There Are Mountains, And Then There Are Mountains

You can only take having your family nearby for granted for so long.  Sooner or later, a time will come when no one is around. Everyone has something to do or somewhere to be and the stars are just not aligned. It’s not intentional, of course, but it’s reality. People have lives that, somehow, do not revolve around me. The nerve.

And those dang stars just so happen to be unaligning themselves on Saturday, the day of my race. Let me just say right now that I’ve done about, oh, hundreds of races or so and at only about ten of those has anyone in my family either been with me or at the finish waiting for me.  I’m accustomed to having friends around and comfortable commiserating with other runners. It’s part of the experience, for sure.

There’s something about this Saturday, though, that kind of makes me wish other people didn’t have things to do. Like jobs. And classes. And whatever WAHnothingismoreimportantthanme! I don’t know why, and I know I’ll be just fine, but I sort of have this little ache to be able to gaze up the mountain just past the finish line (which you can see for at least the last two miles of the race (the longest miles of your life)) and see my people there. My blood.

Alas, it isn’t going to happen that way. I’ll get over it, and hopefully I’ll haul my butt up there just the same as I ever would have. Later that night we’ll go to dinner, and celebrate and hopefully I’ll have a good story to tell. I know they’ll all be thinking of me.

In the meantime, I’m concentrating on other things that’ll get me to the finish (and hopefully beat all the cutoff times, ugh).

For as long as I’ve known about blogging, I’ve read FatCyclist.com. While I’m only an amateur cyclist at best and knew very little about cycling at the time (oh, look, still don’t!) I would go read Elden’s blog and pretend I had a clue what shifters and derailleurs really did, and in the meantime I’d be very entertained. I remember one post in particular where he wrote of possibly being able to sustain on only cold cereal and Mexican food forever and I immediately thought to myself that I was probably related to this person.

Over the years Elden has shared more than cycling on his blog: the story of his incredible wife, Susan, and her valiant and amazing fight with cancer. Susan, Elden, their children, family, and friends are nothing short of heroic. If you want to know what real love and devotion really is, stop whatever you’re doing right now and go read that blog. After having read along with this story, and developing a deep admiration for Susan and Elden, I can honestly say that I have an entirely new perspective on how life ought to be measured.

For months now, whenever I’ve needed to set an intention before tackling something, my mind diverts to Susan and Elden. As with my experience with my friend earlier this year, I believe that we can sometimes be with someone in their struggle, even if it’s only by being better and stronger ourselves.

Last week, on August 5, 2009, Susan passed away. While I am just a person far away and only a stranger, my only reaction was to want to help.  While I realize that is unrealistic, it’s hard to avoid those feelings when people have affected your life so significantly.

While I never thought I was cool enough to have a real bike jersey (and by “cool” I mean skilled in the least on a bike), much less a super cool Fat Cyclist jersey, I do have a super bright pink jersey that looks like this: