Tag Archives: riding

Hold my beer, …

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“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” ~ Sir Edmund Hillary

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As Sunday quickly approaches, I am left to ponder what the hell I have managed to get myself into yet again. After all, since the beginning of my cycling journey I haven’t been known for making the soundest decisions…

Here is the formal description of this Sunday’s Six Gap Century Ride:
“The Six Gap Century boasts many of the same roads and mountain climbs as the elite Tour de Georgia. The ultra­-challenging route takes you up and down six of the steepest climbs in the North Georgia Mountains. Elevations on the six gaps in this ride range from 1,400 feet to 3,460 feet. The toughest climb, Hogpen Gap, will challenge even the strongest riders, averaging a 7% grade for seven miles, with sections as steep as 15%.”


Let me give a little history lesson about some of this course… In 2014, Three Gap Fifty which consists of the first and last two “gaps” (climbs) of Six Gap Century was my very first organized ride EVER. Yes, a Miami girl decided that her first organized ride ever would be 58 miles with 6,385 vertical feet of climbing. If I may say so myself, it was NOT my smartest move ever…

Wolfpen Gap made me cry. I wanted to quit. I wanted to throw my bike off the mountain and never ride again.

But I did not quit.
I did not throw my bike off the mountain.
I did not even walk once.
But, had one more person told me that the rest stop was ‘right around the next turn’ I may have opted to get off my bike and throw them AND their bike off the mountain.

I finished Three Gap Fifty and it was amazing, glorious, and utterly painful all at the same time. That was the day that I truly fell in love with riding in the mountains.

There is something about the pain and suffering that goes along with riding in the mountains that I hate, love, and crave all at the same time. It is the epitome of entering the “pain cave” and “embracing the suck.” There is no way around it and the only way to go is up, one pedal stroke at a time. There is this funny swerving movement that starts to happen when going suuuuper sloooow up a steep incline… You can’t control it, it just happens. When stuck in that space you only have two options, keep pedaling or get off and walk. The problem with quitting and walking is the realization that you will have to walk the rest of the way up because there is absolutely no way to get back on your bike and get forward momentum again. So you just keep pedaling, one stroke after another, how ever you have to in order to keep moving. When one set of muscles starts to hurt, you simply start pulling up on your strokes until those muscles start hurting too and then you go back to pedaling like normal. You repeat the process over and over and over again until you reach the top.

It appears that I love to put myself through the wringer whenever possible. Despite, analyzing this fact to death, I have yet to figure out exactly why I do these things to myself.

I love a challenge.
I love the feeling of being on the edge of life and death.
I love proving the doubters (including myself) wrong.
I love the suffering.
I love giving everything I have and then digging deeper for a tiny bit more.
I love crossing the finish line.
I love the exhaustion and rush of emotions that comes afterwards.

Six Gap Century is a bucket list ride for me and I have been waiting three years to finally get to do it. (I even tried to convince my friend we should do it in 2014, thank God that he knew better than I did then.) Unfortunately, this has not been a banner year for me so far with all these injuries. I am not going into this ride having trained how I wanted/needed to. But, what I do know is that I am in 100% better shape now than when I did Three Gap Fifty, Assault on the Carolinas, and The Assault on Mt. Mitchell (read about my Mt. Mitchell ride here: The quest towards a century ride, REALIZED.). I also know that I have a bike that is lighter, faster, and better than the one I had back then. And, most importantly, I know the drive and determination that I carry inside me to be successful at the stupid things I challenge myself to.

What’s the saying? “If you’re going to be dumb then you better be tough.”

I am incredibly lucky that I am going to be able to do this ride with one of my favorite people and biggest inspirations, Caroline. She is, by far, my favorite training partner (sorry Zac). Caroline drives me to be better at everything that I do. I know that there will be moments where I will want to quit and may not be able to rely on my own brain/heart to push me forward so I am thankful that I will have her there to look over at and give me the “put on your big girl panties and suck it up” face.

Although I am nervous about how my foot and hip will hold up, I am beyond excited for the challenge that is ahead of me. I have been waiting for this day for so long and I am 100% sure that the climbs and descents will not disappoint. My main goal for Sunday is to soak up every single second of this experience no matter how difficult it gets.

