tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71799511881203928342024-03-05T03:04:30.175-05:00Trainin' on a PrayerLindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.comBlogger611125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-82647995578011314912022-02-04T18:43:00.000-05:002022-02-04T18:43:01.388-05:00Bike Decathlon: It's the New Gravel Triathlon<p><span style="color: #0e101a;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">Have I written any kind of real update here in months? No. Does what I'm about to write fit with the themes of any of my previous writing? No. I just felt like writing this, and I thought I'd share.</span></i></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">***</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Earlier this afternoon, Frank casually mentioned something about a guy wanting to buy a triathlon bike and a trail bike at the same time. Since I had recently heard that gravel triathlon is now a thing, my mind jumped to the question, "What, is he doing some kind of all bike triathlon or something?" </span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Actually, that sounds kind of fun. All you have to do is find a mountain bike trailhead with a 5-6 mile cross country loop, plenty of open grass near the parking to fit a cyclocross course, and pavement leading in and out for the road bike time trial. Oh, and just because you *could* do the entire thing on a cyclocross bike doesn't mean you're allowed to. </span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Okay, maybe it's still only fun for the participants, but only if they're very fit people with enough disposable income to afford three bikes. At first, I imagined it would be a logistical nightmare for promoters, but then I thought of at least three locations where an event like this could happen and realized it was more feasible than I initially thought. Plus, just think of how much the very fit people with enough disposable income to afford three bikes would be willing to pay in entry fees for an event that lets them race ALL THREE BIKES IN ONE RACE!!! </span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Hey, but I'm not one to kink shame. I recently paid $133.44 to race for 5-10 minutes in Tennessee in February on a bike that I haven't ridden since October and that I probably won't ride until two days before the said race. I'd love to tell you how it's actually totally worth it at some point, but for now, we must focus on the evolution of USA All Bike Multisport®.</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But what about us not-so-fit and easily bored people with enough disposable income to afford n+1 bikes? To become a financially sustainable organization, USA All Bike Multisport® must find a way to retain the membership fees of this key demographic, who've tried All Bike Triathon®, but that it doesn't fully represent their skillset. Luckily, when we look to our brethren who govern the sport of Track and Field for precedent, we find the decathlon. Moving the acceptable number of events in a single sport that can become one event to 10 opens up a whole new world of possibilities.</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Therefore, as the founder of USA All Bike Multisport®, I present our newest national championship titles: USA All Bike Decathlon National Champion®. Also, as the founder of USA All Bike Multisport®, I'm hoping to finally capture my first stars and stripes jersey as the women's age 42-43 Cat 2 USA All Bike Decathlon National Champion®. </span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The USA All Bike Multisport® USA All Bike Decathlon National Championships® will be held September 24, 2023 (pending rain) at Major Taylor Velodrome in Indianapolis, IN. Entry fees are as follows:</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Pros: </strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">One can of Red Bull</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Adults:</strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> $1297 </span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Juniors:</strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> $2597 </span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Obsessive Non-racing Parents of Juniors:</strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> $5227 (fee to enter premises)</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Cat 2 Women Racing Age 42-43:</strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> 1 MILLION DOLLARS</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">*USA All Bike Multisport® membership required</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">If you're interested in becoming a USA All Bike Decathlon National Champion®, please register using USA All Bike Multisport®'s propriety registration tool. Remember, the 2011-era UX is paid for with your membership dollars!</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> I look forward to seeing you this summer (unless you are a Cat 2 woman racing age 42 or 43)!</span><br /><br /><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZhFXb7YAdZayWNEryZekapLzCGTZ3tzAy4Dsd4irD4xW37jEi7oYQrATli5O2v9L8-lczkG6PfosT5mG9pgJQglFbCnuLu1GdSA1sDVOnWK8LEUk2hJTAEdl7e3K4fCM0aala-y3DslIKaia36EMEqaH1SfieNAB6YQd_KF_sr5YoL4m1Xj_WPJhu_g=s1024" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZhFXb7YAdZayWNEryZekapLzCGTZ3tzAy4Dsd4irD4xW37jEi7oYQrATli5O2v9L8-lczkG6PfosT5mG9pgJQglFbCnuLu1GdSA1sDVOnWK8LEUk2hJTAEdl7e3K4fCM0aala-y3DslIKaia36EMEqaH1SfieNAB6YQd_KF_sr5YoL4m1Xj_WPJhu_g=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p>Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-31849558017064426912021-08-13T14:31:00.001-04:002021-08-13T14:31:24.488-04:00Downhill Southeast 2021: The Geriatric Millennial Rises Again<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnnBxMB8LgL1MUnw8U1Kkz_gZuHQATbXQuAvpgy8NdNG9Yr7aFEtvbOgoX69Jr6Gd_oBrYUKai4ePGK5Q2vLN9o10tSOpJYhMm1rawZUX6924PbZowsyn__mWzxbeDY9T0X3ULYADsLKUp/s2048/Snowshoe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnnBxMB8LgL1MUnw8U1Kkz_gZuHQATbXQuAvpgy8NdNG9Yr7aFEtvbOgoX69Jr6Gd_oBrYUKai4ePGK5Q2vLN9o10tSOpJYhMm1rawZUX6924PbZowsyn__mWzxbeDY9T0X3ULYADsLKUp/w400-h266/Snowshoe.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Despite my return to racing this season, I still haven't been great at returning to blogging. Of the four races I have completed in 2021, I've only written about one, and that was six weeks after the fact. The second was simply not worthy of a stand-alone post, and the last two were a mere week apart, during which Frank and I were living out of our van in Boone, NC. Just like that, the 2021 Downhill Southeast series was complete, and I was left pondering how I would sum it up. After some reflection, the answer I found was surprising.</span></p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcH6rKHj4vH-8xaGUnOsPmJsCp5hb2ZvGBIIMVHOrIGsh7Ux2oveoZ2txpeLZ9OuHUN2MWWhPO0PQOLi4IpTRwQuZlpooiBfeYQlhG1L8PsiKOtoCg2tRNPd_umRbzWNm3Tq5iamMybLCi/s754/Geriatric+Millennial.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="728" data-original-width="754" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcH6rKHj4vH-8xaGUnOsPmJsCp5hb2ZvGBIIMVHOrIGsh7Ux2oveoZ2txpeLZ9OuHUN2MWWhPO0PQOLi4IpTRwQuZlpooiBfeYQlhG1L8PsiKOtoCg2tRNPd_umRbzWNm3Tq5iamMybLCi/w400-h386/Geriatric+Millennial.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://thenib.com/caring-for-your-geriatric-millennial/" target="_blank">https://thenib.com/caring-for-your-geriatric-millennial/</a></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">After my second-place debut at Massanutten, I viewed the pre-reg list for Snowshoe with confidence. Two of the women registered for Snowshoe had failed to start at Massanutten, and the other had been a couple of minutes behind me in third. Plus, hard rain was forecast for the weekend, and I thought my previous muddy Snowshoe experience would work to my advantage. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It didn't. What I'd forgotten about my past muddy enduros at Snowshoe was that they scared the crap out of me. I had still been able to soldier on, focusing on steady, non-aggressive riding that minimized mistakes, including walking to avoid crashing when necessary. That approach worked over five stages and ~45 minutes of riding. At the end of my single downhill run at Snowshoe, I found that the approach had landed me DFL instead. I was upset when I saw the results, but my new "chill" attitude towards racing allowed me to almost forget about that by the time we finished the ~15-minute lift back to the village.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjii9Ss0peGbmRSrTxvAYJDzgpmtqROX5VNB99ACSJrxwM2r5OgqfYsaaMni8-ze8FzT0fpRpcLhyJKw7ngz3xKBYQC5ZBX9crjhObq3XdiR8wZdCcYMyYuLNieQQUp8SGOiNCBwfEnuI0B/s1024/Windrock.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjii9Ss0peGbmRSrTxvAYJDzgpmtqROX5VNB99ACSJrxwM2r5OgqfYsaaMni8-ze8FzT0fpRpcLhyJKw7ngz3xKBYQC5ZBX9crjhObq3XdiR8wZdCcYMyYuLNieQQUp8SGOiNCBwfEnuI0B/w300-h400/Windrock.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><p>It hurt a lot more a few weeks later when I found myself DFL out of 10 racers a few weeks later at Windrock. Not only was I last, but I was last by a lot. I'd had an issue when I rode high onto a banked turn to let a faster woman pass me, but I lost traction in the loose dirt and fell down the slope into her. We both lost time as we untangled our bikes, and it was probably more for me as I encouraged her to stop asking if I was okay and keep racing. Even with that premade excuse, I did BAD. I couldn't believe I'd placed that poorly out everyone, including several first-time racers. I'd actually been passed by the girl 30 seconds back only to watch her walk technical sections in front of me that I was able to ride, yet somehow she kept putting time on me everywhere except for the most butt-rubbingly steep parts of the course. Like, seriously, how did no one do worse than me?</p></span><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMeTPrJtYY5n5vg4vy4fkKusXQYou9qTi-fWlcSvHDFI5vAG6WbxdhIiTqNN7h20k-ehgTmcHQBofmMlGo_OljevzbEWFkmIETJybKiERNNXOFiglf2YJQdKbkp2YA1y994D9w6kHGy_Up/s626/Old+Lady.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="626" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMeTPrJtYY5n5vg4vy4fkKusXQYou9qTi-fWlcSvHDFI5vAG6WbxdhIiTqNN7h20k-ehgTmcHQBofmMlGo_OljevzbEWFkmIETJybKiERNNXOFiglf2YJQdKbkp2YA1y994D9w6kHGy_Up/w400-h310/Old+Lady.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><p>I almost felt the urge to be disappointed in myself for not being more publicly distressed about my results. Like, if I wasn't an asshole about placing poorly, maybe I didn't care enough. It's true; I even shared toilet paper with my competition before the race. I've definitely gone soft. I suppose the sarcastically radical self-acceptance of the above Facebook post after the Windrock was just a minor pressure release for my true feelings. My 25-year-old self's worst nightmare would be seeing myself at 40, getting last place, and pretending that I was "just there to have fun" while also low-key using my age as an excuse for my performance. I also tried very hard to make sure everyone in my category knew I had broken my back last year to feel heroic instead of just dumpster.