I have not raced -- really raced -- since the 2015 Boston Marathon. Meaning that since the spring of 2015 I have not pursued peak performance in anything. My body had stopped working properly, and it stopped being fun living inside of it. So for 2 years I only did races that wouldn't tax me too much physically or mentally. But without the challenge, or achievement it was just kind of... boring. I got out of shape, exercise got hard, and I struggled to dig up the motivation to want to go through the suffering it would take to build my fitness back up. It took over a year to recharge my battery enough to have the basic fitness to run for an hour. It took even longer for my motivation to put myself through discomfort to recharge. So to even sign up for an event where I might think about "competing" was a bit of a victory.
And to be honest, to call what I was planning to do "competing" was a little bit arrogant. I was "undefeated" at the 12 hour distance, but that was mostly because nobody with any talent ever showed up. The events I'd done were tiny little events in upstate New York and Ohio, and drew a crowd of misfits, oddballs and the types of people who think it's perfectly normal to be friends with somebody who rides a recumbent (if they don't ride one themselves). The other participants at these little races were wonderful, intelligent, thoughtful, generous people, but elite athletes they were not.
Every once in awhile I would casually poke around the internet to see if I could find a 12-hour event in California that didn't involve a stupid amount of climbing. In August I was deep into a work bathroom Googling session while still on a high from participating in the PanMass Challenge when I found the 12/24 hour World Championships, put on by the same people who do RAAM. A casual look at the past years' results showed that every year but one the women's race was won in less than 200 miles. I was pretty sure that at the very least I could ride 200 miles in 12 hours with one leg tied behind my back. I got a thrill at the idea of embarrassing a bunch of lame randonneur weirdos.
The problem was that the single year when the top female winner rode more than 200 miles was last year, when Dede Griesbauer (pro Ironman triathlete and undisputed monster on the bike) showed up and rode 248 miles. The next woman behind her still rode fewer than 200 though. So I figured that as long as Dede Griesbauer didn't show up again, I could cherry pick myself an easy win. And since this race called itself the "World Championships" (despite the only requirement for "qualification" being the $150 entry fee), I thought that if I was lucky I could pick myself up a "World Champion" title... As long as no one good showed up.
Another attraction of the race was that it was held in Borrego Springs. Borrego Springs is a spot way, way out in the desert about 2 hours east of San Diego. And since it's in San Diego, Borrego Springs bubbles into my life every time I'm going through a major transition, like a "growing up" touchstone (http://speedyspeedracer.blogspot.com/2016/12/christmas-ride-day-3-desert-and-world.html). I first found myself there in 2010 when crewing RAAM (http://speedyspeedracer.blogspot.com/2010/06/race-across-america.html) right after a rough break-up and relapse. I came back to ride the glass elevator (http://speedyspeedracer.blogspot.com/2010/12/glass-elevator.html) for the first time that following Christmas -- my first Christmas in California, alone, when my life was falling apart around me and I could barely afford groceries. I came back again last Christmas during the 6-day San Diego Christmas ride that I did while my stupid "partner" was moving her shit out of the house. And here I was again in this random ass town in the middle of the desert, that was my recurring symbol for loss and paying the piper. Seriously, what IS it with me and going to San Diego when I need to heal? Anyway, Borrego Springs is also the home of the Glass Elevator, my absolute number 1 favorite road to ride in the entire world. I had grand plans to ride it the day after the race. That turned out to be ambitious, but we'll get to that...
The Monday before the race I didn't have much of an appetite. Since it was a rest day for me, I decided to see how long I could go without getting hungry. It turned out to be a busy day at work, and by the time I got home at about 8pm I still hadn't eaten anything. I still didn't have much of an appetite though, so I just went to bed without dinner, congratulating myself on being in touch with my body and not stuffing myself out of habit. I thought maybe I'd reached some kind of enlightenment... Until around midnight I woke up with horrible stomach cramps and ran to the bathroom to puke up whatever glop is left sitting in your stomach when you haven't eaten in 24 hours. I puked through the night, moving to the couch when I thought that my moaning and writhing might be disturbing the dogs, and the next morning woke up with a fever.
