the adventure continues

Training:
We have a goal: the Great Divide Montana. This is a mountain bike tour through Adventure Cycling that we have selected to ride. This is one of the few off-road tours they offer and one of great beauty. We commence in charming Whitefish, MT, travelling to Bigfork, up through the Mission mountains through the Swan Valley, stopping in Condon, Seeley Lake (where we got married 4 years ago!) and end in Lincoln. It's 250 miles on forest service and logging roads through land filled with Huckleberries, grizzly bears, amazing waterfalls, and things not yet known. They will carry our gear and feed us, so all we need to do is ride. Once we committed to it in February, the panic started to set in. I must prepare, I will not make my one week of vacation this year a thing of torture. I will have a great time. This means I must learn to love my bike, get over being saddle sore, push myself mentally and physically. Well, this is something altogether new to me.

I have my helmet to keep my noggin from getting splattered all over the concrete, I have padded shorts to give my seat a little more cushion (thanks to awesome birthday gift cards- thanks everyone!). I'm ready to go. My first fear: clip-in pedals. I have never tried them, never wanted to. Now, I give it a go. In the back yard. First with J holding my bike. Clip in, clip out, clip in, clip out. Ok. Then riding through the soft backyard. Clip in, clip out, clip in, fall. This becomes very boring and I finally say I'm ready to hit the road. I'm not falling very often, so it must be time. Little did I know that six months later I still have trouble clipping out in stress situations. J watches me fall hard in slow motion, trying to look away, but really unable to do so. Me, feeling that moment of trouble, knowing in my head that I need to clip out, but somehow my feet don't move and I'm crashing hard onto my leg, hip, shoulder, hand, landing on rocks, trees, gravel and pavement. I'm constantly bruised, usually bleeding. I'm most frustrated while trapped under my bike, still unable to free that foot from the pedal. I swear a lot. Then I untwist the pretzel I've found myself screwed up in and brush myself off. I look at J, he gives me a very sad face. He says it's very hard to watch me crash and burn like that. Maybe I need different pedals. Maybe I need a new brain. He has never believed that I am a klutz. Until now. I have finally made him understand why I will never drive a motorcycle. Yes, hun, I will kill myself.

Besides the accidents, our training has been both the time of our lives and a burden. How many miles are we riding? How much time does it take? How many days this week have we ridden? I feel to properly train for something like this I need to quit my job. It just takes too much of my day. However, the rides we have done have been pretty amazing. We have seen beautiful mountain country, bushwhacked trail, been attacked by a quail, (yea, that's right, a quail) and seen no one else on any trail we've ever ridden, with the exception of the one trail in town we've ridden together. Amazing. In the Lolo area we have explored everywhere, riding so far into the mountains that we had to look at satellite to figure out where we were. We've seen land ravaged by fire, logging, microbursts. We've ridden through rain, wind, snow, and especially lately, powerful heat.

What I've learned about my body and my mental abilities were the most surprising. My legs rarely let me down. I have demanded a lot of them and they continue to give me power. They may demand a break from time to time, but are eager to get back to that pedal motion. They aren't the things that fail me. My head does let me down. Sometimes if I just don't look at the hill in front of me, but rather at my front tire, I can keep cranking along. But it only takes one peek around the next bend to see the hill continues to climb instead of levelling out for my body to break. I've started playing head games with myself to see how to control that moment of giving up, of thinking, "I'm never going to make it" or "I can't do it". During our trip I will do it, I will make it. There's really no other choice.