Three months off long rides. Three months of no intervals. Three months of missing out on something that has become a big part of my personal identity. Three months of embarrassment at having let myself dig a hole so deep I couldn't seem to climb out. I know I have so much further to go on this walk-about.
I've learned a lot about myself though. I've learned that I won't give up on myself. That when I really care about the outcome of something, my work ethic is so good I will literally drive myself to madness. To the edge of sanity. I will give more than the expected 100%. If I can channel that sort of dedication into whatever I decide to do with my life someday, I think I can do big things.
I've learned to respect my body in a new way. My life on the bike taught me to respect my body as a well-oiled machine. Sometimes I forgot to perform maintenance like oil changes and tire rotations. Because when you're a person living separate from your body and what it can do, sometimes you don't invest in it like you should. So I'm up on the blocks now, getting overhauled. Expensive, time-consuming... But in my time off, I've spent time in introspection. I've given time to walks in the woods, to my yoga mat, to my family. I see a more well-rounded girl. I have a few extra pounds on me now, but I work hard to be gentle with myself and not berate my body. My body hasn't betrayed me. I betrayed my body, with too much work burden, and not enough time to relax and let it do the real work of repair, with not enough fuel to do so.
My respect for my body as a machine has evolved into respect for the body-soul complex. I'm more than a few pieces of bone strung together by muscle and sinew. I have a brain in my brain box, and I need to use it, and allow it to inform the things I do. In a way, I feel this taking me back to a paper I wrote in Intellectual History of Early Modern Europe, which dealt with the complexities of ideas of monster versus man, and the issue of AI, and questions of how one can tell the difference between man and machine. So what am I? Today, I say woman. I have come to accept my softness. But hopefully someday I can become the monster... An odd melding of (wo)man and machine. The perfect synthesis of humanity and mechanized parts. A monster can listen to its feedback; the machine can't do a thing but what it is told, until it breaks down. The monster can learn. The monster is more than a machine to be driven. It is driven.
But hey, I'm still a cyclist, still obsessed with numbers, data, and improvement. So where do I stand? My blood work improves, albeit slowly. Ferritin, hemoglobin, and white blood cells are slowly inching themselves into fair territory. While not at optimal levels, as long as I continue to make deposits into the Bank of Blood Health and TLC, I should be better in a few months. My hormones have a long way to go to be back to normal, and that'll be an ongoing effort on my part to eat well and relax. My Vitamin D numbers still aren't what they should be, but that will come around too.
So, at what I think it probably the half way point in my journey back to serious training, all I can say is, don't be the machine. Be the monster. Listen to the feedback and learn. Be smart, and be gentle when you need to be.
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