Tuesday I spent the day lying on the couch and taking my temperature (about 100º) between naps, but I did manage to get down a couple of pieces of toast. Wednesday I was back at work, but still feeling like ass, so I braved a light lunch and then quit food for the rest of the day. Beans were a bad idea for my first real meal in 3 days. Thursday I tried to eat normally, if lightly, and then Friday I had to spend the day driving, so while I did eat some baby carrots and other car food, it wasn't a really nutritious meal.
After a week of depletion, stomach aches and no appetite, I knew that I had to force myself to eat a big meal on Friday night before the race or else very bad things would happen. We live in a magical time where you can still get cell service 100 miles out into the desert, but all of the racers and crew in town had completely jammed the network and no one was able to get data for the whole weekend (except, I found, in the wee hours of the morning when everyone was either racing or sleeping rather than trying to post to Facebook). What this meant was that I could not rely on Yelp to find dinner, or even to find my way around town. I drove downtown, and wandered around looking for a sit-down restaurant where I might get a plate of pasta. How in the world did people survive without wandering out into the desert to starve before smartphones?
Eventually I gave up and sat down at a Mexican restaurant instead. Too many bad stories about stomach issues have started with too much Mexican food, and this is mine: I ate an entire burrito the size of a cat, plus the chips, plus extra guacamole. I ate till it hurt and I started sweating. Rather than being digested and sent to my muscles to be translated into pure cycling lightning, it sat in my stomach like a rock keeping me awake all night and causing awful nausea and stomach cramps all night. Maybe it wasn't the dumbest and most painful "too much Mexican food" story in history, but it was definitely the worst "too much Mexican food" story of my life!
Eventually I gave up and sat down at a Mexican restaurant instead. Too many bad stories about stomach issues have started with too much Mexican food, and this is mine: I ate an entire burrito the size of a cat, plus the chips, plus extra guacamole. I ate till it hurt and I started sweating. Rather than being digested and sent to my muscles to be translated into pure cycling lightning, it sat in my stomach like a rock keeping me awake all night and causing awful nausea and stomach cramps all night. Maybe it wasn't the dumbest and most painful "too much Mexican food" story in history, but it was definitely the worst "too much Mexican food" story of my life!
I didn't quite know what to expect from this race. The cycling scene is different in the Bay Area than it was in the northeast. Cycling is more popular and so you get a wider range of people showing up to events. In the running world, ultrarunners are the coolest of the cool kids. They're the ones with the lives you're jealous of and the tattoos that you'd never be confident enough to get. In cycling, the randonneurs and brevet riders are never the cool kids. They're the ones showing up to charity century rides with an entire Samsonite set hanging from their saddle and handlebars, and yet still have wires on their bike computers. There is a smaller subset of ultracyclists who are not "tourists," they're "competitors" and they have more in common with the Ironman crowd than the rando nerds. More specifically, they ARE the Ironman crowd. When I saw my fellow riders at the start, they were both more high strung than I was expecting from a bunch of ultra cyclists, but also cooler. People were having more fun than triathletes by a small margin, but definitely not as much fun as ultrarunners. They had the bodies and paint-on skin-tight everything of triathletes, but they were still a little bit rock and roll.
When I arrived at the start shortly after 4am (for a 5am start) I set down my things and began arranging the many layers of bib straps, base layers, arm warmers, jersey, headphones (allowed in one ear), helmet and glasses. When I went to zip up my jersey that thing happened where the two sides separate mid-zip and the zipper gets stuck 4 inches above your belly butten... And then you get stuck in your jersey. With the help of another rider's wife, we managed to get the zipper undone. I lined up the two sides, sucked all my air up into my chest, zipped ssslllloooowwwwllllyyyy... And it happened again. Finally, after several tries I managed to gently get myself zipped in without pissing off my zipper. But since I was wearing a base layer and bib shorts under that zipper, this meant that I was now committed to not pee or change any layer of clothing except my arm warmers all day, lest my zipper never give me another chance.