I have written about visualization in some of my past posts and that is exactly what I have been doing the last few days, visualizing this experience and visualizing myself (in one piece) crossing that finish line.

And, let me tell ya… the end of this ride feels pretty damn sweet.

See everyone on the flipside!

Complicatingly Uncomplicated

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“Life is found in the dance between your deepest desire and your greatest fear. ~Tony Robbins”

The road.
The road is my home.
The road is where I belong.
The road is where solace, peace, and understanding live.
The road is uncomplicated; its twists, turns, and obstacles are marked.
The road is complicatingly uncomplicated.

Life.
Life is complicated.
As uncomplicated as you strive to make life, complication always appears.
Life’s twists and turns are not marked; sometimes these objects are closer than they appear.
Life is complicatingly complicated.

As much as I run from complication, I continue to find myself nestled right in its arms.
So I turn to the road…

I visit the road to escape from life.
I visit the road to escape complication.
I visit the road to find solace, peace, and understanding.
I visit the road to tire my brain, to exhaust my heart, to close my eyes, to simply “be.”

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Photo Credit: Caroline Worrall

370 miles by 37

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“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” ~Satchel Paige

A couple weeks after doing Ironman 70.3 Florida (which I have yet to blog about) I got injured playing kickball. Kickball… Not one of the bagillion asinine other things that I do on a daily basis, I got hurt playing an elementary school sport. I went to the orthopedic clinic the next day and the diagnosis sucked just as bad as the pain in my foot. “It’s most likely a stress fracture but no way to tell for sure without an MRI.” This was quickly followed up with, “you’ll have to wear walking boot which means no swimming, cycling, or running for a while.”

Excuse me. No what?

To say the time in the boot sucked would be the understatement of the year… I had to pass my bike in the living room every day, multiple times a day, and it looked so sad just sitting there. I tried to follow the doctor’s plan as much as I could but I did throw in a ride, just to see if I could.

When I went back to the doctor, just shy of a month later, he cleared me to wean out of the boot, start riding/swimming again, and slowly start running again as well. ‘Wean out of the boot,’ to me, meant the boot was completely done. I went right back into riding with no issue but running was a different story…

When I finally started running again, I could tell that I had lost a lot of the run endurance that I had built up through my Ironman 70.3 training. Not only had I lost the endurance but my foot would burn while I ran making it that much harder to go faster and further. After several runs, I decided that this was probably going to be my ‘new normal.’ My age was catching up to me. I was starting to feel old. I felt like my body was starting to betray me. I hate getting old. When I turned 21, I was ready to stop counting. Unfortunately, that’s just not how life works.

Friends and family kept asking me what I was training for next, what races were on my calendar… I had no answer for that question because I had no clue. My body felt off and weak but I knew I needed something… I needed something to push towards. I needed something to make me believe again. I needed something to help me stop feeling broken.

Injuries steal something from you; not just endurance, muscle mass, or other physical stuff. Injuries emotionally rob you too. Injuries make you begin to doubt your body’s ability to be pushed to the brink because injuries are a stark reminder that there actually is a limit to what your body can take. They remind you that, even if you make it through training for crazy events injury-free, it is something small and unexpected that can sweep the rug from under your feet and knock you down.

On Thursday, June 16 I decided to go to a 4 mile group run with some friends that starts from a local beer/wine shop called Tipples Brews. It was the third Thursday so they bring out the race clock, which means I would inevitably be pushing harder than normal because I always want to ‘beat’ the clock. And pushing myself to the brink is exactly what I did… I took off near the front of the pack right behind a friend that I know likes to push her pace which makes me push right behind her. My foot started to burn around mile 2 but I wasn’t ready to back off so I kept pushing. Somewhere between mile 2 and 3 she got further and further away as she pushed her pace more but I kept steady to mine. Mile 3 was brutal but I dug deep and ended up finishing the 4 miles in 34:08 (8:32min/mile). I was on an emotional high from a great pace coupled with having had a couple ciders when I decided to give myself a seemingly impossible challenge to achieve…

I was going to ride 370 miles in 7 days.

