Friday, May 30, 2008

Back into the swing...er, I mean spin of things

Only ONE MORE MONTH TO GO till we officially start riding!!! Wow I can not believe how fast it is coming now and I am so excited to get going.

It's been awhile since I have written on my blog even though there have been many times that I have thought about it. Up until the last few weeks I was still having trouble with my knee and kept getting so frustrated and I really didn't want my blogs to keep being about that, so in the end I never wrote.

But this past week, I have started getting into a bit of a schedule and things have been going great so far (much to my relief). Though I have only been doing about 15-18km / day of riding, I have gone out every day of this week and my total is about 70km so far for the week and I still have the weekend to go. To some this may seem fairly small considering most of our days are going to be well over 100km long but I've really learned over the last few months how important it is to ease back into something. One analogy that I think about that I heard at a christian retreat last year was that we need to be like elastic bands. An elastic band needs to be constantly stretched so that when shot across a room it can go really far, otherwise if it just sits there it will become hard and brittle and fall apart. The message here is that we sometimes have to pull back in order to spring ahead. And man I have done my share of pulling back.

ART therapy has really helped heal my knee but so has my dependence on God and my constant prayers to him. As well as all of my family and friends who have been acting as prayer warriors for me (thank you). They have been a real encouragement to me in my down times. I like the one comment made to me by a relative that maybe the purpose for me learning to slow down in my riding is that I will get the chance to ride with some people I might not have had the chance to otherwise.

I look forward to finally getting to ride with the cyclists who right now I only know through e-mails. It's going to be so amazing. My excitement is definitely building.

I am also amazed that I now only have $2000 more to go to reach my goal of $10,000. I have been blown away by so many and by the support they have shown for myself and for the cause of this tour. Thank you to all of you.

Please continually keep all of those involved in the tour in your prayers as we are only still just in the beginning stages.

One month and counting :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh Steph I am glad to hear that the knee is starting to settle. If I can add a saying in cycling training "you have to learn to ride slow in order to ride fast". Our bodies usually tell us what to do, the difficult part is listening. I am glad that you are listening. All the best Steph.