The 24 hour racers had started the night before, so as we lined up at the start, there were riders coming through, either riding on for another lap or pulling in to the pit area. In the confusion of arranging the 2 waves of 12 hour riders at the starting line, while still keeping them away from the timing strips and out of the way of 24 hour riders, all of the race organizers were angrier and snappier than any race officials I'd ever seen, even at a triathlon. They spoke to the two groups of roughly 20 riders as if we were members of a ornery chaingang rather than some innocent cyclists just lining up at the start of a ride. Was this really how it was going to be all day?
They counted us down, and I was shocked to see everyone pull away from me immediately. Not gradually: within 10 seconds I was riding all alone. I wasn't riding particularly hard for those first few miles, but based on my lap time my speed must have been right around 20mph, and yet everyone else pulled away like I was the only one without a motor. They must have been cranking 23 or 24 miles right away, even the women. I wondered if they were just trying to seed themselves because of the no drafting rules, and maybe they'd chill out come back to me later. But nope, all I saw of these riders for the next 5 or 6 hours was their tail lights slowly disappearing into the inky blackness of the desert night.
It wasn't actually as dark as I was afraid it would be. There was a bright full moon lighting up the sky as much as any street light, and this being the desert there were no trees or clouds to block it. Plus, with no man-made lights (all the other riders were far up the road, after all), there was nothing to interfere with my eyes getting used to what light there was. I commute to work year round so I'm no stranger to riding in the dark, and this was by far the most comfortable night riding I had ever done. I hardly had to slow my pace at all because of lack of visibility, and just barreled away into the darkness. Sure, I had to slow down to figure out the handful of turns on the course, but by the second loop, even those were uncomplicated enough to ride through half blind. With nothing to look at, my hands and legs numb from the chilly air, and nothing to listen to (I would not bring in the music until later in the day when I needed it to keep me going) I concentrated on the smell of the desert. The desert doesn't smell like you think it would (I don't know, like a grill or a hair dryer with a burning hair in the coils or something). It smelled like some desert plant that smelled like people... Not body odor, but the smell of a linen closet at a stranger's house or the pillows at an AirBnb. That is, I focused on the funny smell of the desert when I wasn't focusing on the racking stomach cramps that would have doubled me over if I weren't already riding in that position anyway. When the stomach cramps came, I moaned and groaned out loud, because who was going to hear me?
When I came through the start/finish area after my first 18 mile loop, I was surprised to see that I'd finished it comfortably under an hour and averaging around 19 miles per hour despite the doubting in the dark. I don't know what it is but you always go slower in the dark, even when you know the road you're riding.
Around half way through the second loop the sun started to rise. I don't know if I was that much further east, or if it was just the lack of clouds but I was surprised to see the sun so early. On my drive down I had driven through a rain shower in a poorly lit mountain road in the Bay Area before sunrise, and it didn't start to get light until close to 7:30. But here we were at 6:30 and already I could see the horizon lightening.
I've always thought that anyone who said that the desert is beautiful is full of shit. Sure, the sand dunes of the Sahara or the sparkling white of the great salt flats are really cool looking, but this wasn't that kind of desert. This was the Mars kind of desert. The ground was rocky and covered with all kinds of scrubby plants. Occasionally there were scruffy palm trees that no one had trimmed back in their entire tree lives. The mountains were close by, but with no trees on them they looked like something from another planet. But there's something about the consistency and extremity of the desert that puts me at ease. It's kind of like the ambient music that massage therapists put on; no one is going to jam out to it, its attraction is that it isn't going to distract you from whatever other thing you're focused on with the crescendo of a rainstorm or the rocking baseline of a bunch of beautiful trees. I like the desert.
