Riding days…

Funny. My friend, Kristen, recently sent me this quote:
“Men are like parking spaces. The good ones are taken and the free ones are handicapped”.
I laughed at that.

This weekend I rode at the Bud Plant with a group of ATS folks. The group was doing 65-miles and I decided that would be a good distance to do.
Soon enough there was a split, with a faster-paced group flying on ahead. With my current level of fitness I knew I couldn’t maintain that kind of effort for another 3+ hours so I stayed at the same pace with 5 other guys.

I will definitely say that one of the nice things about being a woman in this sport is, since there are such fewer women than men, the women are usually well protected during rides. Certainly this depends on the men with whom we’re riding and how important their training day is, but I have rarely ever done a ride where the men don’t look out for me (or the other gals)...

The west is calling……

Not so good news with my body. A few days of varied training, some days not so bad… then mid-week I rode with my friend Bethany and had one of the most painful rides I have experienced to date. I don’t want to say it was the worst one as there have been some doozy’s, but it was certainly among the worst. Since then I’ve been icing, stretching, and sighing heavily a lot.

I saw Josh Glass the day after my ride and he said I was completely locked up, and just a mess… he planned to call Dr Mautner (they work closely together) to discuss continued intervention with my treatment. I truly appreciate that my caregivers are not giving up on me.

It is hard for me to understand why this is so difficult to diagnose and treat. I can appreciate that what is going on is the (likely) result of years of damage done…. then you add to it a crash which breaks half my body… then top it off with several weeks of complete...

Some things are worth repeating…

“Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.”

- Orison Swett Marden -

What a fun weekend!

Saturday was an all-women’s sprint triathlon here in Atlanta. A few weeks ago I had called the race director, Chuck Dunlop, asking if he needed a “last place finisher” for his race. This is something I have always done for RD Jim Rainey for his all-women’s race in August and I consider it an honor to get to bring all the women in, ensuring no one finishes last (but me). I think races like this are intended to focus on the spirit of the race, to get people off the couch, and motivate people (women) to be better than they were before; to do more than they thought they could.

It was awesome. I loved looping around the women and getting to spend some brief minutes with each of them to encourage them to keep going. Among them, I met a woman named Meredith who had conquered cancer, a women who just survived a divorce and lost 70lbs, and a women who had just given birth 6 months earlier to her first...

Status Quo

So, I went for the shot last week. Like most things, my anxiety about it and the fear of the unknown was worse than the reality…. but it was still NOT fun.
My crazy friend Dana went with me and lovingly held my hand during the whole procedure. I kept apologizing for being such a baby; my face was completely flushed and Dana said she could tell I was really anxious. “I can’t believe I am being such a baby as I hold the hand of a woman who has given birth to two children!”, I whined. But Dana was quite empathetic and felt my anxiety with my needle phobia.

I was on my stomach, unable to see anything that was happening to my back – and thank GOD for that. I kept my face buried in my arm as Dana kept saying, “Squeeze my hand!” She loves medical procedures and a couple times said, “OH, that’s cool!”, referring to the ultra sound screen which showed the 7 inch needle going completely...