expense you would need to bear to cheat the system would be so great that not only would it not be worth it, but such an effort would be impossible to hide from the world.

If anyone has good contacts, or knows “the right people” to contact about how to test and then eventually implement such a system please get in contact with me (I have a few contacts in WADA, but not many, I’m just getting started here).

Footnotes

Sony NEX-6 with Leica Summicron 35mm f/2 Lens

It has been a little while since I posted about photography. Sadly I have been very busy and have not been able to update my photography website as often as I would like. That is not to say that I haven’t been taking photos – I have. I’ve been snapping away while I’ve been coaching at a junior world cup in Italy, as well as while I spectated at the European Championships for Short Track speed skating in nearby Malmø.

Something that I have come to realize when reviewing my photos is that I generally only take photos at big events. I organize my photos into folders by month, but I could just as easily organize them into folders based on events. This struck me because it wasn’t always like this. My camera used to be attached to me at the hip (so much so that I usually carried bruises around my hips) and I would take photographs pretty much all the time. Most photographers like to think of themselves as intrepid photojournalists, ready to capture historic moments as they happen before their eyes. I’m no different, but lately I haven’t been carrying my camera around a lot.

The reason for this is because it is very heavy. At the pointy-end of my setup is a Nikon D800 which sports a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens about 90% of the time. It takes amazing photos, but it is very heavy, and when I’m riding my bike around, running from meeting to meeting, and getting my skates on to do some coaching, it is simply too much of a burden to carry around all the time. Why don’t I use my phone? Phone cameras have come a long way, and the camera on my iPhone is actually very decent, but I have quite an eye for image quality, and the image sensor on a phone camera, no matter how many pixels it has, just doesn’t cut it.

I used to carry around a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 as a backup point-and-shoot. I still have it (and should probably sell it) but the technology is quite dated, and the images aren’t great. I get away with it because I am able to shoot in RAW format and so have a great deal of latitude for “scrubbing up” the photo in post-production, and this is the only way I can make the photos look decent.¹  Recently however, the segment segment of the market known as “large sensor compacts” has grown and become more mature.

Previously, these large sensor compacts fell into two rough categories – (1) those aimed at users upgrading from small point-and-shoot cameras who simply want to pay a little more, and tote around a slightly larger camera, in exchange for better image quality, or (2) those aimed at users who already own an SLR but who want a smaller camera which still retains a lot of manual control and of course, good image quality. Sadly, due to market forces, the former category got a lot more attention than the latter for the simple reason that there was a much greater demand. However, now that it has become very “hip” to be a photographer, the latter category is slowly gaining attention. In fact, the subject of my latest purchase, the Sony NEX-6 was only announced late last year and became available in November.

I have been searching for a camera small enough to be pocketable (in large jacket pockets) yet still with good image quality for a while. Sensor technology continues to develop at an impressive rate, but ultimately the quality of the image comes down to the size of the image sensor. Most SLRs have what are called APS-C sized sensors, which measure 24x16mm and these are generally very good (I would call them “serious” image sensors). The next step up is “full frame” which is slowly become more widespread outside of the full-pro community of photographers. Those sensors measure 36x24mm and come with a few advantages (shallow depth-of-field, greater light-gathering capacity, higher dynamic range) but at a cost – cameras which carry full frame sensors are generally quite expensive. After that, you go into stratospherically-expensive territory with medium format (Mamiya, Leaf, PhaseOne, Hasselblad, Leica) cameras. Strangely, if you want to go smaller than APS-C, there is quite a jump until you hit the next widely-used sensor size (1/1.7″) which is about 7.6×5.7mm.

The NEX-6 has an APS-C sensor which puts it, in sensor terms, on par with most SLR cameras. A handful of other features made it very attractive to me, such as its video abilities (able to shoot 1080/60p, which is better than my D800!) and also its ability to connect to WiFi. Those of you who follow my Facebook will know that I have a penchant for checking in at a location with a panoramic photo for dramatic effect. For example, in August last year:

Olympic Stadium in London, captured and uploaded by my iPhone (click for larger image)

Of course, this is a very attractive feature, to be able to upload photos at the location they are taken. But as I mentioned before, the quality of photographs taken on my iPhone isn’t stellar and for that reason I have the “compact” version of Adobe Photoshop as an app on my phone so that I can perform adjustments on the image before I post it (ordinarily I’ll adjust the crop, and the contrast). However, this doesn’t make up for poor image quality. The Sony has a built-in feature for constructing panoramic shots which has been available on its compact cameras for quite some time. However, pairing that feature with a camera like the NEX-6, with its larger sensor and higher quality lens (higher quality than a compact camera’s) will obviously result in better pictures. Pairing that ability with WiFi means that I can now do something that I already do, but much better. Observe the difference in image quality:

Genforeningspladsen, taken and uploaded with the NEX-6 (click for larger image)

There are other interesting quirks about this camera. For a camera so packed with features, I was surprised to learn that it had a pop-up flash. Many of the other cameras that I was considering did not have a pop-up flash. On compact cameras, flashes have a habit of giving photos a very washed-out look because the subjects are generally overexposed relative to the background. Of course, on an enthusiast camera like the NEX-6, it is possible to adjust the flash exposure (and all the other stuff, like shutter speed and aperture) in order to avoid this. For me, a pop-up flash, while not ideal, is essential for everyday photography. In bright daylight, a flash is indispensable for filling in shadow detail, for example. In this regard, either by mistake or by design, the NEX’s flash has an interesting quirk – it is useable as a bounce flash. A “bounce flash” is where you fire the flash at the ceiling and that gives a more even spread of light than if you fire it directly at a subject (“direct flash”). Because of the way that the pop-up mechanism is designed, you can point it like so:

Pop-up flash being used as a bounce

Indeed, in many respects, this camera is the equal, if not superior to most current entry-level SLR cameras. It is certainly a better camera than my first digital SLR, both purely in terms of specification, but also in terms of the quality of photos it takes. It has an electronic viewfinder with a resolution of 2.3 million pixels (about twice the resolution of most rear-LCD displays). While electronic viewfinders aren’t as good as purely optical ones, the space saving value of having one is substantial (and most people won’t even know the difference). The one drawback to the NEX camera system overall is the lenses. In short, they aren’t great. There are a handful of high quality Zeiss fast prime lenses, but they are large and bulky and, for my purposes, defeat the point of having this camera. The “kit” lens, an impressively compact 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom is certainly a very practical choice, but the optical quality is lacking. Sony relies on in-camera software to compensate for the lens’s shortcomings, but since I process RAW files, the “cheapness” of the optical design is apparent. There is substantial distortion of the image field, as well as significant light falloff towards the corners. It is possible to correct these in post-production, but it is obviously not an ideal situation.

The full kit, ready to go

Still, the focal range is very useful, and I feel that I’m probably going to spend a lot of time with this lens on the camera. However, fact that the Sony E-mount system doesn’t yet have a wide selection of high-quality compact lenses has not gone unnoticed in the photography community. With the help of a few lens-adapters, it is possible to fit almost any lens imaginable onto the camera body. Since you’re not going to find an interchangable-lens camera body with a high-quality APS-C lens in such a compact form factor in too many other camera systems, it seems an attractive proposition to put other lenses on this camera. Obviously, with these third-party adapters, you lose the camera’s ability to control the lens’ aperture or focus, or even for the camera to identify what lens is being used. However, this isn’t a problem since enthusiastic photographers such as myself grew up with manual-focusing lenses and if a good example can be found, then the ultimate compact digital camera combination might be made.

Leica Summicron 35mm f/2

The Leica 35mm f/2 lens, essentially unchanged since the late 1960s is famous among photojournalists. It’s hard to imagine it now, with cameras such a ubiquitous part of our daily lives, but the idea of a compact camera which you could carry around and take photos with is less than a century old. Add to that the demands of photojournalism and it is easy to see how a compact lens with (exceptionally) high-quality optics, paired with a rugged, compact camera body could be such a “big deal” in photography. I picked up this example for the equivalent of about 1000 USD. It’s used, and is a model from the early 1970s when Leica lenses were made in Canada. For some reason, these examples sell for less than their German-manufactured counterparts, even though every piece of evidence available indicates that the optical quality is the same (even the glass is sourced from the same place). As you can see from the first image (right up the top), the pairing of lens and camera body works well to produce a well-balanced and compact photography setup. On an APS-C sensor a 35mm focal length lens will give you a field of view roughly equivalent to a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera which is considered a “standard” focal length.

The bottom line however is that it works, and it works well. I can now easily slip this camera into a large jacket pocket, or side pocket in my backpack. It is light, and it takes excellent pictures. Because of its ease of use, I have begun to take it with me everywhere again, and I am taking more pictures as a result, and this can only be good news in terms of my development as a photographer. Perhaps someday, when I have obscene amounts of disposable income, I’ll buy myself a Leica camera body, but the Leica M currently retails for about 7000 USD (body only), and cool as it is, every photographer knows that the real reason to get a Leica is because of the lenses. The NEX-6 costs almost a tenth, at 750 USD, and frankly it serves my needs much better. This new setup has allowed me to continue taking photographs with the freedom of full manual control without the hassle of having to lug around a ton of photo gear. Yes, in many situations, that gear is necessary, but most of the time, it isn’t, and most of the time, I would still like to take photos since, as it is in many other things in life, it’s not just about the results, but it’s also about enjoying the process, and the bottom line is that I love photography.

