The Outdoor Edit: Optimizing vs. Living, Rad Women in MTB + More!
Hey everyone—
This week, I feel like all I've been seeing are articles about how to optimize your holidays, from fast dishes to make to best sales to the traditional 'how to stay fit and healthy' (which, yes, is an article I have definitely written in the past and will again). But then I stumbled across an article that digs into why we optimize, and suggests that maybe some stuff shouldn't be optimized. While some holiday stuff, I'm more than happy to hack, there are parts: cooking, picking the perfect gift for certain people, watching my few favorite holiday movies... that stuff shouldn't be optimized away. So this weekend, we took some downtime with my sister and brother in law, played with our new niece and their puppy, and basically enjoyed being utterly un-optimized. So now that I'm feeling a combo of exhausted and refreshed, I'm psyched to dive back into the workweek!
OK: Let's talk. What I'm psyched on this week!
XO, Molly
PS: Respond to this email or hit me up on Instagram... I would love to hear from you all, what you're into, what you want to see more of, etc., so feel free to respond to this and let me know!
1 ON OPTIMIZATION
Over on Lifehacker, I stumbled on this article talking about the idea of optimization and whether we've kind of jumped the shark on being productive. It's a super compelling essay that really got me thinking... Especially since I was recently interviewing pro cyclist (10-time Tour de France racer) Laurens Ten Dam about how he balances all of his jobs — editor of Bicycling Netherlands, pro roadie, gravel race promoter, podcaster, dad... and what he told me is that he lives by the motto "RIDE FAST, LIVE SLOW." Even though he's super busy, he makes time for backyard barbeques and time spent really focusing on his family, being intentional with his free time — not obsessively productive with his free time, just intentional about using it properly.
Favorite lines from the article:
Yes, I could wait another year to buy a phone and hope that the new version has a slightly better camera. I could look up a million recipes and then a million restaurants on Yelp to find the perfect meal for a perfect first date. I could wake up at 4 a.m. and meditate and journal for an hour and get to inbox zero and work out for three hours and write 3,000 words of my new novel and go to bed at 8 p.m. Or I could just buy the phone I want now, pick the restaurant around the corner I’ve gone to once a week for the past three months, and sleep in. I could give myself a break and stop thinking about how to use every second of my life in the most “productive” way possible. ... "In other words, I could stop trying to maximize my life and instead just live it."
Not Everything Needs to Be Optimized by Alicia Adamczyk on Lifehacker
2 THIS PODCAST WITH SONYA LOONEY
I won't even go into why this episode is so great, but if you love women in sport, rad mountain bikers, adventurous lifestyles and entrepreneurship, you've got to listen to our Consummate Athlete Podcast episode with one of my favorite humans, Sonya Looney.
3 IS LIGHTER BETTER?
This article from Triathlon Magazine Canada is one that I've sent to a few people this week: Is lighter faster? Is lighter healthier? It's something that I've personally struggled with and internally debated for... well, a decade, if I'm being honest. I grew up as a pretty muscular kid in the late 90s, where Nicole Richie and the Olsen Twins were the epitome of cool, and I was... not that body type, no matter what I did. Full disclosure? I can't remember a time when I didn't want to 'lose 5 pounds' or have some kind of arbitrary goal like that, and when I discovered endurance racing, it shifted from wanting to lose a couple pounds for fashion to lose a couple pounds for speed. My body had other ideas: It really, really likes to stay at the weight that I've been at for years, no matter how much I'm training. This Triathlon article was awesome because it looked at that typical argument of 'if you add a 10 lb backpack to a runner, he slows down, and when you take it off, he speeds up.' That makes losing weight seem like a no-brainer, but it absolutely isn't. There's so much more at play than simply magically dropping poundage without other stuff in our bodies being impacted. I highly recommend reading the article, it's short but it's great food for thought.
(PS I have lots more thoughts here, and so does my new coach... LMK if it's a topic that interests you!)
4 PRE-ORDER SHRED GIRLS + GET STICKERS!
Just a reminder, since pre-orders are key to the success of any book, and I would love to get this into the hands of tons of girls, not just ones who already love riding bikes. So, if you've enjoyed my writing over the years, give this book a shot and buy a copy for the Shred Girl (or future Shred Girl) in your life!
An empowering new series from the cyclist who runs Shred-Girls.com is guaranteed to give readers an adrenaline rush--and the confidence girls gain from participating in sports!
It's time to ride and save the day!
Lindsay can't wait to spend her summer break reading comics and watching superhero movies--until she finds out she'll be moving in with her weird older cousin Phoebe instead. And Phoebe has big plans for Lindsay: a BMX class at her bike park with cool-girl Jen and perfectionist Ali.
Lindsay's summer of learning awesome BMX tricks with new friends and a new bike turns out to be more epic than any comic book--and it's all leading up to a jumping competition.
But some of the biker boys don't think girls should be allowed to compete in BMX. Now it's up to Lindsay, Jen, and Ali to win the competition and prove that anyone can be great at BMX.
PS: If you pre-order, email me the receipt and I'll send you a signed Shred Girls postcard + Shred Girls bike frame stickers so you can still give it as a Christmas present!
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#swag
That's it for this week—if you found anything inspiring in here, do me a solid and forward to a friend!