run this amazing day

God doesn't take things away to be cruel.  He takes things away to make room for other things.  He takes things away to lighten us.  He takes things away so we can fly. -- Pat Summitt Everybody has something in life that makes them feel like they can fly. For me, that moment happens on a bike.  I've been climbing all day.  I'm gritty, sweaty, covered in pollen and asphalt grime, my back hurts and my water bottles are empty; I've almost wiped out a dozen times swinging at the fucking deer flies and I haven't gone faster than walking speed in hours.  Finally, the top comes.  I can slow to a stop, pause, take a bunch of selfies for instagram, swing my leg off my bike and stretch.  Maybe I drink a coke, or eat a cookie or maybe a dozen , or fill my bottles and pee and crack my neck, or maybe I simply hook around in the middle of the road and head back down.  I pick up speed, slowly as first, then faster as I shift into my big chain ring, it feels so good to get my

I am a sentimental person. A bit of a gross understatement along the lines of sometimes people do not agree on Facebook .  For a long time, I was embarrassed by the deep extent of my emotional, nostalgic, downright cheesy streak.  I have an excellent memory for important events in my life; one of my high school boyfriends and I still argue about which day who said what to who and which song was playing on the radio when it happened back in 1996.  Every important event in my life has music linked to it, emotionally, embarrassingly so.  I can clearly recall the Indigo Girls song that was playing the first time I kissed my now-husband, the Nico & Vinz that played on repeat while training for my first crack at IM Boulder, the Diana Krall that never fails to rip my heart wide open, the Journey song that made my ears ring in the bar down the shore where I first met one of my oldest friends, the Lionel Richie I played on repeat for months after my first silly teenage broken heart, the

Well.  So here we are.   I find myself wishing that I had kept up with blogging these last two months, for myself, to have all this shit written down somewhere in a permanent fashion.  Last summer it was helping me to write my way through, but now I understand what it's like to be completely exhausted by my own story.  I am tired of being trapped in a spiral of injury, I am tired of constantly feeling frustrated, isolated, sad, angry, and I am beyond tired of talking about it.  If I heard it once growing up I have heard it a thousand times, if you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all. There is really no way to summarize any shorter than this.  Coming out of New Orleans, my mojo was brimming over, my batteries were at 100% and I honestly believed that my physical body was ready to start training again - really training, not just la-tee-dah what shall I do today training.  As it turns out, it was not.  A little niggle in my high hamstring that

I can tell you the exact moment I decided to race. It wasn't Monday evening when, after a big - all things being relative - weekend of training and a long day of work, I sat down and wrote a brief race plan only so I wouldn't do something stupid like forget to pack my bike shoes and then had a bowl of ice cream after dinner (no, all of my clothes being tight right now is not a mystery). It wasn't Tuesday afternoon when I dropped my bike off with Wes ( ProBikeExpress is the best way to go, as always!) and laughingly told him that I was sending it on vacation and maybe we could ride Saturday afternoon while everyone else was napping.   It wasn't Thursday  afternoon when I was getting the shit beat out of my hamstring or Friday morning when I showed up to swim half of masters with all my friends before hopping on the plane.  Or later that day when I switched over from "eating like a normal human" to "eating only food that is white which includes both