Momthlete Evolves

Sometimes we feel ourselves changing, sometimes we don’t, sometimes we struggle against it sometimes for years. Some people I watch accept all of life’s events with much more grace than I seem to.  It is funny how sometimes we see ourselves as a certain thing. For instance when I was a kid I was a gymnast, a runner, a singer.  As I got older I played trumpet, I was a McDonalds employee, I was a girl guide.  

When I was 16 I bought my first mountain bike.  That is when I knew I wanted to be a mountain biker.  For some reason, whoever those people were in spandex, all fit and healthy, having fun on their bikes, I wanted to be them, not like them, I wanted to be a mountain biker.  I rode my bike as much as I could, wore some of the clothes, did some races but was I them?  I wasn’t quite sure.  But I kept riding my bike more and more hoping someday, I would be a mountain biker.  I would leave my small town of Nova Scotia and ride away from home for five days with my tent, sleeping bag and camp stove. But was I a mountain biker?  I refused to ride road bikes, yeah, that is what a real mountain biker would do, never ride a road bike.

I went to University right after high school. I had a pretty nice bike that I had worked many hours at McDonalds to buy.  It was a very nice Rocky Mountain.  I would ride it every Saturday and Sunday, clean it in front of the residence before putting away in the storage area downstairs. I was proud of my bike.  I had some friends who would take me out and show me the trails.  I was becoming a mountain biker.  We would drink beer after rides, have potlucks and play music at night.  I was pretty sure I was really becoming a mountain biker. 

I started hanging out with Matt Betts at some parties, the New Brunswick provincial champion!  I couldn’t even believe it, I was so nervous sometimes I would hide from him when he came over to visit my roommate. He took me on a few rides.  Now I was dating a “real” mountain biker.  I could see the holes in my game.  I needed a road bike to increase my fitness.  Soon I would need a heart rate monitor to measure my intervals.  Soon I was trying to beat my own workouts. Yes, I had a workout schedule that I followed, lifted weights.  Soon I was racing the top girls in New Brunswick, Canada, the US, I was in a World Cup, whoa.  I was on a team, I was training more than working, racing all summer.  I was a mountain biker.  My environment became mountain biking, my friends were mountain bikers, my community was the race scene. 

Then I had my first baby.  I was a mountain biker with a baby.  I could do this, right? But it was hard trying to work out racing, and workouts around my baby’s schedule.  It was also lonely, I trained alone or with Ava napping in the chariot.  No more long bike rides learning so much from my friends and community. No one else had such a limited window to train in or a breast feeding schedule to work around. I would train, do baby care, race, baby care. I struggled, I didn’t want to give it up.  

When we moved to Corvallis I found most of my days were spent with other Mommas.  They didn’t mountain bike but they sure knew how to help me with potty training, where to go to preschool, which library story times I could go to with Ava for the age appropriate stories.  They changed my parenting game.  They were Pro Mommas, dedicated to parenting like I had dedicated myself to mountain biking.  All they wanted was to be great Mommas and I learned from them every single day.  They thought I was crazy running all over the place with my babies in tow (and they are somewhat correct), but they let me hang out anyway and learn from them.

Each year when I had to relax my racing I thought, oh well, just this year, then I will do it again, once Ava is older, once Miles is older, once Anna is older… Wait a minute.  I think it took me three babies to realize I was not a mountain bike racer Mom.  I am a Mom who mountain bike races sometimes, but more often runs because it is easier. 

After the triathlons this summer, our band played lots of music and I took lots of time to do music instead of training.  And for the first time I realized I didn’t disappear when I stopped being or trying to be a racer.  I simply started changing. And even then it wasn’t easy.  One day in October after 2 months of not racing, Matt and Adam (one of my closest team mates from the good ol’ days) took me out on a ride.  I got dropped on every section on flat rolling terrain. I was miserable.  I couldn’t believe I had given up, I was so mad at myself, so crushed to find out how quickly my training had disappeared.  How horrible that I may never be able to ride a good ride with Matt or Adam again.  Trust me when I say I mourned the death of a part of me that day.

Now I kept trying to do workouts, but when I tried to go hard my body hurt.  My neck would seize, my calf would clench up.  Weird things that had never happened before would happen every time I tried to push my body.  I am getting old, I thought.  I am certainly getting older.  So I would go back to music and my kids, which started becoming more and more fun.  The less I rode my bike, the more other parts of my life would trickle in.  Eventually it occurred to me, maybe I wasn’t losing myself, perhaps I was just changing.  I began meeting more musicians, hanging out with my Pro Momma’s group more, knitting with my preschool moms.  I would go for slower fun runs, do gymnastics with my kids.  If my sports were for fun my body was happy, if I pushed it hard, it would shut down.  I have never had my body send me a clearer message.  “I am finished with this for now”, it said, “if you want to go hard you will suffer.” More surprising for me was my response, for the first time I answered “no, I don’t want to suffer for this anymore”.

And that is when I noticed just how good the change felt.  How much fun I was having in my changing role.  How music often happened at night after my kids went to bed instead of during the day when I wanted to be with them.  I could share music with them a bit, run and ride with them more because there was no more specific workout to do. I just had to keep my body healthy.

Now don’t get me wrong, I went out with Matt and we did a three hour ride together in the Mac Dunn and it was so fun.  I will always love mountain biking and I always hope I am fit enough to enjoy the Mac Dunn and Oakridge.  I may run the Mac Dunn 50 again.  Then again I have no idea if I will and for the first time in probably 15 years, that is ok with me.  The change is almost complete, I am a mom who mountain bikes and plays music.  I hope if I can’t do those things I will be a mom who finds something else that is interesting to do and learns how to do as well as possible and meet the wonderful people doing that thing as well.  For me it is finally ok to change, but for me the evolution within my lifetime was not always easy, pretty and without some serious ego suffering. I imagine many of the changes in my life will be similar, like when the kids leave my house and I am convinced they were just born yesterday.

But wouldn’t it be wonderful, wait, would I be a better person if I stopped trying to be someone or something in particular, and just welcomed what came into my life everyday?  Then would my evolution tick along just as well, without my body finally needing to scream at me “Stop you idiot, I quit! Go find something else to do!”

So there it is folks, I think I have changed a bit this year.  But in reality I change a bit every single year, day, minute, second.  My town has changed, country, community, friends.  My environment is constantly changing, and so does the surface of me, I am getting older, I care more about my house being clean and struggle to make it so.  I want to look nicer most days than I did before (I need to cover up my aging).  And yet I feel like all my friends, towns, family from those past moments come with me all the time being picked up by my self like a snowball, adding layer after layer to who I am.  And yet who I am probably really hasn’t changed that much in 35 years, a kid who liked to ride her trike, sing songs, play with her friends and go for long walks around White Rock, Nova Scotia.

And that is just about enough naval gazing for this night.  Thank you for reading.  Keep changing, keep staying the same.  Sometimes we struggle.  Sometimes we are at peace.  Does anyone know the right path? If someone showed it to me would I follow it to a tee?  If I did, would I learn as much?