Why 370 miles and why in 7 days? You see, a couple hours before the group run I realized that it was my last Thursday of being 36 years old. I knew the way the rest of the week was going to go already… Every day I was going to wake up and have the same conversation with myself, “Oh my God, it’s the last Friday… Saturday… Sunday… Monday… Tuesday… Wednesday…”

I didn’t want to do it; I needed to change the story in my mind. My M.O. tends to be that whenever I need to change the story in my mind, I dream up some outrageous thing to strive towards, something that will take up my time and distract me from whatever negativity needs to be avoided. I knew there was no way that I was going to run 37 miles on my birthday and riding 37 miles would be nothing big. I needed something bigger, something crazy. So that’s what I did… I gave myself a crazy challenge to pull my focus away from feeling weak, away from thinking about the upcoming change of my age number…

I had no plan and definitely no clue on how exactly I was going to achieve this goal but I knew that I needed to feel as if someone was going to hold me accountable towards completing it. I went to social media and shouted from the rooftops that this was my goal. I knew that, if I put it out into the universe, there was no room for failure. Then all I had to do was start riding…

And ride I did… Rolling into the weekend, I knew I had to ride big miles because I still had to work full time and take care of a pair of kids while trying to achieve this monstrous goal. I was reminded of a question someone once asked me while we were facing a seemingly impossible task at work, “Do you know the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” I didn’t think about the bigger goal, I broke it down and focused on smaller goals and each individual ride I was doing. I stayed in the present and quit worrying about everything on the peripheral.

The days went something like this:

Day 1: 100 miles total for the day. 6 rides: 33.5 miles, 10.06 miles, 10.55 miles, 26.23 miles, 4.17 miles, 16.11 miles

Day 2: 70 miles total for the day. 2 rides: 56.14 miles, 14.22 miles

Day 3: 72 miles total for the day. 2 rides: 52.18 miles, 20.18 miles

Day 4: 48 miles total for the day. 2 rides: 28.12 miles, 20.34 miles

Day 5: 43 miles total for the day. 2 rides: 23.26 miles, 20.20 miles

Day 6: Rest day, yay!

Day 7: MY BIRTHDAY!! 1 Ride, 37 miles in honor of turning 37!! Plus I threw in a brick run with my boys just because J

Total riding time: 23:00:34 at an average pace of 16.1mph


Deep down, I knew this goal was about more than just getting it done… It was about reflecting on the current state of my life and the past 37 years. I have consistently written about the peace that I feel when I am riding, even on the especially tough days. Riding is my happy place. Riding is the place where I hash out my life and these 370 miles were no different. I learned new lessons and was reminded of old lessons while out of the road over these 7 days.

  1. Anything is possible. Not only is this the motto for Ironman but it is the damn truth. Anything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and you work hard to get to where you want to be. Life really is mind over matter; as long as you believe, you can achieve. There are so many more clichés that I could throw in right here because they are all so very true. There were moments where I doubted myself but those were far outweighed by the moments where I knew I would not allow myself to fail. I don’t like failing and I certainly wasn’t going to fail at my own self-imposed birthday goal.
  1. This year had more gains than losses. This past year had been one of growth and learning, it brought with it a lot of losses but even more gains. I needed the time out there on the open road to put that into perspective. While the losses were significant, the gains were exponentially larger.Training for Ironman 70.3 brought with it an entire new foundation of friends; I gained a new support network. Whether my new friends were runners, cyclists, or triathletes, they accepted me with open arms. The amazing thing about these wonderful humans? Once you met one, you were instantly linked to 10 more. It was truly as if I had known them for years. They were ready to push and challenge me around every corner, never allowing me to give up. The time and effort that all these wonderful people put into themselves and everyone around them is a thing of beauty, everyone wants to help everyone and everyone is a family. Thank you to each and every one of them for entering into my life at the most opportune moment.

    A special thanks to Caroline, one of my newest pals, who came through to help me suffer on two of my fifteen rides on this journey. I won’t even begin to talk about all the texts she sent me pushing me to roll out of bed and keep moving towards my goal. Thank you. Thank you from the depths of my soul. You were my champion this week and will forever be a true friend. Things like this are what make people who were once strangers become friends and eventually even family.


