Kristin Rides

Where to start? My desire to race is lessening daily; I was basically just “training” for an 8 hour MTB race on July 4th. Lots of long rides. Some intervals, but mostly endurance and hill climb intervals.

Then 2 weeks ago I went dirt biking (moto) on Mount Hood and dumped the bike no less then 4 times. The 4th time I dropped it hard core onto my foot/leg, the engine landing solidly on my foot, which did not have a real moto boot on it. My foot was pretty well crushed; I could not stand on it, and by the evening I could not put an ounce of weight on it. It was throbbing something awful. J ended up having to take me to his house because I could not get up the stairs in mine to get to my bedroom. It was bad, I thought I might have broken something. I ended up having to take some serious pain killers to get through that evening.

I went to work the next day with crutches, but by the end of the day, I was able to hobble around without them; healing seems to have gone pretty damn fast, although it still hurts, especially to twist it (ie getting in and out of pedals).

What really sucks is that I kept crashing onto my knees, and now they refuse to operate properly. Walking up and down stairs is very painful. I can’t climb, I can’t sprint, I can’t do much of anything without some pain at this point. Even just touching them hurts. I’ve been icing like a mad woman, but I think this one will just take some time.

So this means no 8 hour race for me. However, I did go “race” short track this evening. And by race I mean I soft pedaled and tried to catch as much air as I could on the whoops and tried not to crash. Both achieved. My knees actually felt pretty good, but I’m thinking it’s because I didn’t push it, and it was really warm out. While I generally felt good, I don’t want to push it. My knees are bad enough as it is, don’t need to fuck them up for cycling AND running.

I haven’t been writing much because I’ve been really busy with this whole starting-a-business thing. It’s rather time consuming. Apparently.

I also went to Spokane last weekend for one of my best friends’ weddings. It was gorgeous, she was gorgeous, it was fun to see everyone…I got in a long ride on Friday around the Spokane River which was AWESOME. Except that I went too far and climbed too much and my knees were NOT HAPPY. Oh well. It was awesome anyway.

So, back to friends and weddings. I was having a good time, and then I read this little sappy-ish romantical quote that was affixed to a little wedding bobble thingy…it said “Hope is a waking dream.-Aristotle” I don’t know what it was about that, but fuuuck I had to GET OUT OF THERE. Not because it was sappy, rather the opposite. It like…hit something. Somewhere. The whole thing was very upsetting. I found a little bridge over a bubbling brook to sit on and stared at the water for a while. After that I just knew I had to leave Spokane ASAP, and I ended up leaving around 8pm and drove through the night to get back to Portland.

I know, maybe a little insane.

I feel very lost. No, lost is not the right word. Floating. I feel like I’m floating and I’m not really sure where I’m going or what I’m doing. I like riding the wave right now, I like just going with the flow and seeing where it takes me. However at times I worry there’s something else at play that’s just under the surface of the water, and eventually I’m going to stick my feet in the murky depths.