The Full Setup (again)

Footnotes

It’s not about the bike, it’s not even about the drugs

I have written a bit on doping in sport in the past, but in light of the recent interview with Lance Armstrong by Oprah, I feel that I should say a little more.

The interview itself is enlightening. Previously, everything I knew about Lance came from his book (which I read) and watching him ride in the tour. From my previous article you would know that I am under no illusions about the tour, or Lance himself. He doped, they all doped, they still all dope, but he’s still an amazing athlete. The fallout from the USADA report is interesting and a lot has been said about it, most of it stupid and uninformed. I, for one, believe that the way things panned out is the right way.

Should Lance have been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles? Yes. Is that fair? From a sporting perspective – no. Everyone doped. The tour was as fair as sports gets. Lance Armstrong legitimately won those seven tours. But the tour, and high-profile sport in general is about much more than just sport. So from the perspective of The World at large, then yes – it is totally fair. In a perfect world, if you really wanted to be fair, you would catch and punish everyone who rode on the tour for at least the last 20 years, probably longer. But given the situation, finite time and resources, then this is what had to be done. You go for the jugular, and that happens to be Lance, and you hope that the blood that squirts out sprays all over and taints everyone else in the sport.

The other punishments? Extreme? Perhaps. Fair from a sporting perspective? No. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime – from a sporting perspective. Typically, a doping offence is punished by a ban. If it is bad, the ban must be longer than four years, because that causes the athlete to miss out on the Olympics, and that is what really hurts an athlete, both from a sporting perspective as well as a financial perspective. But what do you do with a person like Lance, who has already won seven tours? But not just the tours, but what he has been able to go on and do because of those tour victories. Not to mention what he has done to those who have come out against him in the past.

Once again, we are back to the point that sport is more than just sport. Lance has benefited enormously from his tour victories, and even now after the punishments have been handed out, we would all agree that he is better off than your average cyclist. He spoke in the interview about losing 75 million dollars of future income when sponsors withdrew their support. What about past income? What about basking in the glory of tour victories? What about enjoying the benefits of spending his past income? The house he lives in? The people he has met? It is interesting that in the interview, when he is asked about the cost, he only talks about the money.

What is unfortunately overwhelmingly clear from the interview is that Lance is some kind of amoral sociopathic narcissist. It is overwhelmingly clear from the interview that he spends most of it not wishing that he hadn’t doped, but wishing that he hadn’t been caught. The complete lack of remorse shown for those whose reputations he damaged, “friends” who he sued who were basically telling the truth, and the total lack of empathy for them has made me even less sympathetic to his cause than I had been previously (and I was already very unsympathetic – as I generally am to over-glorified sporting “heroes”). I find the pathetic outpouring of support, and people standing up to defend him (many of them my friends) rather baffling. He rides a bike for crying out loud! Think about that. Think about how you go from “I ride a bike” to “I sue my friends and win even though they’re telling the truth”, and then think about your priorities in life. Lance deserves no less than the punishments he has been given, and indeed I hope that more is to come in the form of large fines and jail time. Sure, all the other riders, and indeed many athletes from many other sports deserve severe punishments too, but that does not invalidate what is being done to Lance.

I skate around in circles, sometimes I throw rocks and sweep the ice with a broom – it’s sport. It’s really not that important. When it gets to the point where people are being bullied into taking huge health risks, where people’s reputations are being tarnished, and where people are getting sued, all in the name of “sport”, then not only has it become more than sport, these people have completely missed the point of sport.

(I encourage the interested reader to read my previous article about doping in sport)

Berlin just after the stroke of midnight

So it’s taken me nearly two thirds of January to get around to writing this. There is a tradition around this time of year to come up with “New Year Resolutions”. For this reason, January is generally a terrible month to visit the gym, because it’s packed with idiots who will be gone by mid-February if not sooner.

In the past, I’ve made similar attempts at resolutions. Since being overweight and unfit generally aren’t pressing concerns in my world, my resolutions are of a very different kind. Unfortunately, they tend to suffer the same fate as those well-intentioned couch potatoes who frequent the gym in January. Why does this happen? Because change is hard. Real change – the kind that lasts – is difficult because most of your habitual behaviours don’t originate out of thin air (in the way that these resolutions do). They are a product of you, they are a culmination of everything you have been up until now, they are a continuation of the “you” story.

The “you” story has a lot of momentum. Changing its direction significantly is therefore very difficult. I have been fortunate in that I have been able to significantly change things in my life several times. It’s not easy. Seeing as I generally use this website to dispense advice to people who do not ask for it, I feel like it might be a good idea to use my experience in successfully changing myself to help others do the same.

Get uncomfortable. This sounds very cliché, but you need to get out of your comfort zone to change. It should come as no surprise that some of my most significant changes occurred when I moved countries. Moving presents a massive displacement not only physically (obviously) but also mentally. Many things which we rely on without realizing it – routines, familiar places, familiar faces, food, social networks, jobs, and so on are changed in a very complete way when you move countries. Without any of the strings which normally tie you to “life”, it becomes much easier to reinvent yourself, and to change things about yourself. It lifts away many mental boundaries. Think about it – often if you want to make a big change in your life, you don’t just need to change things about yourself, but you have to move other things around in your life. When you find yourself in a completely new environment, and context, you don’t have any of that baggage to weigh you down.

I suppose that in this sense I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve moved countries four times which is not something that many people get the opportunity to do. An example of a way that I changed significantly is in the kind of student that I am. Those who knew me at Melbourne University know that I was an infrequent attendee at many of my classes, that I did almost none of the required reading, and that my academic record is outstanding for all the wrong reasons because of that. I made a concerted effort during my honours year to become more studious, to do more reading, to do all of the assigned homework, and I was mostly successful, but it was very difficult, and I very often fell back on old habits. I was just very fortunate to have some exceptionally smart friends who helped me through the year. However, when I went to Columbia University in New York, I reinvented myself. I became that nerdy guy in class who did all the reading (and there was a LOT of reading to do), who did all the homework, and who prepared meticulously for class presentations (I solved a Rubik’s cube without looking at it while introducing the first few slides of a talk on the economic thinking behind the “Washington Consensus” in one class presentation). Anyone who knew me from Melbourne Uni would not have recognized me at Columbia, but they weren’t there to call me out on the act – and THAT is the point. You get to be whoever you want to be.

There are limits though. You may be able to cram for a history exam the night before, but you can’t “cram” for a speed skating race in the same way. Some things take time, and often those things require a lot of effort too. My shyness is something I’ve struggled with for most of my adult life. I do a pretty good job of hiding it these days, but on the inside I’m still a very shy person. In the past I’ve often had thoughts that “if I do _____” then that will give me confidence. Of course, that is a false supposition. It is a result of my mind looking for something on the outside to change something that is fundamentally on the inside. (I’m always looking for my deus ex machina). I’ve organized huge amnesty comedy nights, done a LOT of travel, nearly died a few times, tried to go to the Olympics as an athlete (and now as a coach), and have a bunch of quite decent university degrees from some very decent universities. Surely all of that should give you confidence… but it doesn’t. Only YOU can give yourself confidence, and it seems that this cannot be done overnight.

In the recent past, I’ve focused my quest for more confidence on specifics, in particular girls. Just having the courage to go up to one and start a conversation would be nice, but I find the very thought of it terrifying. I am, however, determined to be able to do it, and if my life experience and achievements are anything to go by, when I am determined to do something, I generally make some significant progress towards it. A more general approach is needed, to build that confidence and that courage.

So THAT is my new year’s resolution. To do things that I’ve never done. To try new things. To take myself out of my comfort zone. To put myself in a position where I can fail. To reach out further than I think I can go. To bite off more than I think I can chew. To really challenge myself emotionally. Because life is short, and I don’t want to get to the end of it with a long list of “what if”s. I want to change the world, and the first thing I need to learn about doing that is how to change myself. I need to do the things that I’ve never done, so that I can be who I want to be, which is evidently still a little bit further than who I currently am.

Sitting in a hotel room in Berlin on New Year’s eve is as good a time as any is write a long-belated post about growing up, and how it differs to ageing.

I recently turned 31. 31 is a nice age to become, and not only because it is a prime number. I dealt with a great deal of anxiety when I turned 30. Many of the reasons for this had nothing to do with my birthday, but had a lot to do with the surrounding circumstances of the environment – my relationship and career at the time being two major contributing factors. 31 is nice because it seems much less significant than 30 – it really feels like you’re only getting one year older. Somehow, turning 30 feels like suddenly becoming 10 years older. (yes, I realize that it is ironic for me to say such silly and innumerate things, being a mathematician and all).

