This chick is moving her blog

I've been too quiet on this blog for too long, in part because I lost all my bravery for a while and in part because I have been rethinking things. Those few friends who follow me may find me at Bindweed or Bluegrass now.

Why the rethinking? Three big things, relating to the name of this blog:

1. Identifying myself as a fat chick in lycra felt like a persona, not myself. It was a mask, and I am tired of wearing masks.
2. The name seemed to feel constraining in terms of what I want to write about. I have an interest in HAES, but that is not everything I want to put in words. 
3. Most importantly, after spending more time reading the fatosphere and reading the very real discrimination many people have encountered, it felt presumptuous to call myself "fat." Out of respect for others who are fighting significant battles, I do not want to imply my experience is the equivalent of theirs. If I can be an ally, I will.

Why Bindweed or Bluegrass? I am a transplant to the West and at times I feel like I found home when I got here and at others I wonder what on earth I'm doing here. Many people plant Kentucky bluegrass in their lawns out here, even though it requires and inordinate amount of watering and babying in this climate. I wrote a poem years ago wondering if I was just another patch of bluegrass or whether I could learn to thrive here. The jury's still out. We shall see.  

Well, I didn't quite make it

Actually, didn’t come close. Not even a personal best. Sunday, I shot for 100 miles on a bicycle and completely bonked just past the 50-mile turnaround. Started having conversations with mythical creatures. At 65 miles I was done trying to rack up pride points. Just done. Toast. Hitched a ride on the sag wagon.
 
It was discouraging. My friends tell me to reframe it, that 65 miles is a big ride. This is true. It just wasn’t as big as I pulled off last year.

My husband told me for your first century, the stars need to align. It took him 5 or 6 tries to complete one. This was only my third. There will be another time.

The stars were out of kilter. It was a hard day. A lot of headwind on the way out. I was a little rundown and couldn't get comfortable on the bike. Life got in the way of my training schedule last month. My Dad’s 90th birthday was more important than a bike ride. 

I made mistakes. I was pressed for time and went out too hard at first. I didn’t take adequate breaks or eat enough on the way. I could have trained harder.

But I learned from it. I spent a day or two feeling sorry for myself, although the day-after hot stone massage went a long way in lifting my mood. Last night I was a beautiful evening, and I rode an easy 10-miler. It felt good to get back on the bike.

Patience, patience, patience

I am a painfully slow cyclist. Nearly everyone blows past me, particularly on climbs. Early in the season I swear I was getting passed uphill by small children with princess stickers on their bikes, but now I can smoke those little bitches!

Patience. I need patience with myself. Patience to grasp that I am starting at a different place or at a different time than others. I've only really been taking this seriously in the past year or so. Patience to recognize I'm built more for endurance than speed.

A week from today, I will attempt 100 miles on a bicycle. It's an organized ride with rest stops along the way, patrolling repair vans and a sag wagon. Much easier than attempting one alone or with a small group. Just toss a water bottle on the bike and go.

I'm behind on the training schedule. My longest day so far was 50. By now, it should have been 60 or 70. Life simply got in the way the last two weeks in July, including a week of family travel. That's OK. I believe life is fluid and goals should not be cages.

I've done what I can, and I will do what I can next Sunday. I'm not overly worried. Yesterday, 39 miles felt comfortable. Last year, my longest ride before the century attempt was 40, and I pulled off 90. The last 10 miles were ugly, and the sag wagon kept circling with concern, but I came in under my own steam.

Some of it will depend on wind and heat. I've heard it said you should not take up cycling anywhere known for its wind farms. Last year there was a 20+ MPH headwind a good chunk of the way out.

I have five hours to make the turnaround. Even with rest stops, this should be more than enough. I need to be patient when the cyclometer dips to 6 MPH and not to try to keep pace with others, even if I'm off the course DFL.

Even if I don't make it, it's OK. I haven't failed. The point is to get out and ride and feel the joy of a good spin. That I can accomplish for certain.

You are enough

So many goals start from a place of inadequacy. I'll be thinner, more organized, more ambitious. I'll write that novel, keep a sparkling kitchen. I'll give up coffee, sodas, sweets, computer solitaire.

It's as if I believe I can be a new person -- a vastly improved version of myself because the old one is not enough.

I am enough as I am. And you are, too.

Whatever lists I make, I wake up in the morning the same person as when I fell asleep on the couch watching old movies.

I have the same cluttered dining room table. I have my half-cleaned kitchen. The same box o'makeup in the bath that I never wear because I don't wake up early enough and I never remember to take it off at night. I have the same unread books, the dusty piano I don't play as often as I would like.

I have the same body. The same seemingly un-styleable hair. I have the same scar across my neck where they took out my thyroid. The same emerging wrinkles on my face. The same fears and failings.

All of this, and I am still enough. I don't need a self-improvement program to make myself acceptable to the world. No reinvention needed.

Be gentle with yourselves. You are enough.

Would have given up by now, part 1: Weight

A local community program here is promoting 10,000 steps a day. Unfortunately, they chose to make it about weight loss, including required weigh-ins. What I find sad is that I believe this will end up discouraging activity. If exercise doesn’t “work” for a participant -- that is, doesn’t result in weight loss -- I fear they may decide it’s not worth it.

Imagine you take a volunteer job that inspires your passions and uses your talents. You work with wonderful people, making a real difference in the world. Now imagine you took this job believing it was a paid position, only to find out later that was not the case. I’m certain an entirely different reaction. When people expect to, but don’t get “paid” for exercising -- when they don’t lose weight -- they may lose sight of all the other great things about it.