    This past year also brought with it a change of employment. It was not a change that I was ready for but it was definitely a change that, in hindsight, was much needed. I had been at my previous job for 6 years and the stress levels were crazy high there. My new job is much more relaxed and is a semi-vaca from clinical work which is a very welcome change. I have great coworkers that constantly have me laughing and have brought another layer of wonderfulness to my already charmed life.
  1. Even a glorious failure can be an immense success. I won’t get deep into this because it will be delved into much deeper in a later post (hopefully). The gist of this is that sometimes what one person calls a failure is actually a success. And, sometimes you need some “failures” to propel you towards an even bigger success. I am so proud of everything I have accomplished this year, whether it be a glorious failure or a resounding success, I am proud of it all. I think this Robert Louis Stevenson quote about sums it up, “Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.”
  1. I am such a lucky girl. Anytime that I feel myself slip into sadness all I have to do is take a step back and look around me. I am surrounded by so much love, friendship, and family. I have so many friends in my life that have been there for years upon years. It has to say something about a person if they can rattle out the names of so many friends they have had for 10+ years, not to mention the two best friends that have been in my life for 29+ years each!! I may not have a “partner” to walk through life with yet but I have so many wonderful friends that are there precisely at the moments when I need them most, some before I even realize that I need them at all.I can honestly say that I don’t think I ever take my wonderful friends for granted but I do believe that, sometimes when we allow ourselves to wallow in whatever pain has overcome us, we forget the things/people we have directly in front of us. Sometimes we let the pain take over and steal our joy. I am trying to do a better job with moving myself through pain by reminding myself of all the goodness in my life. Sometimes this works and sometimes I fail at it but, like I said earlier, even failure at something can be a grand success in the long run. Sometimes we need to just feel the pain before we can move through. Continuing to focus on the positive of all the things I DO have is definitely a goal for my next year.
  1. Being single ain’t so bad. I love love. I love being in love. I love having a person. But, I have been loving being single and immersing myself in training. I have learned that I don’t need to have someone in my life; I don’t need to be in a relationship with anyone but myself. This has been an interesting lesson for me since I have been so used to being in relationships. I am such a social person that being alone in itself used to be painful. Through my few years of cycling, I learned how to be alone. I learned how to be alone and ok with my thoughts and myself. This year was different because I wasn’t only alone out on the road; I was alone when I came home too. These 370 miles were a reminder of what I already knew… Being alone is ok. Furthermore, being alone isn’t just ok, it’s wonderful. I get to do what I choose to do, train when I want to train, I get to dictate my own life (when my kids aren’t doing that, obviously). I get to be the master of my own peace, something which I didn’t even realize until this year. I am open to the idea of someone coming into my life but, until that happens, I am happy and ok being alone.
  1. I am NOT broken. Age is just a number. Everything happens for a reason. I am pretty sure this speaks for itself given the ridiculous goal I achieved. Getting injured wasn’t the end of the road for me, I got to heal and keep going. I may not understand the reason behind why I got hurt, no one ever wants to get hurt, but it happened for a reason. Maybe the reason was to propel me to set this goal and smash it so that I could see that getting old doesn’t mean that I will be worth any less than the younger person at the start line next to me. I have to push harder to fight the aging process but that’s a challenge that I am totally willing to accept. Bring it on life!

I believe there are probably tons of lessons that I am forgetting at this precise moment but these six were by far the most important of this experience. I am sure that they will come to me later on and then I will get to mold them into their very own blog post. For now, though, these are enough.

Life is going to keep coming and there is nothing that I or anybody else can do to slow it down. I might have to live life on life’s terms but you better believe that I will be trying to control those terms as much as is humanly possible. I truly can’t wait to see what the next 37 years brings with it! Who knows… maybe there will even be a RAAM ride in there somewhere (Ride Across America, check it out!)

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You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone

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I miss my long morning rides… Terribly.

There was something about waking up and going for a long, refreshing ride in the morning that just set the tone for the remainder of the day. Even if the day turned out to be not so good, I could always fall back on the fact that it had started out amazingly.