Once again, events surrounding the turning of the years has given me perspective and food for thought. As it happened, my birthday coincided with a Speed Skating Junior World Cup, where I would be coaching the Danish team. I decided to go a few days early and have some “me time”, which really means hanging out with friends who are my friends by choice, and not simply people who I hang around with because we all happen to be in the same place and can speak a common language (veterans of elite sport will know what I mean).

The day before my birthday I was in Salzburg visiting the Christmas Market. Nothing in the Christmas Market really interested me, except perhaps for the glühwein, but fortunately Salzburg is a pretty nice place to be on its own merits. Walking around, I wandered into a music store and I fiddled around on the pianos for a bit. Then I saw a flute and thought to myself “wouldn’t it be nice to be able to play the flute?”. So I bought a flute.

31 isn’t ordinarily an age where people are recommended to take up new musical instruments, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I am assured by those around me (at least those who have a great deal of experience playing the flute) that my progress has been reasonably quick. I am reminded at this point of the time when I first began playing the piano (I would have been about 5 or 6) and my mother also took lessons for a while. I distinctly remember that her progress was not particularly quick, especially compared to mine, and that she soon gave up while I continued to eventually become quite a competent pianist despite failing my grade 8 exam twice at the age of 10. This continues to be my fear with learning the flute – that I will basically be hopeless at it, and be forced to admit that my 400 euro expenditure was a waste of money. It is noteworthy that I do have a slight advantage in that firstly, I have a reasonably thorough prior knowledge of music going into this, and secondly, that I don’t have a small child making rapid progress alongside my slower progress and discouraging my by making me look (sound) bad. The piano has also endowed me with a high degree of digital dexterity, and coordination, as was evidenced by the speed at which I was able to become good at the video game “Guitar Hero”.

Then there was the dinner. In the evening a few friends joined me for a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant in a nearby town. By the end of the evening, the restaurant staff had figured out that it was my birthday, and brought out my dessert – a tiramisu, with a candle in it (pictured above). As the waiter gave me the cake, he spoke to one of the German-speaking members of the party (we were in Germany) and said “how old is your friend today? 18? 19?”. Of course, most of the table knew enough German to know what had been said, and there was much laughter. I am used to having my age guessed lower (earlier in the evening, one of my friends guessed my age at 26) but this was quite ridiculous. However, on further consideration, not unprecedented.

Earlier in the year, about a month before my birthday, I was in Minsk, Belarus, coaching the Danish team at a Junior World Cup (this is a recurring theme). Unfortunately, the skater I was coaching had a bad fall and injured himself requiring a brief hospital visit on the first day of competition. While he was waiting in the medical room for the ambulance, I rushed to the organizing committee room to tell the organizers that my skater would have to withdraw from the remainder of the races for the weekend. One of the girls looked up and said “ok… but what about you? are you still racing later today?”. (in Speed Skating, you are classified as a junior until you are 19 years of age).

Fast forward to the Junior World Cup which happened a few days after I turned 31. On the first day of competition, one of my skaters was randomly selected for an anti-doping test. Despite me reminding everyone to have their passports at the track for identification, he did not, so I had to accompany him to the testing centre and sign a bunch of forms to “prove” that he was who he said he was. We both walked down the stairs, opened the door to greet the official and were greeted with “oh, are you both being tested?”.

Maybe it’s just genetics, maybe it’s because I don’t like being in the sun, maybe it’s my diet. Being an elite athlete is supposed to make you age a little faster than normal, but perhaps it’s a little bit different for speed skaters because we spend most of our time indoors. Whatever the cause, it is clear that I look much younger than I really am. Curiously on the few occasions when someone has guessed my age correctly, it has been after they learned some of my life history. Two bachelors degrees and a masters degree aren’t ordinarily found in persons under the age of 20. When you add up the time spent as a full-time athlete, and all of the epic travel, as well as the various bits of work experience I’ve done, then it makes much more sense to guess a number close to 30.

Is this a problem? Yes, a little. While it is certainly nice for people to think that I’m young, and I’m sure that when I’m 50 and I look 35, I’ll be thankful, it does present its own set of problems. People often don’t take me seriously because I just look like a kid. I also don’t look very physically intimidating because my facial hair patterns resemble those of a teenager more than those of a rugged athlete. I often get disbelieving, incredulous looks at the gym when I stack the squat bar with weights. I’ve all but given up on giving people advice on technique.

The biggest problem though lies with girls. Looking like a guy in his early 20s means that I get a great deal of attention from girls in their late teens or early 20s. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, and while I have learned to never say never, girls this young are generally undesirable for a serious relationship.

