www.huffingtonpost.in/kiran-gandhi/why-i-ran-the-london-mara_b_7996522.html

Why did she do that again? She's all over the place. Not convincing enough.

In any case, it's disgusting. It's as disgusting as pissing or shitting in one's pants or having mucus and phlem drip down one's nose because, 'I am not ashamed, but proud of my bodily excretions and in order to prove that, I want to thrust it upon you all'.

Kinnera wrote:Why did she do that again? She's all over the place. Not convincing enough.

Yeah, it was brave of her to still run when her periods started a day before the marathon. But the activist tone she takes is stretched - seems more like a case of making a virtue out of necessity.

Idiot and a moron

She should have gone to run in Lahore, Patna, Hissar or Madurai to raise awareness and fight against stigma. London was not the right place. She just doesn't have the sense of cleanliness.

There's stigma against diarrhea as well, but I don't see anyone running and dripping when they have diarrhea.

What a jerk

Merlot Daruwala wrote:

Kinnera wrote:Why did she do that again? She's all over the place. Not convincing enough.

Yeah, it was brave of her to still run when her periods started a day before the marathon. But the activist tone she takes is stretched - seems more like a case of making a virtue out of necessity.

Notwithstanding her unorthodox approach (running a Marathon race during her periods without using pads etc.), she does raise awareness about the need for sex education in schools and the importance of proper info. to young girls about female hygiene and cleanliness etc. ... 
http://www.geocities.ws/lamberdar/feminine_issues.html

Kinnera wrote:Why did she do that again? She's all over the place. Not convincing enough.

Because she is a Gandhi, and has to rebel against the Brits.

Hopefully she does not have any HIV or Hep.

as is usual in my case, I have no fixed opinion on this.

she obviously wanted to run, so sitting out was not an option. pads would have made her cave in in the middle of it. don't know how a tampon would have held up. personally, the feeling of anything dripping is the most uncomfortable feeling for me... but since she must be also sweating profusely, guess she didn't notice... my technical question would be, if all that extra wetness itself caused chafing or not. Dunno about hygiene. someone with diarrhea will have other issues to be able to compete the race. someone with a runny nose may still chose to run and people around them would just scorn, if at all. regarding hygiene, not entirely sure if it's that big a concern on open roads where the blood can fall w/o affecting others.

did she need to make a case about it? dunno. she could have just said, 'I made the decision the night before and I am going to stick with it. shamers be damned'.

now comes my main point... if you know the date of any event well in advance, and you know your cycle, and you can do basic math, something like this is easily avoidable. especially if you are in a first-world country with easy medical access. for the last 20-30 years women have been avoiding periods on critical days. you can take the meds to postpone. the meds can cause severe side reactions, so you adjust the cycle 2-3 months in advance, and have a smooth run (in this case literally) on the event-day. If it's not something critical, then you try home-remedies, whichever method you *think* works for you, to prepone or postpone your periods. I have an important travel 4-5 months from now, it's not critical, but I could be within range of that, so I am trying every cycle to postpone by 2-3 days each. personally, preponing is much more fun than postponing, but whatevs...  

She herself might be too young to know everything, and there are a few rare women who never discuss these things... but I wonder if she ever discussed this with other women (elders or friends), and/or the so called literate women around her ever advised her on this. If I am close to a woman, I basically know her dates, and can guess for her how any event might get impacted, and bring it up too. In general, women could be uneducated in this, but they are each others support system.

Regarding being aware, I know most women into sports candidly discuss these things with medical or non medical people. So, I am not sure how this was not high up in her list of preparedness. To me, that's a bigger surprise than her having run the way she did.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:

Kinnera wrote:Why did she do that again? She's all over the place. Not convincing enough.

Yeah, it was brave of her to still run when her periods started a day before the marathon. But the activist tone she takes is stretched - seems more like a case of making a virtue out of necessity.

Brave? Commendable is the word. While the meds would've taken care of her cramps, running the marathon with warm, sticky lumps dripping down between the legs is most commendable. I don't know how she overcame that icky and uncomfortable feeling. One also feels weak, esp a few hrs into the first day, with all the heavy bleeding. Kudos to her!

as always the comments are more interesting than the article itself.

how do elite female athletes deal with this?

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:how do elite female athletes deal with this?

