Bikes & Brené
My cycling target for 2020 was to complete my first century and ride 2020 miles (3250km). By mid April the sportive I’d planned to ride my 100 miles at had been cancelled but I still thought 3250kms do-able. In June Boots, our rescue lurcher, came to live with us (happy day) and almost two hours everyday went on walking him. Still, the 3250 was still in range, with stolen hours here & there.
In November I enrolled on a 200 hour yoga teacher training course. Usually this course, run by my favourite yoga studio, is delivered over 18 months and involved being at the studio one weekend a month. In the Covid world this was truncated to a year and became a three hour zoom call every Wednesday with two Saturdays and one full weekend of study during November. The course also calls for one-to-two hours of personal study, three hours of yoga home practice and 90 minutes of studio class, per week. This coupled with work getting stupidly busy meant I’ve barely ridden my bike for a couple of months and my target was out of reach.
So I changed my target. My new target was ‘do more than 2019’. Last year had been my best year ever on the bike, due mostly to getting a gravel bike and loving the women I’d found locally to ride with. Last year’s final figure was 2662km (I can’t remember what the target was). As of Christmas Eve, I needed 200km to beat last year, 33km a day.
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I had two great days post Christmas and bagged my 66km, yesterday however I was tired. I’m also behind on my yoga home practice, I’m doing 45mins a day to catch up. Yoga and staying up late playing word games while drinking cocktails made me too weary to ride yesterday.
Today in a better frame of mind, I rejigged the figures and decided I could still hit the target. At 11am I was in the pain cave; I listened to three Brené Brown podcasts and took myself on a leisurely pootle round Zwift, bagging another 52km. That leaves me 80km to do, in two days. It’s doable. It totally is. On Thursday, New Year’s Eve, there’s a Zwift meet-up of my women’s cycle club, I am dearly hoping to hit my target riding with that wonderful group of inspiring and supportive women.
Which brings me neatly to another inspiring and supportive woman, Brené Brown. I love her work. Early in 2019 I read ‘Gifts of Imperfection’ taking myself off to a quiet coffee shop to read her wisdom. My copy of ‘Gifts’ is littered with my underlinings and Washi tape page markers. The most salient passages have been copied into my journal.
Brené’s podcast, ‘Unlocking Us’ is my current ride companion. And this is both good and bad. Good in that I loose myself in Brené’s warmth and wisdom, not noticing my numb bum or weary legs. Bad because I can’t jot down the many wonderful things the podcast seeks to espouse. Two things I remember from today tho: ‘judgement will always demand punishment’ meaning if you judge something your mind will seek to punish whoever you judge as failing, and often that’s yourself. So, don’t judge, always a good guide to try and live by. And the second related to ‘family gap plan’ i.e what do you do, how do you behave when the energy resources across the family don’t add up to 100%. I bounced into the kitchen after my ride and immediately discussed the family gap plan with D, my husband, and this is something we’ll work up together in the coming days. Our family energy levels are high currently, it’s the perfect time to get this tool in place.