People who have travelled a lot know that you can “get along” with just about anyone, anywhere but with most people you’re limited to talking about the weather, or sports – the conversation never moves much further than superficial chit chat.

I make a big deal about being “unequally yoked”. The term appears in the Bible, in Corinthians in fact, and is used to describe a very different situation, but I like the metaphor. If you’ve got a cart, with two oxen pulling it, you want them to pull with roughly the same amount of force. Because of the way “modern” ox carts are constructed, it will still work if they are unequally yoked, but it will be difficult on BOTH of the oxen. What is the point of all these oxen metaphors? People who have travelled a lot know that you can “get along” with just about anyone, anywhere but with most people you’re limited to talking about the weather, or sports – the conversation never moves much further than superficial chit chat. To really connect with other people is much more difficult, yet for longer-term relationships this is quite important. Strangely, I have also learned that it is impossible to predict which people will click, and who won’t. However, I do know that it is more likely for people to click if they’ve had similar life experiences and are at similar places in their lives.

What implications does this have for relationship-relationships? I’ve travelled a lot, much more than would be considered average. I’ve lived for significant amounts of time in many different cities on four different continents, with significantly different cultures and languages. More than that – I’ve seen a lot, and experienced a lot. I’ve also nearly died three times. Perhaps I’m being overly idealistic, but in a partner I generally look for an equal. Someone who will challenge me – an intellectual and… er… physical sparring partner. Luckily, the world is a very big place and there are nearly seven billion people in it. I am still optimistic that a suitable partner can be found. However, I do recognize that in all probability, she will be older than I am. Indeed my most recent ex was older, and we clicked very well, at least when she wasn’t busy being a mother.

And so we come back to the age thing. If I look like I’m in my early 20s, what are the chances that a girl in her late 20s or early 30s will show any interest in me? It makes me realize just how important physical appearance really is. My previous ex always felt insecure around me because even though she also looked younger than she really was, I looked even younger. Many times I was mistaken for a student of hers, or an au pair. Which seems funny at the time, but really is kind of awkward. What other possibilities exist? Perhaps a girl in her early 20s who is one her way towards accumulating the kind of life experience which will make her a good sparring partner might come along. This initially seems like a good prospect, but then I think back to what I was like when I really was in my early 20s (and being mistaken for a schoolboy) and what I was like. Not only what I was like, but also how drastically I changed from year to year. Every year since I was about 20, my entire outlook on life has changed. From year to year, I was a completely different person in some significant way, and here lies the rub – experiences change us. And with the kinds of people I like to mix with (and possibly date) experiences change us on a very fundamental level.

Maybe I’m overthinking things. In fact, I’m sure that I am. Rules, expectations, preconceptions, they all get thrown out the window when the love bug bites. On the subject of experiences changing us – I’m obviously worried about growing apart from a partner, but it seems more likely that once the relationship is initiated, that two would grow closer together. Also, it is likely that there are many more people out there who, like me, don’t seem to age very quickly. My ex was one, and come to think of it, I know a handful of others too (of course, I don’t think I’d have the guts to ever ask them out). Of course, while we’re on the subject of overthinking relationships, there’s all the agony of deciding where to “settle” which, in itself, is a slightly terrifying prospect for someone who has become so accustomed to moving around… and then there’s kids, and what to do with them, where to raise them, how to raise them, and so on and so forth. But I might leave that to a later post.

So I’ve owned a flute for exactly three weeks. Coincidentally, it is also Christmas Eve, so what better way to display my mastery of this new instrument than to play a traditional christmas carol in front of a Christmas tree? (I can’t think of one either)

I have a problem. I’m stuck in a bind;
This season, I have many presents to find.
The shops have gone crazy, everything is on sale!
The shoppers are worse, seeking their holy grail.

But where does this leave us environmentalists?
we’ve spent all year pointing and shaking our fists
at the invisible hand, the free market if you will:
whose effects are much-blamed for society’s ills

I’ll explain if you’re late to this Christmas party
consumption heats econ soup – makes it hearty!
all that spending drives aggregate demand
with it growth, jobs, GDP hand-in-hand

so spend spend spend spend they cry out with ease
and borrow borrow borrow to fuel this disease
but stop and consider from where this debt comes
nature is left the remainder of our sums

she can’t borrow from nothing, it comes from tomorrow
our partying now, will soon lead to sorrow
but here I still am, no closer to winning
the game which has the consumption beast grinning

’cause I found out the hard way you cannot go to meetings
with close friends and family without gifts with your greetings
many days after Christmas, I had to be able
to endure disappointed, disapproving looks ‘cross the table

those hypocrites say “it’s the thought that counts”
but leave them gift-less and you will be denounced
but how does one give an appropriate gift
without leaving mother nature adrift?

