Fatigue, fatigue, fatigue!

Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever slept that well in my life.

Out like a light and surviving on coffee today.

The 719 Ride was pretty tough but a lot of fun. My Garmin tells me I rode 71.9 miles on the dot (we circled the parking lot to get the full mileage) and climbed a little over 9,000 feet, making it the hardest ride I’ve ever done!

There were two tough climbs that were really taxing on the legs. Our speed up those were 5-7 mph. Ooof! It was a grind. I’m so grateful for my big climbing gear!

But the nice part was you could recover during some downhill in between, unlike say Rist Canyon where it’s just a straight hour of climb. (Rist is still the highest grade I’ve done, that top part is insanely tough!) It was definitely harder than the Double Bypass though. Someday I’ll complete the full Triple, just not this year. (I was considering, but everything was canceled anyway.)

My legs are sore but they feel better than they have in a long time, honestly, especially after such a hard effort. I ‘m doing a lot better at pacing myself and maintaining a consistent power over a longer period of time. That’s the main thing I’ve been training for, is that feeling of moving quick but not fast enough to tire out before I intend to. I’m getting to know my legs and my heart rate and my hunger and my sweat a little bit better (it burns your eyes, lemme tell you, not fun). I’m not racing here; I’m just trying to finish.

I’ve always been curious about endurance, always admired it. I find what the human body can endure to be insanely fascinating. It only makes me wonder more: How far can I go?

How far will I go? When will I hang it up, at what point will I feel like I’ve had enough?

I guess I won’t know the answer to that question until I get there. No, I don’t plan on doing anything incredible like going on a solo expedition across the Antarctic or something wild like that. It’s not like anything I’ve done or am doing has never been done before.

I guess it’s not so incredible from the outside looking in.

But a lot of the time I think the bigger achievement was deciding I wasn’t happy with where I was, and I worked hard for a long time to change that. I made a lot of sacrifices and hard decisions, dealt with a lot of uncomfortable feelings, faced a lot of failures and threw away a lot of the crutches I had thought were keeping me going — traded ‘em in, actually, for this other stuff that actually does keep me going.

Because I know that feeling. I know that feeling of putting in the work and seeing it pay off. I know that feeling of celebrating something you’ve worked so, so hard for. I see it out there at the gym when someone’s deep in their pain cave, trying to find anything to keep them going for another 5 seconds. And I see it out there on the road, when people fly by you on a climb but leave a word of encouragement because on their journey, they were once in the exact same place.

Lately, I’ve found so much joy in celebrating other people’s achievements and in giving back. It sounds kind of weird to say that I never thought I’d be that kind of a person, but alas — here I am. It all started with Bike MS … my first blog here, even. I wanted to give to something bigger than me, to pay it forward to someone in the future, and I was hoping some other people would believe in my cause and do the same.

Then came #GivingTuesdayNow and a failed fundraising campaign. And then WyoGives and a successful fundraising campaign! And now I’m looking forward to the next one.

Because what is life but one giant question: What comes next?

We knocked 719 out of the park, and now I can always take that with me.

I know I will keep going, ever reaching on forward, but I do just want to take a moment to say that right now, in this moment, I’m pretty damn content, and I’m so grateful for all of you who have helped me get there (but especially the cheering crowd at the park in Colorado Springs, y’all were my favorite).

Salut!

If it weren’t for the salt stains on my sports bra, you probably wouldn’t even know that I just destroyed my legs for 6 hours. Still, this beer was so damn refreshing.