The View from 58-inches High

First day of the new year and, as every year, I have a list of resolutions and goals for the new year. So, without further ado, here they are.

• Go Paperless – This is not so much an environmental thing as an admission that I am unable to organize the amount of paper I have in the house. Between bills, statements, recipes, and receipts I have no counter space anymore. I spend countless hours a month moving paper from one flat surface to another.
• Have my hardware removed – I really wanted to have this done last year but, I realize now, there were too many insurance issues with the original surgeon. I will need to look elsewhere. I don’t know if the insurance company will approve the procedure but I’m hopeful. I cannot run as it is now and the cold weather makes it very painful to walk.
• Get back to working <45-hour work weeks – Ohh boy, this really needs to happen. Last year I went from 40-ish hour work weeks to 56+ hour work weeks. My main concern here is that the expectation of what I can accomplish in 1-week becomes skewed. I need to nip this in the bud.
• Walk the dogs regularly – My stretch goal is 3-times a week. Realistically this looks like 2-times a week.

So there you have it, a boring but substantial list of goals. Notice there is nothing cycling related. I don’t think that hobbies should be resolutions. The items I listed are thing that will be difficult for me and require sacrifice on my part. In the end, many of them will improve my life, but much like dieting or quitting smoking, the road there will be tough. Happy New Year, welcome 2012!

Late last night I logged onto facebook to get status updates before heading to bed. As I was scrolling through the posts I saw this picture with a link to this story Lees-McRae cyclist Megan Baab killed in training accident | eNews.lmc.edu. I had to read the headline twice before it sunk in. The words didn’t seem right poised next to such a happy, smiling photo. I couldn’t believe it. I was in complete shock.

It’s always difficult when the cycling community looses one of their own. It’s a harsh reminder that what we do is dangerous. In some way, I think we always hope that the accident was caused by the cyclist so we can pretend that we have control over our fate on the roads. For Megan, this was not the case. Another college student fell asleep at the wheel and crossed the center line. There was nothing she could do.

I wasn’t close with Megan but we raced together my first year, before she cat’d up. That was when she was only 16 and looked even younger. She had the confidence of somebody years her senior and a personality to match. She was never nervous about lining up with the big girls and she held her own. She was a strong racer and was always one of our marks. Her dad was her coach and her biggest cheering section. He was at every race with her.

Last night was completely restless. I felt sick to my stomach and could not stop thinking about her dad and how big a part of his life she was. When I did sleep, it was in fits, with dreams about people close to me dying.

Now I’m sitting at work unable to concentrate on anything. I can’t find it in myself to cry about it so I just sit here feeling sick. I’ll start working on some code only to find myself feeling as if I’d forgotten something very important that I was supposed to be doing. There is great sadness in me because Megan is gone but the real pain comes from the realization that we really have very little control over these things. I can’t give up riding because of this accident or any other. I can change the way I ride, I can use my trainer more but accidents still happen and they don’t require a bike. I feel completely vulnerable right now and I don’t know how to move passed that feeling.

I am completely loosing it. I realize that the last 6-months of my life have been completely dominated but work but only in the last two months do I really think I’ve lost my mind. Well I might not have officially lost my mind yet but I did manage to lose 3 different important things in my life. This may seem really silly but I never lose things. Everything in my life has a place and my days are as regimented as possible.

It started in early November when I noticed the 6-bottle bag that I use when I buy wine was gone. This thing seriously only comes out of my car when I buy wine and take it into the house. The possibilities here are very limited and yet, it’s gone.

This was followed up by the loss of my favorite sweatshirt. My frost your fanny sweatshirt has been with me for 4-years. This thing was rock solid and would have lasted forever if I hadn’t lost it. Again, I only wear it at home, at work, and in the car. I have searched everywhere and it’s just gone.

Finally, my brand new armwarmers, that I owned less than a month are gone. No if there is anything that had a routine in my life, it’s the bike. The clothes come off and go into the dirty laundry bag. There is little room for error here.

The thing about losing things, especially multiple loses in a short time, is that it makes you feel helpless. Like anything at anytime could be lost. I have been torn apart in side over the loss of my Frosty. I tore apart the house, my office, and my car. I was so sure it had to be somewhere silly that I just overlooked. I scrutinized my calendar looking for a clue, something that could have broken my routine.

I know that I’ll eventually get over all of these losses, but right now there is a hole in my life and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t still searching.

Last weekend, my friends and I went to Dallas for the White Rock Marathon. Our friend Audra was running it as her first marathon and we thought it would be a great excuse for a girl’s weekend in Dallas. As if a girl’s weekend ever needed an excuse. Even given my crazy work schedule, I was in for my first trip to D-town.

We had so many plans for the weekend. None of which will be discussed here because 3-days before the trip the weather forecast took a turn for the worst and most of our plans went out the window. The weekend was really about Audra and with the race taking place in 30-degree rain, she was going to need all the help she could get.