I am a cyclist, it’s just who I am. It’s ingrained in me to want to be on my bike, all the time. Having recently bought a new bike (to be discussed in a future post) makes the fact that I can’t ride in the morning that much more difficult to wrap my mind around.

There used to be mornings where I would roll around in bed and whine and beg myself for just one more hour of sleep instead of getting up to ride. But, 9 times out of 10, I got up and went riding and would feel amazing. Now that I can’t really do it, I wish it had been 10 times out of 10 that I had gotten up to ride.

It seems cliché to say “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” but it’s the damn truth. They say that hindsight is 20/20 but I am a firm believer that sometimes foresight is too, we just choose to ignore what we know because we think we know better even when we know we don’t know better. (say that 20 times fast)

Life is often filled with crazy twists and turns, most of those twists and turns by our own creation. I just prefer my twists and turns to be out on a road… while I am on a bike…

The Hunt For My New Whip

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I am a woman on a mission… It’s time for a new bike, it’s actually been time for quite a while. Unfortunately, this process is turning out to be much harder than the one I engaged in to buy a new car.

Maybe it’s because you know you’re going to spend a lot when you buy a car so you’re most likely prepared with a large down payment. Maybe it’s because cars are much easier to understand. Maybe it’s because when you find the car you like, you simply tell them what color you want and what bells and whistles to include…

Whatever the case may be, for me, this process has turned into a quite laborious one.

I decided, pre-Thanksgiving, that I would leave Miami with a new bike. The universe, on the other hand, had a different idea for me (as it quite often does). In test riding bikes, I fell in love. Like actual love… The kind where the tiny hearts float away from your head and pop in the air, your eyes get all googly, your heart flutters, and you want to devote every last minute to your new love. You know… That kinda love.

The problem? The hefty price tag.

Unfortunately, my new love was no cheap hooker… She was a high class, high price, fancy, classy escort. Maybe the kind you find out on some ranch in Vegas. A siren of sorts that whispers sweet nothings into your ear convincing you that you aren’t about to sail over a cliff to your impending death.

Her name? Specialized Venge Pro.

She is a fantastically neon orange. A full carbon aerodynamic frame. Shimano Dura-Ace components. Carbon wheel set. Lighter than a feather. A click click sound as you ride that could lull a colicky baby to sleep. A glittery, rainbowy, flying unicorn of sorts if you will.

This is when the mental wheeling and dealing begins. This is the problem with buying a car versus a bike. When I bought my car, I went in with an idea in my head with how much I wanted to spend and I did not veer away from my plan. I did the same when I set out to buy a bike but that idea quickly crumbled when I fell in love…

Love has a way of breaking the boundaries that you set for yourself and causing you to WANT to push your limit. Love truly is blind sometimes… Even to price tags.

Cycling is my passion, my one true love… I want to ride this bike into the sunset (probably because it looks like a fiery skied sunset) over and over and over again…

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So what did I do? I gave myself a reality check and decided that the girl for me was the intermediate, working her way towards that big money ranch, showgirl… Specialized Venge Elite.

Don’t get me wrong… She is a beauty in her own right with her carbon frame and Shimano 105 components but she will NEVER be the Venge Pro.

**SPOILER ALERT** This is where the universe comes in and kicks the bottom out from under me…

I got measured for size, smiling the whole time from ear to ear knowing that soon I would be united with my noble steed.

Wrong!

The words still cycle through my head in my nightmares while I sleep… “The color you want is on back order until March but this other color is only on back order until early December.”

Defeat.

I was already “settling” and leaving my love in my rearview mirror, could I settle yet again?

No.

I began a mission to call EVERY SINGLE authorized Specialized dealer in the ENTIRE state of Florida in hopes that SOMEONE may have the charcoal Venge Elite in a size 52 in stock.

Fail.

Fail. Over. And. Over. And. Over. Again.

Not one store in the ENTIRE state had the color/size combination that I was looking for, NOT ONE.

Now what? Do I go back to the drawing board? Do I I surrender to the siren and let her lead me off the cliff into the beautiful, fiery orange colored sunset?