The last two months, I’ve been training toward what will hopefully be my first century ride in August. It’s been on my bucket list since I was 10 and my brother did one. It would be a stretch to call myself a serious cyclist, but I have definitely putting in some miles for me.

I see progress in so many ways other than the scale. Sunday, I found myself telling my husband that I went on an easy 21-miler, only to stop and wonder when I started using “easy” and “21-miler” in the same sentence.

I see progress on the hills which I once struggled up and now ride up smoothly. I see it on the hills where I used to have to stop halfway for water and oxygen, and now I struggle up them. I see my cadence becoming faster, my resting heart rate becoming slower. My average weekly mileage increasing. I can run bigger gears with less effort. I’ve got a new personal landspeed record of 38.7 MPH. I’m more comfortable on the bike.

What I do not see, nor did I expect, is any significant weight loss. That’s OK. That’s not why I’m doing this.

If I had gone into this with weight loss as my goal, I would have given up by now. I’d step on the scale and believe that I’d failed. There would have been no reason to crawl up hills in my lowest gear in 90 degree weather repeating in my head, “This hill will not defeat me.” I’d turn around when the 20 MPH headwind kicked up. I wouldn’t go to the YMCA and run on the treadmill on the days thunderstorms threatened and I couldn’t ride. What would be the point?

If weight loss were my goal, I would have quit by now. I wouldn’t have been getting “paid” for this. But it isn’t my goal, and I am being rewarded for my efforts in many ways.

I believe my body will do what I ask of it if I take care of it. I know I am capable of doing this. I want to be stronger. That is all the payment I need.

The West is on fire

Yesterday, a haze of smoke hung over Cheyenne, even though we're probably about 60-70 miles from the nearest raging wildfire. The sunsets are blood orange red. The news reporters post satellite photos of the plumes of smoke coming off the mountains, blowing eastward. The National Weather Service issued a special statement about the smoke, and the city warned against exercising outdoors. 

Even though I’m not particularly sensitive, yesterday I felt my eyes and lungs burn at times. I chose to do my ride inside at the YMCA instead of out on the roads in the haze.

According to InciWeb this morning, there are 141,783 acres – 221.5 square miles -- of active wildfires just in Wyoming, with many more fires burning throughout the state. This is an area nearly the size of Chicago.

The fires in Wyoming understandably don’t get as much national news as the fires threatening more populous areas like Colorado Springs, but there are still many in those mountains at risk of losing their homes and dreams. I’ve been watching the news on the Arapaho fire closely as it’s far too close to a place I love and where I know two wonderful people who run a bed and breakfast. Over in the Snowy Range, Woods Landing has been evacuated, the fire threatening, but not destroying, its historic bar/restaurant and dance hall.

Out here, we’ve known the West would go kawoosh at some point. For years, we’ve seen the beetle kill march down the mountainsides, turning green to reddish brown. It’s been heartbreaking, and we’ve known it was dangerous. We knew it would happen sometime. This must be the year.

Cycling club: not an auspicious beginning

Last night I attended my first cycling club ride. It was not an auspicious beginning.

I joined the local club in hopes of finding others at my level to ride with. Someone who might be willing to do long distances at slow speeds. On asking about the different rides, I was informed that Thursday nights they had a slower “no-drop” ride of about 10-15 miles.

As they say, never bring a knife to a gunfight. In this case, I brought my beatermobile commuting bike instead of the road bike. The one I took is half mountain bike, half something that’s not quite a road bike, with mismatched wheels and one thumb shifter higher than the other on the handlebars. It's cobbled together from parts and pieces from multiple bikes the man in my life has scrounged over the years. Not only that, but I left the panniers on, stuffed with my work clothes and purse.

For a mellow ride, I figured it would be enough. It  became apparent quickly that not only was the ride going to be longer than 10 miles, their definition of “mellow” was a little less, well, mellow than mine.

We rode the bike path. I managed to keep up with the slowest rider, although I was running out of big enough gears to pull it off. From time to time the front group stopped and let us catch up. About eight and a half miles out, way the heck on the other side of town, I hit a grate on the entrance to one of the tunnels and felt my handlebar somehow somewhere else than it had been. When we caught up, I discovered that not only was it now 2 inches off-kilter to the left, the thumb shifters were in even more of an oddball position than they had been.

The ride leader was kind enough to pull out his tools and fix it, and we were off again. Against the wind on a hill, I made the fatal mistake of downshifting into the middle chain ring on the front. Didn’t take long to start falling back. (Remember the big gears thing?) So, I went for the big front gear again. It didn’t want to shift. I pushed it a little harder... and heard a snap. Front derailleur cable was flopping in the breeze, and the chain slipped quickly down to the smallest gear.

I’ve had a few bikes break on me, but never the same bike breaking twice on one ride. In front of people I barely knew. Not good.

At their next stop, I let them know I’d be cutting off the route and limping my way home at that point, as I’d never be able to keep up. They were very kind about it and concerned that I’d be OK. I reassured them I’d be fine, that I could get home from there.

I can’t even remember the young man’s name, but when I was in college I went on a date where the guy had not one, but two cars break down on him in the same night. He arrived at my house in a car with an alternator out. Mercifully, I lived on a hill so we could roll start the thing. We went back to his house to pick up his mom’s car and drove the 15-20 miles to the little town where the art theater was. We had a lovely time. On the way back, on a peaceful country road, the car up and died. We wound up walking to a farmhouse in the dark and asking to use their phone.

It was our first date. As I recall, I did go out with him again. So there’s hope for me with the cycling club.