Bonnie was awesome and booked us a room in the brand new Omni before it got booked up with race participants. We rolled up to a hotel with rainbow lights all around the outside. We should not have been surprised when we found the TV in the bathroom mirror but we still had fun watching it.

In the morning, we ordered breakfast to our rooms (posh right!) and looked out our window to find a parade forming just down the street. It was awesome watching huge blimps of Elmo and nutcrackers being pulled along buy groups of people. We were meeting Audra at Onyx Nail Salon for maini’s and pedi’s. This place was fantastic and I left wishing it had a twin in Austin. The chairs offered one of the best massages I’ve had and they had 4 big-screen TV’s. We sipped mimosas (complementary with service), watched TV and had our nails done.

We had grand plans for the day that included, shopping at the mall (yes, 21 days before Christmas), going to the mega half-price books, dinner, and dancing!! By lunch it was raining pretty hard. We headed to the mall and drove around the parking lot for a good 20-minutes before we found a spot. We hit H&M and BR and burned 3-hours before leaving the mall. We figured it would be best to ditch half-price and head back to the hotel to get ready for a night of dinner and dancing.

We had dinner at La Duni, a great restaurant Jessica wanted to try. The food was fantastic and we didn’t have to wait long to be seated either. By the time dinner was done, so were we. The weather was miserable, we were tired, and we had hatched a scheme to help Audra by running portions of the marathon with her. We were looking at a good 6 to 8-miles of running and the hotel beds sounded really good.

Stay tuned for part 2!

Yesterday was the last Driveway race of the season. As removed as I was this year, it was still sad knowing it would be the list time I’d see some of these folks for a few months. It also meant I had to fess up that I had not really done my part to help out this year. It’s been easy to say I’ve been too tied up with work but I also know alot of it was feeling so removed after my accident. It also seemed like many of the old regulars were not longer coming out; especially from my own team.  I miss feeling a part of this sub-culture that is so strong and yet so natural and at ease on their bikes.Still, even as the driveway shuts down this year, I am excited to come back to it next year.

The weather brought people out in droves with highs in the lower 80’s. After a year of record highs it was a racing opportunity many were not willing to pass up. Even most of the Trek Junior pro team came out. It doesn’t take much of an excuse for me to bring bubbly to an event and another successful year seemed as good a reason as any. So as the night wound down, Holly, Suzi, and I sipped on some fabulous bubbly rose and mused about another great year.

The view from registration; after the huge line died down

As I was registering people, I saw a racer I hadn’t seen in a while. He started racing last year and quickly moved up to a Cat3. He doesn’t race with a team and isn’t your “typical” racer. At the beginning of the year, I got on him a few times because his helmet didn’t fit right. It was an older helmet and the tightener on the back had broken. For some reason he also had the straps adjusted really low. The end result was that his helmet moved around freely and wasn’t doing him any good. I helped him adjust it a few times. While he might have found it annoying, I knew it could make a difference. When I saw him yesterday, he was wearing a new helmet that fit! I immediately told him I liked his helmet.  Turns out we hadn’t seen him for a while because he had crashed and landed on his head. He had only started adjusting his helmet because we got on him so badly. His helmet cracked in the crash and if he hadn’t been wearing it correctly, he could have been seriously injured. He actually told us we might have saved his life. It really makes you think.

I was so wrapped up in work this week that I almost completely missed all of the commotion for the LiveStrong Challenge only two blocks away from my office. I knew the ride was happening because I was signed up to work at the Austin Flyers rest stop, I just didn’t realize the extent of the transformation at Mellow Johnny’s. I walked over on Friday to see if I could get my stuff for volunteering only to find the street  completely shut down. The expo and packet pickup are usually at the convention center 12 blocks away. For whatever reason, this year it was moved. I always find these transformations interesting.

Today it was a very early wake up call to get over the the rest stop, themed “Texas pride”. We were there quite a bit earlier than we needed to be but when the rush finally came it was all we could do to keep up. At one point my gloved hands were covered in a mixture of peanut butter and jelly. It was how hard a time we were having with the PB&J construction. Part of the issue was that we had preserves instead of jelly so the first third of the jar was just huge chunks of fruit that wouldn’t spread. The second issue was the lack of real knives. The best was Rhe breaking all our plastic knives with her super human strength and over-zealous PB&J making. We finally got a decent assembly line going and, with the three of us, almost caught up to demand.

We also had fun cheering on the riders and watching the main group go by with Lance and other Radio Shack celebs. The best was the actual cancer survivors. There was a little girl, maybe 7, who was in remission. She was doing the 20-mile ride on her little kids bike with the basket and all. Last year she was in treatment and her family pulled her along behind. Her family was doing everything they could to help her but she was having none of it. She wanted to walk her bike up the hills herself, and get her own food. She was fantastic.

Towards the end of our shift it was getting hot. Lance had already come through twice and the string of people was thinner and thinner, Since we were only 6-miles away from the start/finish, those who did stop on their way back were mostly using the Porto-poties. I rode back to my car with Kate, Kim, Diane and Meredith. It was a super fun day.

