Fell In Love With a Road

Well, I'm back from a one woman mini-training camp. Having some time off, and sensing my "vacation" plans about to fall through and become day-trip activities around the city I was trying to get the hell away from, I shut off my mobile, left the laptop, packed up the bike and headed for the hills. Oh those hills. 

I had always disliked certain areas of this vast province I live in. Judgments based on both over exposure and non-exposure at the same time. Sometimes, when something is too familiar to you, you take it for granted. I opened my mind, traveled several hours out of the city to places that were a prominent feature of my childhood and put my tires to the tarmac; testing myself on the toughest climbs in the area. Then it happened, I fell in love with a place I used to hate because I finally really saw it for the first time.

This was a very transformative training camp for me. In recent years I had spent more time on my mountain bike because riding my road bike brought up a lot of bitter-sweet, sad memories. All that was stripped away layer by layer, climb by climb, and beneath I found the little girl who first fell in love with the freedom, the challenge and the wonder of riding a bike. I was reborn as a cyclist out on those climbs. Along with a lot of sweat, I left behind all the negative associations that had piled up around my bike and realized they didn't have anything to do with my riding. I was riding a bike long before any of the negative stuff ever happened.

Grinning like a maniac, I attacked twisting, snaking descents with a fearlessness I haven't felt in a long time. Climbing the toughest hill I have faced to date, I was overcome with a strange experience. First my arms, then my face started to tingle; not in a pins and needles sort of manner, but in a feel-good euphoric sort of way one would generally only experience if they were very fortunate during an entirely different type of cardiovascular activity. It was wild. It was definitely a cycling first for me, and I want more....

Whatever it is you used to love to do, before it became not fun anymore, before life or disappointment or negative associations got in the way, I hope you rekindle that spark and fall in love all over again. It's magical!

Doing my bike courier impersonation at the train station

If You Wanna Be Happy

I have joked for years that if I ever got married, my first dance with my husband would be to the Kid Creole version of If You Wanna Be Happy (for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife). I love that song, it makes me giggle and it raises an interesting hypothesis about attractiveness and happiness. (Side Note:  gentlemen, we can be feminist and have a sense of humour). I have spent the last 24 hrs or so fairly immobilized by yet another injury and amusing myself with countless hours of Margaret Cho stand up. Margaret Cho is fabulous and I wonder how anyone could watch her and NOT instantly fall in love with her.

I absolutely relate to Margaret Cho about not fitting in, wanting to be accepted, having trouble finding love. For those of you who do not know me personally, I am about as petite as an adult woman gets without requiring hospitalization. I am tiny. My abdominal muscles are visible and so are my ribs. Being thin and being fit has never brought me instant acceptance, friendship, love, or a better standard of living. I have been just as screwed over by friends, co-workers and lovers as any of my chubby counterparts. I’ve probably spent more Saturday nights alone than them. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not want pity, nor am I fishing for compliments. I want to tell the world that your weight, whatever side of the scale you fall on, is not the key to either your happiness or unhappiness. Strange words coming from someone who works in the fitness industry, I know, but it’s true. Men let doors drop on me, just like everybody else. They shout at me to get the %*@& off the road when I am riding my bike, lyrca clad. Boyfriends cheat on me with heavier, less fit women. It’s all the same. When you get treated badly, it usually has nothing to do with you. Bad behavior toward you says more about the person behaving badly than it does whom they are behaving towards. Stop torturing yourself trying to find out why he or she “did this to me” and instead wonder why you let them. Shun the people who treat you poorly and lavish attention on those who lavish it on you. Sounds like common sense, but too often we do the exact opposite.

Life really is what you make of it, it’s not a cliché. The world is one big self-fulfilling prophecy and you will have returned to you the attitude you project. So don’t worry that other’s can see through you and realize that you are really a pathetic loser. They can’t, they are too busy trying to hide their own pathetic loser from everyone else.  Having thighs the size of tree trunks or a gut that has its own postal code is not as unattractive as the huge chip on your shoulder.  So let’s all decide right now that whatever self-improvements we decide on are self-motivated. Let’s stop trying to appear to be what other’s want us to be and start spending more time with those who want us because of who we are.  In the words of my girl, Margaret, “our revolution is long overdue”.