Adult Diapers

 

I wasn't ready for adult diapers until Saturday. I hit the trails again for a blood-pumping two hours, pedaling through the cold, from the cold with my new best friend, a mountain biking game changer. Strangely they reminded me of work. There was the diaper factor, the wheelchair cushion-like gel.  Luckily I was using them to run into trees, derail my chain, hop over logs, avoid the dreaded endo instead of the alternative and by the time it was over I could hardly think straight. My thighs burned, my stomach wanted ALL FOOD IN SIGHT and my brain was toast. Nothing does me in more than mountain biking and this girl pushes me. She says she's out of shape and if that's the case then so am I!

 

To avoid wuss-dom and live up to my new motto that "I can do what I put my mind to" I kept my commitment to run eight miles with Mimi on Sunday.  I'm enjoying the outcome if I decide to just go for it, to see if I can take it, so go for it I did.  I may have had a close call with a passer by while relieving myself roadside (if I'd been wearing real diapers they'd have come in handy) and a few stray cattle on the road but I plodded along the country miles and felt new strength and a new blister.

 

Surprisingly I haven't yet crumbled into a pile of whining bones.  I've lost a toenail, my pants are getting tighter and I'm slowly learning how to train and eat and fit it all in.  But for someone who once thought three miles of running was her limit I'm proof you just never know what you can accomplish until you try.    

 

Lately motivation has come from thinking of the alternative to health and being overwhelmingly grateful for what I have.  That I can run and bike at all seems catalyst enough to brave the cold, to slough off the pull of lazy.  I recall other types of pain and realize that losing a toenail is nothing in comparison so I keep going.  There will be time enough for diapers of another sort but for now I am on one hand running from that day and on the other more than content to pause here and ride these for all they're worth.