As you know from yesterday’s post describing my family’s own experience with Multiple Sclerosis, this week is MS Awareness Week. I won’t repeat what I’ve already said (except to plug Team Dave, of course!), but I wanted to share with you what training for this type of event is like.

I am basically as out of shape as I’ve ever been, or at least I was on New Year’s Day of this year. I have been active and athletic for most of my life–a runner, tennis player & coach, hiker, biker, volleyball player, you name it. But for the past five years, I have been either pregnant, postpartum, or doing the kind of round-the-clock nursing that doesn’t lend itself to doing a lot of bouncy exercise (need I say more? I don’t think so). Now that Lily is almost three, the nursing is less round-the-clock, and I’m ready to get back in the saddle. But I’ve got 5 years of inertia to fight and about 15 extra pounds to lose before I’m ready to ride 150 miles in the course of two short days.

So how am I training for this event just shy of four months from now? I can tell you I started small. A wise man (my doctor) told me to get out and exercise just five minutes every single day–in fact he jokingly wrote me a prescription to do so–and it didn’t take more than 2 weeks of that practice before I was absolutely dying to get out for some longer stretches. Having a couple of great pals (and team members!) who are always on the bike has helped. Living in Lyons, the freakin’ biking capital of the universe, has helped. And so has having a husband who is ecstatic not only that I’m getting back in shape, but that I want to bike, and bike with him–double bonus!

I’ve learned that the best type of training I can do is the easiest exercise for me to achieve with two rambunctious monkeys (I’ll spare you a lengthy diatribe about what happened when I tried to do yoga with my little helpers on hand, but it looked like that barrel of monkeys game with kids hanging off each limb): biking with kids in tow in the trailer. Wow, that’s, well, like pulling an extra 100 pounds on the bike. Just going to pick them up at preschool once a week adds 17 miles to my weekly mileage and, since half of that is pulling the kids on Highway 66–a road that manages to be uphill and into the wind both directions–it’s something I’m trying to make into a habit. I also signed up for a weekly spinning class which is a special form of torture for the truly insane an excellent workout. And oh yeah, I actually got the idiot boy sweet puppy so that I’d have a running companion, so now, a year after we got him, I’ve actually started taking him out for walks and runs.

As the weather warms, I’m hoping to ride at least three times per week, with one of those rides being an increasingly long one. I’ve got a 40+ mile ride planned for the end of March, and that will be the longest ride I’ve ever done (did I mention that I’m a beginner rider and that I have a long way to go??). I’ll slowly increase that length until I’m riding about 20-30 miles twice a week and more like 50-75 miles for that one longer ride. We are planning to ride the CSU GSEE Community Ride and Elephant Rock, which will hopefully put my first metric century (100km=62 miles) and my first regular ol’ century (100 miles) under my belt. Wish me luck–that’s a lot of time on a hard, skinny bicycle seat!

If you’re wondering how I fit this into my schedule, you need only look at my blogging (or lack thereof) in the past month to imagine how I did it: I let some things go. Some of the things I let go were really hard to do, but all of them were things that are less important to me than feeling good about myself, being healthy, and helping find a cure for MS. So in the end, the choice was easier than I thought it would be.

But the crazy-wonderful thing about exercise is that it amps up your energy levels even after only a few weeks of training. I’ve been on this sort of manic, bouncy, water-guzzling high for the past two weeks and a half weeks since I really started training and I hope it will continue because I feel good. Oh, and to finally circle back to the title of this post, you can watch my training progress (if you’re really interested, or just really bored) at MapMyRide.

My sister suggested that rather than trying to cut some less desirable things out of my life, I simply start to add more desirable things in. The thought is that the good will leave no room for the bad, and I think it’s working. I’m adding exercise to my life and some other things that I’d like less of (alcohol, junk food, stress, inertia) are falling away because their simply isn’t room. And in the end, I’m listening to my gut on what needs to stay in my life and what needs to go–making each choice consciously and with intention instead of arbitrarily swinging from place to place is a refreshing change from the past five years.

I guess my reason for this long and rather self-centered post is first that I’m excited about this new thing in my life, but second, that I wanted to write something with a message of “if I can do it, anybody can…” I’ve been in a bit of a cocoon stage for the past six months or so as I try to come to grips with my new life as a mother, reconcile myself to the loss of my father, make a life in a new town, and figure out who I want the adult version of Julie Artz to be. I’ve not been in a good place for quite a long time, but I finally feel like I’m moving in the right direction. And having something to train for–a reason/excuse to do something I’ve long been needing to do–is part of what got the ball rolling. Thanks Dave!!

Posted: 03|3|09 at 9:11 pm. Filed under: Family, Multiple Sclerosis, Musings.
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