Last night Brain and I did date night with dinner and Death Cab for Cutie. We don’t do date night often and we never do concerts. Brian and I typically have very different taste in music; which is why I was shocked the day he asked me if I’d ever heard of Death Cab for Cutie. On a side note, he hates The Postal Service? The venue is just around the block from my office so we met up at my office and walked over to get dinner nearby. Dinner was really tasty but the service was horrible. It turned out to be fine as we got to the venue just before 9:00 and only had to wait a few minutes for Death Cab to start playing. Our seats were general admission so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to see much. I was just looking forward to a good show

They were amazing!! One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to; yet the crowd was listless. I don’t know what’s happened to concerts in the last 15-years; I suppose I wasn’t keeping track. Apparently, if you really like a show you sway, take some photos, and whisper to your friends. I felt so out of place. I dressed for this concert in a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers specifically because I thought it would be rowdy down on the floor. I made sure I had nothing but my phone and my ID in case I wanted to crowd surf. When we got in the door, I saw most other women were wearing heals and carrying large purses.  Throughout the show I was jumping up and down, dancing, singing and screaming at the top of my lungs. The people around me… looked annoyed by my behavior. What absolutely killed me though was when people came out from the front nobody packed in! Even if it meant there was a huge hole in the crowd! Forget crowd surfing! The band tried so hard to get everybody riled up but to no avail. The people around me kept saying how good the show was so it seems they were enjoying themselves…

When did this happen? When did concert going, especially with general admission tickets, become about texting your friends and taking photos. I remember when you couldn’t help but let the music infect you. Before you even had time to think about it you’d be jumping. Then everybody would jump. It didn’t matter that you were all bumping into each other. In fact, that’s exactly how mosh pits got started. If you didn’t want to be there anymore, you’d just crowd surf your way out. And to think, we didn’t even have cell phones back then. How did we ever find each other?!?

So while it was an amazing show, I left feeling cheated. I wanted to be a part of a sea of moving bodies and instead I spent most of the night swaying with my arms crossed; like everybody else around me. In the end, it felt more like a lame work party where you don’t really know anybody. I can only imagine how difficult it is to be a rock start these days. Fantastic show guys! I wish I could have “gone up”. Not that anybody would have known what I was talking about.

Last week I finally decided to make an appointment with the doctor. Why? Well I didn’t really know. I had some bad post nasal drip and my workouts had become harder and harder. My output was horrible for the same heart rate. It seems like it’s been weeks of not being able to do a decent ride but I wasn’t going to jump to saying I was sick because it’s often the equivalent of thinking you have a flat tire when your legs suck. I figured I was just over-trained or stressed or something simple. I took all last week off from exercise and tried to get more sleep. Friday, I decided to see if I felt any better on the bike and joined Dianna on an easy spin. The entire ride my HR was really high and I was gasping for air. I made the appointment thinking I had a sinus infection. It made the most sense.

All weekend my incredibly easy workouts were horrible and for hours after each I found that I really couldn’t breath. It felt like somebody was stepping on my chest. When I woke up this morning, I felt fine and a little stupid for making the appointment. I always feel like a hypochondriac when I go to the doctor. He was asking me about my symptoms and I’m explaining the post nasal drip (thinking I’d be leaving with a Z-pack) when I bring up the shortness of breath. He starts asking me more questions and after a while he stops me. Turns out I’d been taking a deep breath once every two or three words. He listened to my breathing and tells me I’m basically having an asthma attack!!

I’ve lived here for over 10-years, been very athletically active for more than 6-years and I’ve never had a problem before. I was in total shock. instead of leaving with a z-pack I left with an inhaler. I felt totally broken. How can you exercise if you can’t breath? The good news is that I feel better than I’ve felt in weeks after using the inhaler and there is always the chance that this was kind of isolated. For all the other athletes out there, how would you feel after getting this news? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?

Yesterday was my birthday and also the first day of the music festival craziness we call ACL. I had already put in a ton of hours at work this week so I didn’t feel bad at all about meeting up with Dianna for a morning birthday spin. It was supposed to be just the two of us but she ran into Glenn Kasin and invited him to ride along. He works with the Radio Shack team and so we got some interesting perspective on professional training regiments and also on InterBike, which he had just returned from.It was supposed to be an easy spin but I am not well and, again, found that I couldn’t breath and my heart rate skyrocketed quickly out of range. I made an appointment with the doctor for Monday so I can find out what’s going on.

Since I work very close to the festival grounds, most of my coworkers bailed before 2:00 so they wouldn’t get stuck in traffic. I did the same and had time to take care of the dogs before Brian got home to take me out for my Birthday. We went to The Grove since it’s not near downtown and it has good wine and food. We didn’t do the whole tell-everybody-its-my-birthday thing so desert was just desert and not a birthday cake slice.