The other thing about the desert is that weird shit happens in the desert. When people think they see alien landings, it's in the desert. When cults go somewhere to put on matching sweat suits and purple Keds and drink poisonous Tang so they can be transmuted to some magic asteroid in the sky, they drink their Tang in the desert. When whacked out militia gun nuts go and live out some desperado fugitive fantasy, they hide out in the desert. Burning Man happens in the desert: enough said. The weird shit that happens in the desert of Borrego Springs is that there are camels, and elephants, and dinosaurs, and a giant sea monster, and what I eventually decided was a rat having a temper tantrum. Jesus is out there too. Some whacko out in the desert of Borrego Springs has decided to dedicate their life to building iron sculptures and installing them way out in the middle of the open land of the desert. You could look out for miles and miles into the empty landscape and see bucking horses, giant grasshoppers, stage coaches, and good ol' Jesus Christ... Hundreds of them spread out all the way out to the horizon . Art for art's sake, I guess.
I had planned to stop every 3 laps, but at the end of the third lap I was still feeling good so I went out for one more. I was having a lot of trouble eating, but with the 8,000 calorie burrito sitting in my stomach like a boot and slowly dumping glucose into my system, I was able to ride the first 72 miles on very little food. Which was a good thing, because every time I tried to swallow a mouthful, my intestines would wrench and I would have to grit my teeth against the pain. Most of my calories came from sucking the candy coating off of Almond M&Ms and spitting them out once I got to the chocolate part.
As my fourth lap drew to a close, I considered going out for a fifth but decided that my water wouldn't hold out for another hour, and it was about time to take off my arm warmers anyway. I flew into the pit area and took my first pit stop like a pro triathlete coming through transition. I picked up my spare water bottles that I had already filled, dumped the arm warmers, shoved as many Starburst in my mouth as I could while both hands were free to unwrap them, and was back out on my bike in a couple of minutes.
My fifth and the first half of my sixth laps went well. However, as I closed the second half of my 6th lap I started to feel pretty awful. The highest point on the course was about 3 miles from the end, and when I reached it I told myself, "Claire, you idiot. You don't feel terrible. It's just the hill!" And then I remembered, "Claire, you idiot. The hill you usually climb is 2,300 feet and you're a strong climber. The total elevation gain on this entire 18 mile course is about 230 feet And you 'climb' it over several miles. Not to mention, you've climbed it 5 times already this morning without feeling awful. You are in rough shape indeed if a 'hill' like that is kicking your ass." I considered stopping after my sixth loop, but the six hour race was about to start and I didn't want to get stuck in the pit area while they were starting their race, so I decided to do one more lap.
On the seventh lap I died. The painful stomach cramps had calmed down a little bit, but my stomach just felt sour and I felt generally nauseous. I don't remember feeling particularly sore or fatigued, but I generally felt disconnected from my body. The "hill" felt nearly insurmountable and everybody who passed me made me feel like I was pegged to the spot. It didn't help that I had decided to ride a traditional road set up with no aero gear at all. I knew that my success was mainly a function of me being able to stay on my bike for as long as possible, and staying in an aero position for hours on end when I hadn't ridden like that in years would be a mistake. But when the cool kids who had trained for this race passed going 2-3 mph faster than me with their time trial bikes, deep rims and aero helmets, I felt like I was riding a beach cruiser in flip flops. It was bad enough when the dudes handed me my ass, but when two women on their fancy schmancy time trial bikes and custom skin suits passed me -- lapped me on the "hill" -- my soul snapped. Those last few miles took ages, and I thought about how nice it would be to just go back to the hotel and take a shower and a nap and never think about this stupid race again. In fact, I felt like I could fall asleep on my bike right this very second. My eyelids were heavy, and just holding my head up was a chore. Maybe I would just lie down on the ground in the pit area and just fall dead asleep, and if I was lucky I wouldn't wake up until the 12 hours were up and I wouldn't have to ride anymore. I had ridden 126 miles in just under 7 hours after being sick with a stomach bug all week. Wasn't that good enough?