What. Do. I. Do.

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To be continued…

When heartbreak wrecks the soul…

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“The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.” –George Bernard Shaw

 

For the last two years of my life I have dealt with a crazy series of ups and downs in all facets of my life (relationships, family, health, work, etc). However, no matter what was going on in my life, the one constant that always brought me solace and peace was cycling. It didn’t matter what up or down I was going through, the road was my sanctuary and free from anything external. It was as if, for the most part, the emotions of my everyday life just had no place out on the rides with me. Cycling truly was my heaven on Earth, until recently that is…

For the last week I have been dealing with something in my personal life that made me feel as if the air was sucked out of me. I am not even 100% sure why this situation hit me so hard but it did and my heart feels like it is quite literally broken into tiny pieces. I have racked my brain to try and process what made this hit me the way it did and I haven’t come up with much of an answer. I kept thinking that, if I keep riding, at least that time would be free from the emotional pain that has lodged itself deep into my being. I was wrong; boy was I ever wrong… The pain and the heartache have followed me right on to the road and infiltrated my safe place in a big way.

It is such a disheartening feeling to wake up on ride days and not want to get up and ride… Cycling was the one thing out of everything in my life that I always woke up looking forward to doing. I still make myself get up (earlier than usual) and I have been making myself ride further even on weekdays hoping that something will click into place but it hasn’t. There is this terror inside of me that the joy that I felt on my bike is gone. I can’t bring myself to believe that it’s gone; actually I won’t allow myself to believe that. My whole 30 mile ride this morning was full of a blankness of feeling of some sort, not the good kind of peaceful blankness but a sort of confused and lost blankness.

Those who know me know that I don’t do well with not knowing things but, unfortunately, that is all that I am left with. I keep hoping that it was all a nightmare that I will soon wake from and that I will go back to feeling good and happy but I know that isn’t the case. I find myself praying a whole lot more these days too… There is a constant repetition of Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” in my head. Logically I know that I have overcome so many bigger things and so much emotional pain to rise above but the emotions I feel now are fresh and the wounds are wide open and trying to tell myself logical things doesn’t help heal/close up those wounds any quicker. Apparently, not even riding can do that right now…

But still I ride… I ride in hopes that I will feel better or that I will feel anything other than lost and confused really. I ride continuing to hope that eventually clarity will strike or that eventually the pain will lift off my heart and once again allow me to be free, to be the me I had come to be. I ride to be one with the thing that had become my passion, my soul’s savior. Instinctively I know that the storm does not last forever and that eventually the rainbow will appear in the sky but, for right now, only clouds are visible in the distance. I may have lost my mojo for a moment but I know that it is not gone forever and that I will overcome and persevere as I have always done in life.

And so it begins…

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“This is the core of the human spirit… If we can find something to live for—if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives—even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable.” Viktor Frankl

I believe that to understand my love and passion for cycling you must know the origin of its birth…

I have always been awestruck by the idea of being an Ironman (a feat that I am sure I will accomplish one day). After all, the title brings with it such a strength and dignity. However, I knew there would be no way to start there given my intense fear of drowning. In November 2011, I jokingly told a friend that I wanted to do a triathlon expecting her to tell me how crazy I was for wanting to do one. Instead, she offered to join me in my quest given that she had already trained for a triathlon and believed that she knew what we needed to do.538722_3437588653017_13867180_n

 

And so that quest began… We chose the Marineland Triathlon being held April 2012 and created a training plan that included lifting, swimming, running, and riding. I trained for it with a friend’s mountain bike which was actually pretty miserable and did not leave me with the desire of becoming a passionate cyclist. The thing is, I am a pretty stubborn person and, in my stubbornness, I refused to do the tri using a mountain bike. I, in turn, set out to find a road bike because it seemed like a superb idea and I didn’t have anything better to waste my money on at the time. After a few weeks of looking and a little help from some friends, I found my bike. I didn’t research it much and, had I done so, I may have spent a little more for a much better bike. Time was running out and, honestly, the bike I found was a shade of blue that spoke to me and I knew that it was meant to be mine. But, I digress… A couple weeks after I bought my bike, I did that triathlon and I loved every moment of every excruciating minute of that journey.