how do we reinvent our gift-giving season
when cultural practice won’t give way to reason?
we often do speak of a ‘green revolution’
and sometimes we also like redistribution

so let us continue to purchase our presents
but by doing so differently, make clear our intents
from Oxfam Unwrapped, I’ll purchase a goat!
which is really a much better gift than a coat

you won’t get to meet it, or feed it, or pet it
but you’ll help a poor village, and never regret it
milk they produce, and kids don’t forget
and fertilizer, so their farmers won’t sweat

but let’s say you’re not such a fan of the fauna
then may I suggest buying land, do you wanna?
coolearth.org does a wonderful job
selling patches of rainforest so loggers can’t rob

us of these essential carbon sinks
they even protect locals from corporate hijinks
in fact they do plenty of meaningful stuff
but I’m starting to feel like I’ve spoken enough

this holiday season consider your buying
consumption’s no good, and neither’s your flying
but rather than hoarding more mountains of stuff
make choices and choose that enough is enough

people are in need, the earth needs our healing
buy stuff that helps others, and pass on the feeling
for giving is rather unshakable, see?
but who defines what’s to be giv’n – it is we

so give, and be generous, but please do take heed
the recipients should be those who are most in need
I trust that you all will do what is right
a merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

No doubt many viewers are exposed to sports which they don’t normally get to see. Big mainstream sports like football get plenty of TV coverage and in most countries opportunities to take up the sport are plentiful. The same can’t be said of some of the smaller sports, like archery. I happen to have some expertise in this particular sport and thought it might be interesting to give a little how-to guide for anyone considering taking up archery as a sport after watching it at the games.

Archery is relatively easy to take up if you know what you’re doing. Figuring this out can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. In most cases, the easiest way to get into it is to find an archery club. Why is this easier than getting a bow and setting up some targets in your back yard? For starters, a club will likely have some bows that you can borrow for some kind of trial period to see if you actually like the sport. Next, and probably most importantly, the club will probably have a handful of experienced archers who can teach you how to shoot properly. In archery, technique is everything. There is a nontrivial amount of physical conditioning required to compete at the highest level, but this is almost never a limiting factor in performance. Good technique and an ability to concentrate and focus for very long periods of time are skills which are highly-developed in an elite archer.

But what about those bows? You may ask. A competitor at the Olympics will typically have two identical setups. Bows which have a bewildering number of “bits” attached to them. Fortunately, Archery is nothing like triathlon in that past a certain point (generally, very early in an archer’s competitive career) it is impossible to “buy” better results. I am referring of course, to many a middle-aged triathlete with more money than cents who goes out and buys an expensive carbon fibre time trial bike with full disc wheels in an effort to better the personal best set in their first iron man triathlon. But I digress… below is a diagram of all of the components of a typical olympic recurve bow setup.

That’s it. There isn’t much more to it. The bit of the bow you hold onto is called the riser. The bits that bend and store potential energy before it is imparted to the arrow are called the limbs. The string is a fairly straightforward bunch of synthetic fibers (anything that doesn’t stretch when subjected to a pulling force all day) which are twisted to make the string more round. The nock point is there simply to ensure that the arrow is always nocked in the same place – consistency is the name of the game in archery. The sight is there to help you aim – ordinarily you line up the sight with the (blurry) string. The clicker is a device which you place over your arrows and “clicks” when the arrow is drawn back a certain length – once again ensuring that the length of the draw is consistent over every arrow. The stabilizer rods (center and side) are there to help balance the bow – they ensure that the center of mass of the whole bow is close to the handle so that when the string is released, there is no unpredictable movement coming from the rest of the bow.

You will also need an arm guard to stop the string from hitting your arm when released (this hurts a lot), and also a shoulder guard which prevents your clothing from catching the string as it is being released. Being an outdoor sport, sunglasses and a hat also come highly recommended, and the archer in the photograph above has both.

Strange Physics

Just before getting into the nitty-gritty of how to shoot, I think it’s worth mentioning a slightly unusual aspect of archery physics which has a dramatic effect on how you set up your bow. It’s called the “archer’s paradox”. For a right-handed shooter, the arrow rest on the riser is positioned on the left side. Why is that? Perhaps a diagram will help:

The red line represents the straight line which goes from the back of the string, through the center of your sight, and all the way to the middle of the target. In the first picture, the arrow is at rest, just before being fired. In the second picture the arrow has *just* been released. It bends slightly because… things bend slightly when you subject them to an accelerative force, especially things shaped like arrows. The reason it bends in that particular direction is because of the way the string comes out of the fingers of an archer’s right hand. The arrow wants to bend back, of course, and it does… and continues to bend more since it is still being accelerated by the bowstring. If the bow is set up correctly, it will reach the maximum bend in the other direction just as it is halfway past the riser (middle picture). As it continues on its flight, the bends back, *clearing* the bow, and continues to bend backwards and forwards all the way to the target. This is the paradox – a perfectly set-up bow will generally have the arrow pointed slightly off-line at full-draw. If you had been very observant, you will have noticed this in the slow-motion replay footage from the archery at the Olympics. Below is a video illustrating this in action.