One can easily postpone or prepone the periods with meds. Not just athletes, women in India know well how to do it. If they have a trip to Tirupathi or some such place or if the brides have their cycle around the wedding date, etc they try to adjust their periods accordingly. It's not something that one wants to do frequently, i guess. But, it can be done. 

I was reading some of the posts there and they talked something about the professional athletes using cups. I don't know what it is.

i would think elite athletes take birth control to stop the periods altogether for few months at a time. I know some regular non athletic women do that, so they must be doing something similar.

@ Vidya. With tampons, you won't even feel that you have your periods. Most comfortable! I mean, ppl swim with the tampons inside.

I plan to educate myself soon about

How tampons hold up in a marathon
How regular atheletes affect their cycles and handle nutrition bone loss etc
Do birth control work like I think they do

Lol, she did raise awareness, gotta hand her that

Beatrix Kiddo wrote:i would think elite athletes take birth control to stop the periods altogether for few months at a time. I know some regular non athletic women do that, so they must be doing something similar.

Elite athletes are up to their eyeballs in testosterone. I doubt if they even have proper periods.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:

Beatrix Kiddo wrote:i would think elite athletes take birth control to stop the periods altogether for few months at a time. I know some regular non athletic women do that, so they must be doing something similar.

Elite athletes are up to their eyeballs in testosterone. I doubt if they even have proper periods.

LOL! Great e-gyan

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:how do elite female athletes deal with this?

Elite athletes train during periods while using whatever they use, to make their mind, body comfortable with fluids/cramps.

Elite athletes can postpone their periods for months through meds. Some do it.

Kinnera wrote:@ Vidya. With tampons, you won't even feel that you have your periods. Most comfortable! I mean, ppl swim with the tampons inside.

Why do I fell Beatrix K was kidding when Beatrix K asked that question. 

A 40+ woman with a 15+ daughter can only be testing other people's knowledge when asking such a question.

excuse me

southindian wrote:

Kinnera wrote:@ Vidya. With tampons, you won't even feel that you have your periods. Most comfortable! I mean, ppl swim with the tampons inside.

Why do I fell Beatrix K was kidding when Beatrix K asked that question. 

A 40+ woman with a 15+ daughter can only be testing other people's knowledge when asking such a question.

When i posted that as a response to BK, i didn't mean to imply that she doesn't know abt tampons and has nvr used them. That would be ridiculous. It is for other ppl's knowledge and subtle indication that the runner could've used them.

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

Merlot Daruwala wrote:

Kinnera wrote:Why did she do that again? She's all over the place. Not convincing enough.

Yeah, it was brave of her to still run when her periods started a day before the marathon. But the activist tone she takes is stretched - seems more like a case of making a virtue out of necessity.

Notwithstanding her unorthodox approach (running a Marathon race during her periods without using pads etc.), she does raise awareness about the need for sex education in schools and the importance of proper info. to young girls about female hygiene and cleanliness etc. ... 
http://www.geocities.ws/lamberdar/feminine_issues.html

Seva, a few decades ago, sanitary napkins were probably available only in big cities and towns and not many knew about them. Now they are available at every kirana store even in small towns. The problem is their affordability for the poor people. The domestic help at my mom's home has three young daughters. I wonder if they all use the pads. The monthly budget for sanitary pads for four women in the household would be quite a bit and i wonder if they spend so much on them. Hence they do what women were doing a generation ago: use old cloth. In an ideal world, every woman in the world should be using a pad and changing them frequently. But unfortunately, economics don't allow that. The solution is female education and improving their economic conditions. The focus should be that.

Now imagine this: If women in US were to go with, 'no pads or tampon month' in support of the women of the world who can't afford them and go around with bloody pants, how would it be? Even a women, i'd be grossed out with that. Whatever be the cause, it's indecent. What the woman did was inappropriate and inconsiderate. There could be small girls and boys in the spectators of the marathon. How appropriate is it to display one's bloody pants to them and imagine the embarrassing situation of the parents must have been put in. That, apart from showing her periods blood to unwilling adult spectators too. Not a nice thing to do.

agreed, Kinnera. Hers certainly was a very strange approach to draw attention to the need for sex education in schools and overall feminine hygiene and cleanliness etc. in the Third World countries.

i hv only one question. how does a 2 week old or 2 month old tampon left inside look or smell ?