The next day we discussed race strategy while eating breakfast, but then an hour later at a coffee shop I became overwhelmed with sudden clarity and scratched from the race.  We had just ordered lattes and sat down at a counter facing out the window for some people watching. I found myself jealous at everyone talking and laughing as they passed by.  I imagined that they all had the freedom to go about their lives without their bodies disappointing them constantly, and I wished that I could trade places with one of them for a little while.  Of course I fully realize that everyone else has a hard life too in one way or another, but that logic didn’t help me at the time. Suddenly I was crying, and that was it.

The whole thing was quite anticlimactic.  We sent messages out to our family, friends, and the race organizer to alert everyone to our decision.  The next day we loaded onto an airplane and we were back home to our cats before nightfall. 5 days after that, we were back at work like nothing had ever happened.  Our whole trip only lasted two weeks, so we didn’t even need to dip into the unpaid leave that I had secured a full year in advance.

I was right about my knees healing quickly; by the time we were back home it felt like nothing at all had happened to them.  Several people pointed out that my legs looked super puffy in a few of my pictures, and we’ve wondered if fluid accumulation was responsible for some of my nighttime knee pain.  I’ve been told by a physical therapist that my patellas don’t track well, and that overuse of my quads can cause tendon tightness that pulls on the patellas.  Essentially, I need to work to strengthen my glute muscles to balance my muscle recruitment. I’ll be embarking on some sort of physical therapy once I’m healthier, but this is a tricky issue to address because it ONLY comes up after 4 or more consecutive days of triple-digit rides.  I’ve had many advanced bike fittings, and nothing has ever seemed amiss with my riding position or shoes.  

We had a local shop ship our bikes and gear back to us from Missoula.  When everything arrived, we piled it into our den without unpacking any bags.  It took about 6 months for us to touch some of it, but even today it’s still not totally organized.  The problem is that I haven’t needed to deal with my TABR gear because I mostly haven’t been able to ride my bike.

I spent two weeks pretending like I could handle going to work, but in reality I was feeling so sick every day that I had to keep cutting my hours short.  Things continued to spiral out of control and I was on medical leave by the first week in July. I had promised myself when I scratched that I would give myself a break from the gauntlet of seeking a diagnosis.  I was just going to let myself be sick and accept my fate, and that would be that. Thankfully I broke my promise to myself and by August I was diagnosed with and in treatment for not one, not two, but THREE different infectious diseases that I contracted from a single tick bite.  Yes, I finished 25% of TABR with 3 simultaneous infections! A multi-year journey of 15 doctors and hundreds of blood tests finally came to an end.  Ever since then, my life has pretty much been on hold while I try to find a way back to health. I am so incredibly blessed to know now that it is possible to recover, which is something I didn’t know for a long time as I was searching for a diagnosis.

Many racers have talked about experiencing depression post-race, probably due to a combination of hormone disruption and the sorrow of a long anticipated adventure being over.  Imagine for a moment what it was like for me to come home disappointed and then lose most everything else that was normal in my life as well. Just a few weeks after scratching, I had a panic attack while trying to walk around the block of my neighborhood because I was struggling so much that I wasn’t sure I could make it back home.  I literally thought I was going to have to call someone to pick me up and drive me back home. To my house that was 1/10th of a mile away. 

Thankfully, I’ve learned that Chris and I are pretty resilient.  We kept our spirits up by immediately throwing our TABR cash fund into a different project: building a workshop/gym in our backyard where we can store our bikes and ride on our trainers.  We committed to training and preparing for TABR 2020, even when I was at the height of my illness. In the back of our minds we knew that it would likely take me longer than that to recover, but we like to choose the optimistic and hopeful road in every situation.  When I start to despair over my situation, I log onto Instagram and look at all our photos and videos from our cycling adventures. It’s a little bittersweet, but fills me with joy nonetheless. Life is REALLY hard right now, but it’s comforting to remember that we’ve lived to the fullest whenever possible. We continue to be excited about the future, which motivates me to keep working at recovery.

As of March 26th, 2020, I’m still on medical leave and fighting with one last infection.  A runner I know who also has Lyme Disease warned me at the start of treatment that it would be like waking up every day to run a mandatory marathon that you didn’t know you were signed up for.  I can’t come up with a better way to describe it. Make no mistake, the last 9 months have been much harder than racing across the country, and I don’t have the option to scratch. However, I started responding to the right medication immediately, and I’m making steady progress.  I’m convinced that our endurance cycling habit prepared me both mentally and physically for this challenge, and that’s why I’ve managed to (mostly) maintain a bright spirit. I can’t wait to get back to the TABR starting line someday and celebrate all that Chris and I have overcome.  

I know that many of you are in the same boat as me now.  The 2020 race has been cancelled due to COVID-19, and now as a whole community we are mourning our loss of normalcy.  Thank you to everyone out there working at the front lines of the pandemic in our hospitals, all of the essential employees like grocery store workers still showing up to work despite the dangers, and everyone who has given up their livelihoods to isolate at home and protect the vulnerable.  Don’t forget to look through your photo albums and remember what we are all fighting for. Some day, life will begin to return to normal, and we will all feel more motivated than ever to live life to the fullest. I hope to see all of you at the TABR 2021 starting line!! It’s funny how in the end, riding your bike sometimes ends up being the easiest part about finishing this dang race.  

So why did I scratch, and what did I learn from my experience?  At the time I claimed that I scratched because I had exhausted all options and there was no way for me to continue riding.  That wasn’t true. In the end, I scratched because I realized that I was probably tough enough to finish the race no matter how sick I felt, but that doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do.  It wasn’t going to be worth it to potentially become disabled for years. I wanted so badly to prove that I was strong enough to overcome the obstacles placed in front of me, but sometimes the strongest move you can make is to back down. 

Throughout this whole experience, I constantly doubted myself.  I had been told so many times that doctors could find nothing wrong with me, and so when I continued to suffer and struggle I felt like I failed.  It didn’t help that aches, fatigue, and general suffering are all normal for TABR racers, so I felt weak for wanting to quit when I experienced them. However, I was so burned out and sick in the months leading up to the race that I could barely make it to the starting line to begin with.  For me, scratching was actually a declaration that I believed in myself. I knew something was truly wrong, and I knew that I deserved better.

What I learned from this experience was that YES, it IS in fact worth it to take big risks in life.  During our two years of training I spent a lot of sleepless nights wondering if it was smart of me to commit so much time and energy to something when I wasn’t totally certain that my body would be able to handle it.  Would it be worth it to spend thousands of hours training, researching, gathering gear, saving money, and learning how to be an ultracyclist… potentially all for nothing?

Yes, yes it was.

I might not have made it to the monument at Yorktown [Chris: Yet!], but I’ve done and seen so many things in the last few years for the sake of training that I might not have experienced otherwise.  My memories from those 9 days of riding are more vivid than almost any other memories from my life. We had an absolute blast. My greatest hope in writing this blog is that someone out there will see it and make the decision to sign up for a race because of it.  Maybe you have a chronic illness or injury too, or some other complication in your life that you think might get in the way of your success. My advice to you is to do it anyways, and let the pages of this blog confirm to you that it will be worth it.  

At the beginning of all of this, I wasn’t sure if I was capable of riding my bike across the United States.  I might not have done it yet, but I definitely know now that I’m capable.

We’ll see you at the starting line soon!