I teetered into the pit area, hung up my bike and went and sat down next to my stuff. I was surprised to see other riders getting off their bikes so stiff they could barely dismount or stand up straight once their feet were on the ground. I too was moving like that, but this was a new thing for me. Usually once I took my feet off the pedals, even on the longest rides, I was at least able to walk like a normal person. Maybe when I'm well I'm not as weak as I'd come to think I was over the past couple of hours. I went to see if people's lap counts were being posted anywhere to see how far behind I was, but they weren't posting them. I sat down on a curb and ate about 20 Starbursts (straight sugar, and no bulk for my stomach) and drank some water. As I looked around, I realized that there were a lot of people taking extended breaks. There were also lots of riders that were doing the race as a relay, alternating laps with a teammate. No wonder so many people were passing me looking fresh. And who knows how many people I never passed out on the road because I passed them while they were hanging out in the pit area. I didn't have to ride for the rest of the day, I could just ride one more lap before I quit if I wanted to. So after about 35 minutes, I headed back out onto the course.
I was surprised to find as I settled back into the bike that I was feeling a little bit better. Not great, but not like death warmed over either. Each pedal stroke had started moving me down the road again, and when I pushed on the pedals it didn't feel like a fight against my bike that the bike was winning. I felt so good that when I came through the start/finish area, I was even able to go out for another loop. On the second loop of this lifetime, I continued to feel pretty good. Despite the chip seal and fatigue from sitting in one position all day, my stomach wasn't actively tying itself in knots anymore and speed felt effortless. In fact, it felt like I was being swept along by a pretty enthusiastic tail wind.
I planned to continue on for a third loop. Since only completed laps would count, and I figured that most people would stop for a break in advance of the 3:30 switch from the long loop to the short loop, I thought that if I went out again 15-20 minutes before the short loop opened, that would give me the edge. Conversely, if I waited, I could only count on about 5 4-mile loops, which was probably the same distance everyone was planning on riding -- effectively freezing any lead I had now. Yes, the way to win was to have the mental toughness to do another 18 mile loop before dropping down to the 4 mile short loops.
Buoyed and inspired by the idea of a disappointing total mileage but the possibility of victory against my imaginary competition (I had no earthly idea who was in my division), I turned the second corner on the course and the screaming tail wind that had me feeling so good became a cross/headwind. My motivation flickered. Then I made the turn onto the fourth side of the rectangular course. This was the "uphill" (250 feet in about 3 miles) portion of the course. I turned directly into the wind and my bike just stopped. There was a woman about 50 yards ahead, moving at a crawl, and it took me about a mile and a half to pass her. I didn't have the guts to check my speed during that period, but it had to be in the low single digits. There was absolutely no fucking way I was doing another loop into this wind. I battled my way to the next turn and drifted defeated into the pit area to wait for the short course to open.
When I came into the pit area and saw the other riders around me, the scene was pretty drastic. There were some team riders, 6 hour riders, and "participation" riders that looked pretty fresh, but there were also riders who could barely walk or dismount their bikes. I was pretty surprised to find myself one of them. I crumpled down to a seat on someone's cooler, and found that the energy of even staying seated was too much to handle. I held myself together for long enough to drink a soft drink (San Pelligrino Limonata, thank you very much! We are not savages!), and then lay down on the asphalt. "This is pretty nice," I told the other sad sacks sitting under the pop-up tent with me. "Maybe I'll live down here now."
"Where do you live now?" Asked a 24 hour rider with a waxed mustache, not checking my drift.
"Down here, on the pavement of Christmas Circle, Borrego Springs," I explained.
