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Travel, logistics and stress…oh my!

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It’s not far now until I head off to tackle the Dopey Challenge. As a matter of fact, I leave in just nine days. So I am starting to get tense about getting there and getting it done. I’m not worried about the actual races because I’ve done all the work.  The anticipation of possible complications ties my stomach in knots.

This is how it will all go down (hopefully):

Wednesday January 6:  Fly down to Orlando.  Check into the hotel.  Get over to the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex to pick up my bibs and maybe purchase myself a little swag with Dopey on it.  Get back.  Eat dinner.  Go to bed.  So that I’m ready for…

Thursday, January 7:  6:00 a.m. start time for the 5k.  I’ll probably have to leave the hotel by 4:30 to head on over to Epcot for the race.  My pit crew will be bright and sunshiny and ready to help*.  It will be a nice easy ride, barely time to get into and out of the bike.  The important thing is it will let me judge the travel time and complexity.  The 5k had approximately 12,000 participant last year.  I’ll get back to the hotel and lounge poolside.  I may try to get over to the parks but not for too long because I have to be all revved up for…

Friday, January 8:  5:30 a.m. start time for the 10k.  From what I could find, the participation in the 5k and 10k are pretty close so logistics (check out this site for more information on the best services available for this) should be pretty close to the previous day…aside from the extra half hour of lost sleep.  To see it here, I should have a pretty good plan on logistics. It will be another relatively easy ride, only twice as far as the day before.  It will give me a great opportunity to get used to the gears on the fancy loaner bike of the Moving Company.  Afterwards I’ll head back to the hotel for a nap and lounging.  As part of the Achilles entourage, I’ll be attending the dinner on Friday.  It really is amazing to meet other athletes who have decided that their challenges won’t stop them, either.  The majority of the team will be up early the next day for…

Saturday, January 9:  5:30 a.m. start time for the Disney Half Marathon with race sponsor Donald Duck!  13.1 miles through dark of night and the well lit parks of Disney.  Disney does an amazing job of keeping the runners motivated.  There are bands and choruses all along the route.  Disney characters show up for photo opportunities.  I’m torn.  Do I try for a personal record or for as many pictures with characters?  I guess I’ll decide that with approximately 25,000 other runners that day.  I’ll get back to the hotel, and take the manditory nap.  That night we have a Philly team dinner.  Hopefully the service will be as swift as the food is good because I will need one more good night’s sleep to prepare for…

Sunday, January 10:  5:30 a.m. start time for the Disney Marathon!  The culmination of a half year of training with endless hours spent planning, plotting and blogging comes about.  Doubling  the prior day’s distance once again, I’m not sure what to expect.  Will I feel good as I start out?  as i finish? during?  Someone should check their magic eightball and let me know.  I expect this to take between 3.5 and 4 hours which means i will be finishing before i normally get up on a Sunday morning.  After that, I have the whole day before me. A trip to the parks might be in order…particularly a nice dinner someplace in Epcot.  Plus it is my birthday!!!

Monday, January 11:  Head back to the real world.  I’ll have to see what picture I remembered to take and plan my final celebration blog for all of you who have travelled this road with me.  Forgive me if it is a day or two late, but I just rode 48.6 miles.

*This is a big fat lie.  My pit crew will be conscious.  I don’t ask for much more than that.

It’s never enough

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I warned you that there would be times during this journey when things got tough. Now is one of those times. I’m just frustrated.  I have two tales to tell of this week’s training.

Tale the first:
I was supposed to do a long ride on Saturday. It was going to be a full 20 miles riding solo for most of it. That isn’t what happened. Less than two miles into the ride, I popped a tire. I pulled over, hauled myself out onto the curb, and grabbed my repair kit to see what I could do. The answer was nothing: the popped tire was the one with the built-in gears and I didn’t have the tools to remove it from the bike. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t walk it home…

On the kindness of strangers:
Cyclists and runners are a friendly group. Someone did stop and offer a hand*. While we still couldn’t change the tire, she gave me a helpful push back up the bike path to the road. Once at the road I called an Uber. The driver tracked me down via the gps and got me and my bike home safely. I didn’t get to do a ride on Saturday.

Tale the second:
I had my regular check up with my neurologist on Tuesday morning. I was really excited to see him because I truly believe that I am the strongest I’ve been since he’s known me. I told him about my training and the Dopey Challenge. He was supportive and positive about it. Then he asked “how far can you walk now?” It totally took the wind out of my sails because I’ve been focusing on upper body and core. I had to admit that I hadn’t been using the walker at the gym.

So today I did. I got out the walker. I made sure my form was good. I did two laps and then was completely wiped out. I’m just tired, and frustrated because there’s always something more I could/should be doing.

I’ll still keep doing it, I promise. I’ll complain a little. I’ll make bad jokes or quote song lyrics.

Today “Shellshock” by New Order is looping through my brain.
“It’s never enough until your heart stops beating…”
Sounds like a definition of life, doesn’t it?

*A wave to Alexis if she reads this!!!

What’s your status?

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I play all sorts of mind games with myself if I am riding alone. If I plan to go 10 miles and I’ve done 2 miles, I do the math in my head: 20% complete.

I’d love it if we all had a status bar above our heads. It would display progress through a workout. When out riding on West River Drive I could see where everyone is. If I saw someone at 98% complete, I would totally give them a high five or at least a nod.

What made me think of this? I went out with my Achilles team on Saturday morning and did 17.9 miles. That 0.1 is killing me! If I’d only gone a tiny bit further I’d have reached 18. A status bar would have told me, “keep going, you’ll fill the bar completely!”

Sunday brought a different workout. We had a visitor for the weekend and decided to bring him to our favorite restaurant in Philly. Tria Café has great food, great staff and great service. They specialize in cheese paired with wine and/or beer. I decided to justify those calories with a workout. I took my manual wheelchair and wheeled myself all the way. Turns out that it is 2.6 miles from my door to theirs. I did an additional half mile on the way home.

I did the additional half mile after our lunch to qualify as a 5k. If they let me stop half way through each one for a nice lunch, I have it made!

So this weekend I did two of the four Dopey races: a half marathon (plus) and a 5k.

Vacation training and why I haven’t posted

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My first blog post dropped almost a month ago. It’s been sitting here, lonely and neglected. I knew I should have waited until I came back from vacation (where there is no wifi) to begin but I was excited. Unfortunately, I didn’t – which means that the people who have signed on to follow my (mis)adventures have been left salivating for more*.

There are certainly challenges to taking a vacation in the midst of training for a big event. Good food, good wine, good friends can all knock you off track, so what’s a determined woman to do? Runners probably have the easiest way of it – all they need is shoes, clothes and a space to run. Hand cycling requires equipment and that equipment doesn’t travel easily. You have to get creative.

So what did I do? I took advantage of what I had: a lake…a beautiful, sand bottom, crystal clear lake. I determined that as long as the weather was clear I would be in that lake every day. It wouldn’t be just a quick dip to cool off, it would be an hour plus of swimming around, doggie paddling and constant movement. People don’t realize that just breathing in a lake takes extra effort to expand your lungs against the pressure of the water. I may not have been perfect, but I did put in significant time almost every day.

One entertaining tale: My friend Zach was driving the boat to bring people out tubing. They helped me get on the tube and away I went. All that upper body strength really pays off. I think he gave me as difficult a ride as anyone else, but I clung like a limpet to a rock and didn’t get dumped**.Totally tubular!

If you would like to support Philly Achilles and me, please go here to make a donation.

*luckily, only one or two people saw it…and thus the rest of humanity was saved from disappointment.
**rumor has it that there is a VHS tape out in the world with me taking an epic flip/dive/dump far back in my youth. If it ever gets transferred to digital, I’ll share .

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