Last week was a mix of emotions. My last long ride was filled with fear, doubt and worry. I could only focus on the things that were bound to go wrong. This week I am in a better place. I have come to terms that if I do not finish, I will still be proud of everything I accomplished this year. For 7 months I trained and trained and was dedicated to that one thing. For 7 months I put my body through some tough sessions when I could've easily given up. I never gave up. I woke at o'dark hundred in order to get those long training rides out of the way so I could still come home and be a mom. Yes I missed some occasional soccer games and family outings but thankfully I have wonderful people in my life that understand. The majority of my training was done while my kids were at school. A few times I would drop them off with my bike in the car and ride the entire day while they were at school. I'd pick then up from school sweaty and smelly and they'd laugh because they found it amusing that I was on my bike that whole time.
A good thing that came out of all this training was cleaning up my nutrition. One of the books I read that really stood out this year was Eat To Peak by Chrissy Carroll. Thank you Chrissy for this book and for educating me on an area I really needed help with. This book helped me realize that if I fuel my body with crap, I feel like crap. The book also explained things like macros, and how many calories I need to be eating (much more than I thought). Once I started to apply all the basic principles the author suggested, I felt so much better. I highly recommend this book to any endurance athlete. You can find it on Amazon.
Thank you all for your words, encouraging notes, texts, emails, posts, etc. It means the world to me. I'll be thinking of all of you that day and secretly wishing I was watching Netflix on the couch with a glass of wine.