My companion with the waxed mustache was not one of the cool hipsters in a Rapha kit with fancy time trial bike. He was one of those ultraendurance eccentrics that you expect to see riding a steel frame touring bike to work in all weather, and a restored penny farthing on the weekends. But after 22 hours of racing, his mustache looked less like a smart Wright Brothers era facial accessory, and more like the cartoon villain who had just smoked an exploding cigar. I half expected him to put on a sour expression and squeeze out a flame on the tip of his mustache with his finger tips. When the opening of the short course was imminent, he waddled off to try to re-mount his bike and then limped back a few minutes later and started changing into street clothes. I'm not sure if he even made it back onto his saddle.
Once the short loop had opened I dragged myself back onto my bike, determined to ride for the remainder of the time or until grim death took me. After 9 loops of the 18 mile course it was great to have the punctuation of finishing a loop every 4.7 miles, or 18 minutes. But then again, completing each of those 5 remaining loops felt like it lasted forever. I didn't know that a mile could be broken into so many sub-chunks. But at least this section was mostly sheltered from that god awful headwind.
Coming through the pit stop with a little under 30 minutes to go, I knew it was my last lap. The crowd must have known that everyone coming through was headed out for their last lap as well. However, as I came past the roughly 100 people watching at the pit area, not one single person cheered. They all stared at me in exhausted silence until I flapped my arm upward in the universal, "Come on, fuckers! Cheer for me!" sign. They did, sorta.
This is going to sound arrogant, but it felt strange to be just another rider. With the exception of triathlons (which are stupid anyway), I'm almost always among the strongest riders that turn up for a given ride, and certainly one of the strongest females. When I'm on a bike, people notice me. I also have some pretty great outfits. I may be terribly dressed off the bike, but my jersey game is very strong. I have no illusions that I'm world class, or even strong enough to be competitively ranked, but in my little world of recreational riders, I'm used to getting noticed. I had not ridden strong that day, and I was certainly outclassed by all the other riders. But I also realized that on my 10 year old bike with my traditional road set-up and logo free non-sponsorship kit, I was quickly on my way to being an unremarkable rider. The kind of rider that makes attention grabs such as stupid waxed mustaches or bragging about commuting in the harshest conditions (because if your numbers aren't badass, you can score some easy badass points if you just buy some rain pants and don't mention them when you tell your stories. Who's going to question you?). I suspect another thing was happening too. I'm beginning to reach that age where women become invisible. I always thought that that was a silly thing that unambitious people complained about because they weren't aware of their own mediocrity. But obviously since this can't possibly be the case with me, then it must be true that around age 35 (or 34 in my case), women become invisible.
On my penultimate turn on the final lap there was some asshole running in the street. I'd seen people running on the course all day and wondered if they were a team turning this event into the world's most intense brick session. However, until now the runners had all been on the other side of the street and running in the opposite direction. This ass hat was running on the course, and his buddy was riding next to him. I tried to time the pass to happen before or after the turn, but with these two clowns moving at a running pace, there just wasn't a margin for error.
"WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY?! DON'T PASS IN THE TURN!" Yelled the course marshal as I hit the apex of the right hander with both the runner and the cyclist on my inside. I was livid. If I got some sort of penalty because of these idiots, I planned to appeal the shit out of it until the penalty was off of me and onto them. Of course, no one bothers with a penalty for last place...
I rolled in to the finish and climbed off my bike. I was thoroughly bushed. It wasn't the moment of the day that I was the most tired, but I had been through something, given it absolutely everything I'd had, I had overcome some pretty serious shit, figured out how to keep going, and now it was over. There was supposed to be a cookout after the ride, but food never materialized. As hard as it had been to eat all day, I was dying for some real food: something hot, and soft, and handled by a human in the past month/not out of a package. I stuck around for over an hour as the awards ceremonies were delayed, and then they went through all of the different categories at all of the different distances, starting with The Olds and working their way back. Once I saw the face of the chick that won my age group (she was an animal: over 240 miles in 12 hours -- not even in my wildest dreams could I hope to compete with that), I could wait no longer and went to order a pizza.
