Up to Speed is all about the intersection of sports research and women athletes. The book starts with a look at how scientific research has historically utilized predominantly male subjects (although I would like to add that it also utilizes very small sample sizes in general, and I'm not sure how generalizable most sports research truly is), goes into a discussion of women's physiology and anatomy (with an entire chapter devoted to the menstrual cycle), delves into clothing (in particular, the sports bra) and then devotes three chapters to key times in women's lives (adolescence, pregnancy, and menopause).

I think books like this are important. Anything that brings up the sad inequality between women's and men's sports is valuable if it helps to bring about some change for the better. (Not to mention the sh*t that non-binary and transgender athletes have to deal with.) Hopefully people with the power to do something about it will read this book. For me, it was just a frustrating read. Like, I know how hard it is to buy sports bras that don't suck. Welcome to my life.

The book was also kind of a frustrating resource. As a female athlete getting into triathlon, I am starting to viscerally understand the issues of wearing proper bike shorts. The author highlights different women-developed gear and clothing here and there in the book, so I was delighted to hear about Machine for Freedom in the chapter on clothing ("Beyond Shrink It and Pink It"). Then I looked them up. In 2018 they were purchased by Specialized (upon seeing one of their horrifically sexist billboards in the late 2000s I vowed never to buy a bike from them). Early in 2023 (likely just too late for the author to know about it while writing the book), Specialized stopped producing their gear and basically shuttered them. So, yeah. Thanks book. Now I'm even more frustrated at being a female athlete. (But are there other brands that are good? I don't know! The book doesn't even hint at where you would go to find out.)

Honestly I found the three chapters on major female life events to be hard to read. I had to completely skip over the chapter on pregnancy ("Family Matters"). I'm not sure if the author just went purposefully overboard on the discussions of pregnancy-related health issues, but it was too much for me as a child-free-by-choice woman to handle. Maybe I'm a wuss. But if you're easily triggered by graphic depictions of injury, I would recommend you read that chapter with caution.

Even the chapter on menopause just made me feel depressed. The author tries to have a positive attitude like, not all women have such a miserable experience! But she focuses on the negative aspects of everything to a really large extent that it just made me feel anxiety about the fact that I'm turning 40 soon. Like, my life is going to be miserable if it's 10% as bad as her discussion on perimenopause. I get that women need to have conversations about these things. But it's another thing to write a book chapter focusing on how horrible menopause is.

Finally, the author laments the slow pace of progress. "And what's incredibly frustrating about science is its slow pace, though it's an intrinsic feature of the scientific process." (From the conclusion, page 255.) No. That is not true. The pace of the expansion of knowledge is not an intrinsic feature of the scientific method, just look at the leaps and bounds made in physics in such a short period in the early 20th century! While the scientific method does require fastidiousness, integrity, and other similar traits that tend to slow things down, the major thing that limits improvements in scientific research today is money. Where is the funding going? Who is being paid to conduct this research? What topics are being funded? Anything else isn't going to happen. Don't blame policy problems on science.

(Also, I would like the author to consider the flip-side to her lament. Look at what happens when quick-results focused journalists hype up some misunderstood finding in a research study and plaster it all over the news. That's how you wind up with long-lived myths such as "high reps low weight" that are incredibly pervasive in sports and exercise.)

While I didn't dislike this book, I also didn't particularly love it either. I didn't find it compelling enough to pick up and willingly read... it became kind of a chore. At the end I was happy to finally return it back to the library. While writing this concluding paragraph of my review I struggle to even think of whom I would recommend the book to. I guess if you're interested in the intersection of sports and women athletes, and don't mind being seriously annoyed, you may want to read this book. ( )