Suffice to say that it is a difficult and complicated task to correctly set up a bow so that the arrow clears the bow consistently. Without a high-speed camera, it basically comes down to trial-and-error. An arrow that is too stiff won’t bend enough and will hit the riser as it goes through causing all kinds of unpredictable inconsistencies. The way the archer releases the string will have an impact on this. The weight (the force required to pull the bow to “full-draw”) of the bow will have an effect on how much the arrow bends. The weight of the metal point will have an effect, as will the length of the arrows.

Shooting

You put the arrow on the string, pull the string back, and let go. The trick is to do it exactly the same way every time. It’s best to begin shooting at a shorter distance, like 30m. At that distance, a terrible bow setup will still give you decent results as long as your technique is good. When aiming, the idea is to line up the center of the target with your sight and the string. In theory, this should ensure left-right consistency as long as you always release consistently. Up-down consistency is achieved by always drawing the arrow the same length. Begin by pulling the string back to the same point on your chin every time (this is called the “anchor point”). Some archers like to press the string against their noses for an additional anchor point, but this will largely depend on the shape of your face. The whole idea of the clicker is to make sure that you do this, but it is no guarantee. If you’re pulling the arrow back quickly, you’ll pull it through the clicker, the clicker will click, and you’ll react to it at some point after you hear the sound (usually a tenth of a second). If you pull the arrow back very slowly, all those things will happen at the same speed, which means that the distance past the clicker that you’ve pulled the arrow will be shorter, and your arrow will come out of the bow a little bit slower than if you had pulled it back quickly. You need to find a rhythm. This is very difficult when you’re concentrating on shooting, so to practice this, many professional archers shoot “bare bale” which is where they shoot at a target but without the target… often a bale of hay. Without the distraction of aiming, the archer can then concentrate on the rhythm of the shot.

Breathe. A lot of beginner archers hold their breath when they pull the arrow back – don’t do this. It is important to breathe. Breathe in, breathe out, pause here between breaths, and shoot inside that pause. It is also important to keep your teeth together with a gentle bite. This ensures that the anchor point on your chin is always in the same place. Stand up straight. Try to line everything up – target, sight, string, your back elbow. Keep your bow arm’s elbow slightly flexed (most people’s arms are perfectly straight only when the elbow is slightly flexed). If you find that you have a different eye-dominance to your preferred hand, it is generally better to shoot according to your eye dominance i.e. if you are left eye dominant, then you should shoot left-handed. Archery is a very relaxed sport, the finger-release must be relaxed to be consistent. In the book “Zen and the Art of Archery” by Eugen Herrigel he describes the string’s release like “a dewdrop rolling off a blade of grass”

Some final notes: archery is about consistency. It’s all about the “grouping” of your arrows – you can always adjust your sight to put your group in the middle, but if your group is too spread out, then it won’t help your score much. Most good risers will allow for a small amount of adjustment in the weight of the limbs. Use this to “tune” your bow so that your arrows come out cleanly. Do not be tempted to go up in weight. Sure, you won’t get far in competitive archery if your draw weight is less than 40 lb, but too many archers fall into the trap of trying to pull the fastest, heaviest bow that they can. A fast, well set-up bow can cover up for a lot of technique inconsistencies, but it will also cause you to fatigue sooner. A slow 10 is always worth more than a fast 9.

If you want to watch someone for technique Ki Bo Bae, the Korean girl who won the gold medal in the women’s individual has the best technique I’ve ever seen. The Koreans are consistently the strongest country in the world in archery, and most of the good equipment comes out of Korea. Archery doesn’t seem to favour any particular build although having big boobs would be a disadvantage (gets in the way of the string). Wide-set eyes and square jaws can help, as can having broad shoulders, but none of those attributes is essential. You do need to have good eyesight – if you wear glasses or contacts, make sure your prescription is correct.

Most importantly – have fun! Archery is a relaxing and rewarding sport. And just like most other sports, if you want to go to the Olympics, you’re going to have to practice… a LOT.