Monday, February 20, 2017

Putting the brakes on my enthusiasm

This won't be my usual light hearted post, but it's important. I post a lot of pictures of me at finish lines, holding medals and happily succeeding. There's another side to training you don't normally see. 


This is me after a training ride yesterday, feeling completely broken. I'll skip to the end, turns out the whole 30km, the front brake mechanism was broken, and partially engaged. But I didn't know that while I was riding. I thought since I'd given up alcohol, and been drinking so much water (thanks Jon) I'd be a gazzel! It was a route we do often, and usually as a reprieve in our training. I made the same breakfast mistake I thought I'd learned from last year, but even eating didn't help. I was sluggish, and it was all I could do to make my bike go forward. It was our first ride since the snow, and it was cold and wet. With every fibre of my being Grams, I wanted to stop, throw my bike and cry. 

But I learned more than if I'd nailed that ride.

1. Regular bike maintance is imperative. 

2. Keep pedalling. Even when it sucks. 

3. My cousin, life coach, mentor, riding buddy and cheerleader Cindy is irrefutably one of the most important people in my life. I hope one day I get the chance to encourage her like she did for me yesterday.

4. Jon is as optimistic as me, if not more so, with unwavering faith in my abilities. "You got the best work out of your life!" 

In true form of this experience, this is my second time writing this post, the first time I left the page to find the link to my fundraising and it disappeared. Hopefully I wrote it better the second time. Here's the link: 

http://www.conquercancer.ca/site/TR/Events?px=4156398&pg=personal&fr_id=1593&s_src=boundlessfundraising&s_subsrc=:sub_source

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