The next morning I woke up before 4am and could sleep for no longer. I packed up and set out for the over 8 hour drive back to Marin to pick up Oscar. I had a lot of time to think, and it set off a series of deep thoughts that I would not reach closure on for several weeks.
I had always wondered what would have happened if I had gotten on a bike sooner, had the proper coaching and been introduced to the right people. Who knows, perhaps I could have been a halfway decent racer in some Sliding Doors alternate universe. Or maybe I would only be 10% better than I am right now, with even more of my life and career wasted than I lost in the recession. While I absolutely hadn't been at my best during this race, there were a number of people who had beaten my all time best 12 hour time by over 20 miles. That's absolutely enormous. Maybe with the right bike, the right training, no stomach issues and a crew I could come close, but I didn't have to dig very deep to realize that I didn't have the right level of commitment to really go for it, either. It had been a rough day, and for the first time in years I had stuck it out even when there was nothing to be won and no personal record to beat. But it's been years since I participated in something where "just finishing" was my main motivation. If I looked deep, the only things that motivated me anymore were to have great experiences and have fun. This event, while not fun, was an absolutely unforgettable experience. I'd ridden through the desert in the dark under a full moon. I'd had debilitating stomach cramps while riding past a surreal iron sea monster and dinosaurs. I had lain half conscious on the asphalt talking to a cartoon villain. And I had seen what true talent looks like.
For so many years I have identified myself as an endurance athlete. It's just what I spend all my free time doing and planning. It's how I spend my extra money, and my vacations. I will always be an athlete, but I will never be a champion. I don't want to be a champion anymore. Maybe at one time that would have made me happy, but now that I'm older and I have a career and other responsibilities, it makes me happy in other ways. But as I got older, I had never really recalibrated what I expected it to give me. I was still training as if I were chasing constant improvement, but it had felt like just one more responsibility for years. And if improvement was what I was after, then I was moving backwards in my athletic life.
What if I took all of that pressure off? If I could just admit that I was never going to be hot shit, and then I could just relax and enjoy all the adventures I'm able to go on because of this mountain of base fitness that I have.
For months I had been struggling with the mounting pressure at work without support at home. As I drove back through the mountains of east LA, I had a flash of insight. I saw that I was sitting on top of a goldmine of opportunity, and here I was complaining about having to stay 15 minutes later or wake up early for a meeting because it messed with my dumb workout schedule. Who cared about my 4 hour marathons? And if I had to work for 10 years longer because I sacrificed some great opportunities because of the pressure that my rigid training plan was putting on me, then would I care about my stupid marathon in 30 years either?
As I write this, it has been almost 2 months since I rode 187 miles with a stomachache in the desert, and I feel like a millstone I've been carrying around my neck has been lifted. The conversation at work has gone from, "Let's find you your next job" to "we need to free you up to take on more responsibility here." I'm not saying that work and career are everything. For some it's art, or bird watching, or they have kids. I'm just saying that I needed this race to show me that the thing that I loved most was not bringing me joy anymore. Once I stopped trying to force everything to fit an outdated script, everything started to fall back into place.
I have been wanting to get back into writing for awhile, but I no longer feel like the same person who built this blog nor am I pursuing exactly the same goals. So this seems like a good place to stop and transition. This and the 300 posts that came before it will still be here. They represent important and cherished memories. However, from now on you can find me posting in my new spot at speedyspeedracer.com. I'll see you over there.
I have been wanting to get back into writing for awhile, but I no longer feel like the same person who built this blog nor am I pursuing exactly the same goals. So this seems like a good place to stop and transition. This and the 300 posts that came before it will still be here. They represent important and cherished memories. However, from now on you can find me posting in my new spot at speedyspeedracer.com. I'll see you over there.