August 9, 2021-Ride #14-111.42kms
Hello to all, I am sure some of you were wondering how soon I would be able to get back on my bicycle after my last ride ended at 40kms with a tire puncture, and with how disappointed I was! Well, here is what I did, I said to myself, forget this!, and sold my bicycle for $50, I am done! Just kidding of course! Lol. As you can see by the Title of this blog, I got right back on my bicycle as soon as I felt recovered, which ended up being 3 days later, and I continued my journey towards 200kms! I really feel the need to express the follies of over-reacting to various situations, because again, if you look at my video from my previous ride, one might think I lost a cherished puppy rather than had a ride end early.
I don't need to touch on how demoralized I felt at the time, and in the moment, as I went into detail with those thoughts and feelings during my last blog, but here I am going to discuss the very important mental element of 'tomorrow is a new day.' Obviously, how quickly one bounces back from a disappointment will be related to a number of factors, including the intensity of the disappointment itself; therefore, I can only obviously speak from my own perspective, and my own circumstances, but I do hope this helps you in your attempts to keep things in their proper light.
To help me reframe what took place, I started by asking myself a few important questions, 1. Was I injured? No! and 2. Would this end my fundraiser? No, as well! Puncturing my tire was not a catastrophe, it sure felt like it, but it was far from that! I also needed to draw upon my past experiences to remember other times where I felt like it was all over, only to see that in fact I could and did bounce back. Even with the heavy self-abasement I engaged in from not having a tire repair kit on hand, I have many times bounced back from similar things like that as well. By putting things into perspective, by reframing, by considering past experiences, I was able to have a decent evening the very day of the incident, and I was able to get back out there riding just 3 days later! Is developing productive thought processes going to be your cure to mental illness, no, very likely not, but it could easily increase your chances of getting through very difficult times like I did here!
Now for the ride! I have settled into a pathway groove, really taking advantage of the amenities the city of London has put into place along the Thames River biking trails! From the now fully connected pathways, to the water fountains, the washrooms, the benches, to even the splash pads, which I unashamedly have well utilized, I have seen my view of the pathways change. While I do miss some aspects of cycling in the country: the beautiful farms and open land, that wonderful tail wind and those endless roads, I do not miss the strong headwinds, the close encounters with cars-including transport trucks so close I can feel the heat from their exhaust-that darn bulldog that kept chasing me, and those impatient drivers I would experience on occasion that somehow forgot I had a legal right to be out there! I might get out on the country roads one more time, but it does seem the right place to be now is the city pathways. With how long my rides are getting, by staying in the city I can make adjustments if a storm pops up, or if darkness hits; ever cycle on the open country roads during pitch dark? I haven't and I don't want to lol. I thought I would have to constantly stop for other pathway users and ring the bell a thousand times, but that hasn't been too bad, and the pathways are not as bumpy as I thought they were, although in some places I shake more than a pair of dice in a game of Yahtzee!
This was another challenging ride, but the weather was solid until just before the end. I went through the usual ups and downs, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th winds, the whole, 'man, is this ride ever gonna end' thing, but I also had the, 'it feels good to be alive' and the, 'this intense challenge is absorbing.' Just as I was about 8-9kms away from the finish line, and just after I hit the splash pad, the winds picked up, the clouds rolled in, and the rain started coming! Let's just say I cycled a bit faster the rest of the way lol. So, there we have it, 14 rides in, and still going! I kind of tricked myself into thinking that at 100kms I was at the halfway point, but really, with the length of the rides, that is deceiving; I may be halfway through the quantity of rides, up to this point has been the easy part, although for me not easy at all lol. I was thinking, maybe I could just go ahead and try to cycle 200kms in one day right now, but there are a few reasons why I will not do this. I don't want to risk more injuries by over-extending my body, including my injuries. But, an even greater reason is that I want to feel the exhaustion from these rides, one ride at a time, I want to feel the journey, and I want to do all of this so that I can paint an accurate picture of what it is like for me, and many like me, to not just grind through for one day, or for one ride, but to have to grind through, recover, and do it again! There are no real shortcuts to dealing with mental illness, and so I don't want to use any shortcuts in reaching 200kms! I hope everyone is doing well, and at the very least, never giving up trying to reach their goals!