Most would assume that this is where my love for cycling began but, it is not. Following my triathlon, I hung up my bike for nearly a year because I was focused on work and on being madly in love. In July 2013, I went through a horrendous break up… The kind of break up that brings you to your knees and rakes your very being across hot coals. I was broken… My mind, body, heart, and my soul were all very, very broken. It was the kind of brokenness that you swear you will never heal from because you just can’t remember what it was like to NOT feel broken… My self-confidence had been stolen from me, or rather; I had chosen to give my self-confidence away (wrapped up like a present with a pretty bow on top too). I had alienated a lot of the people in my life that had meant the most to me because I thought that the love I felt could conquer all and that it was the place that I needed to be. I was wrong but as they say, “hindsight is 20/20.”  The loneliness and sadness that I felt on a daily basis was unmatched by any feelings that I had ever felt before. I felt as if I was trapped in a dark room 24 hours a day, I was essentially going through the motions of life.

The suggestion that would ultimately bring me to a place where I would begin to heal came from a very unlikely source… A source that, in his own right, had caused a lot of broken feelings of his own within me… My ex-husband. My brokenness at the time had the powerful side effect of bringing us closer as human beings sharing the Earth; one could say that it brought us together as friends. I am not sure that even he knows the power that his simple suggestion had on my life. He simply encouraged me to get up and start doing something physical, whatever it might be. He told me that it might be about time to use my bike and go for a ride.  I had no better solution so I rode… My first ride I went on was a 15 mile ride and the rest from that point on is history…

Something happened on that ride and on every subsequent ride thereafter. It was as if the time that I spent on my bike was free from the dark shadow that had begun clouding every facet of my life after my break up. I began to crave that light, that freedom, that happiness, that ability to breathe, that sense of accomplishment, that sense of self-confidence… I didn’t feel small while I was riding, I felt powerful beyond belief. I felt as if I could conquer anything. Riding fixed my brokenness, it awakened my soul… Riding made me feel whole again. Riding opened my mind to the idea of forgiveness, to the idea of letting go… There is something about being alone with my bike and the road that brings about a sense of togetherness. There is no crazy world invading my every thought, no phone to attend to, no work to do, no one pulling me in a multitude of directions, there is only me and my thoughts. I am quite ADHD in real life but while I am riding, my thoughts are focused and succinct. I have deep conversations with myself about issues I am facing, about my hopes, about my dreams, about God, about life, about the people I care about, and, often times, about nothing at all.

I have never been a solitary creature; I thrive in the company of others. I acknowledge that a lot of that was because I feared being alone and in silence. Riding changed that… I look forward to my alone time, sometimes hours on end of solitude. I have learned the power of silence and learned about the healing that can take place when one learns to be silent. There are many instances where I will be well into a ride and realize that I have thought about nothing at all and that I have spent all that time lost in the nature and the road around me. I am a firm believer in the saying that “there is nothing that a good bike ride can’t fix.” I am pretty certain, at times, that given the chance I could solve the world’s most difficult issues while out riding my bike. Unfortunately, my ADHD causes me to forget all those amazing solutions as soon as I step back into reality… We do, after all, all have an Achilles heel to contend with.

My bike may not be the best but it is mine. It is my 3rd baby and it understands me more than any human being ever will. It works just as hard as I do, it doesn’t push me when I can’t go, it gives me everything that I put into it, it is where I go when I need to feel free. I think that it would be fair and safe to say that my bike has saved my life and my sanity. Cycling has helped me heal, grow, challenge myself, dream bigger dreams, be a happier person, become a better mother, and become a better friend. It has given me a refuge when the world seemed to be crashing down, when nothing around me made sense. It gave me a safe place to cry, a safe place to “be.”

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I am a cyclist. I may not be the fastest, the strongest, or the best climber but I am a cyclist nonetheless. I continue to expand my cycling goals because when people tell me that I can’t, when I tell myself that I can’t, I have to prove that, in fact,  I can and I will.

“You can accomplish anything you wish that is not contradictory to the laws of God or man, providing you are willing to pay a price.”