</p></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I realized that since turning 40, I had begun using my age as an excuse the same way I used to blame my lack of natural talent when it came to race results. As I learned regarding natural talent, although I might not immediately be good at something skills-based, I could always get better than I was. Downhill is undoubtedly a young woman's game. However, I expect I still have a few years left before my myelination decreases and my fear of mortality increases to meet in my inevitable plateau. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Going into the finale' at Sugar Mountain, it became clear that I had miscalculated my forks for the season. To protect myself from being too upset if I did badly during my first downhill season, I had put almost zero effort into getting better between races. I pretty much admitted that after the first race, but I took it too far, barely riding or improving my fitness at all over the summer. I think a tiny part of me wanted to find out if I might be decent without trying, but with every other physical endeavor of my life, that was not the case. While there was little I could do to improve my skills or fitness in less than a week, I made the commitment to myself that I would start caring again.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I still needed to pull it together for Sugar, though, as the one consolation prize I still had on the line for the season was the overall series title. I was set to be the only single crown woman who did all four races. However, my two last-place finishes had let a couple of women with fewer races get within striking distance for the final event. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Sugar was the first course of the year that I actually enjoyed. Once I rode through slowly on my first lap to check out the track, I was confident and even found some flow in my practice laps. However, it rained during the night and throughout race day to take the course from dry and loose to slick. I struggled a bit in the wetter, more technical parts at the top but still felt good on the bottom half of my practice lap the morning of the race. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I got a good starting place for the race. I was third to start out of the 12 women in my class. The first started with the single crown men so she could finish and get back up to race 2/3 open, as well. Then it was two minutes until the rest of us started, beginning with the woman who would eventually win by nearly a minute and a half. I definitely didn't have to worry about her slowing me down. The woman thirty seconds back from had beaten me at Windrock, but she hadn't looked particularly fast in practice. I made it my goal not to let her catch me before the finish. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EI1svck3B9MteCsD5iMjvzxrsh_2DQM_yAzSKKHLIvzWnbOEFnBwCHP2ZOXW3M-wwKOTW8Wy3C0CqeOGhGeOMz9NhhcmC1Ff4qfzExCiHBwIgyuXiJ4QFqRvnHHluY8JbvMlGeoz4WEP/s2048/Sugar+Race.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EI1svck3B9MteCsD5iMjvzxrsh_2DQM_yAzSKKHLIvzWnbOEFnBwCHP2ZOXW3M-wwKOTW8Wy3C0CqeOGhGeOMz9NhhcmC1Ff4qfzExCiHBwIgyuXiJ4QFqRvnHHluY8JbvMlGeoz4WEP/w400-h266/Sugar+Race.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">My run was clean save a little tripoding, which is expected in those conditions. I waited at the finish to see that I had not only made it without being caught, but I'd put extra time into the woman 30 seconds back. I ended up 8th out of 12, which is definitively not last, and only 42 seconds separated 2nd-8th, meaning it was the tightest racing our class had seen that season. I would have loved to have made it to the top half, but it was still a nice uptick in my results to end the season.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I quickly did the math, and I saw that I was tied for the series lead. The website didn't say how they would break the tie, but I figured it wouldn't fall in my favor. As they began giving away the awards, they announced other ties that they had resolved based on who did better in the final race. With the other woman's second and my eighth, I realized that I'd lost the series championship by a mere second in the last race. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It was stupid to be disappointed in not winning a series where I hadn't really done well all season. However, as I had predicted at the beginning of the season, just getting myself to the finish line of four races this season was a massive challenge for me. Frankly, no other woman in my category had accomplished the same challenge. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqbeKGIc2wtu6fJnzMPRGk5rQPkBcJCUq8rqDPS-SaXzjg8s3sj2rwJK1Ou2Eaf3GT3qWYiO__iLsVQ3Xw1ypF3m6oB7UQn-FrCKPYscAgdNXBD8zDGLBBXkO8PG8dbEGmoCiZzx2gx683/s4032/Trophy+Case.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqbeKGIc2wtu6fJnzMPRGk5rQPkBcJCUq8rqDPS-SaXzjg8s3sj2rwJK1Ou2Eaf3GT3qWYiO__iLsVQ3Xw1ypF3m6oB7UQn-FrCKPYscAgdNXBD8zDGLBBXkO8PG8dbEGmoCiZzx2gx683/w400-h300/Trophy+Case.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When I got home, I put my second-place series plaque next to the trophy I'd received for winning the MASS Enduro Series in a similar fashion in 2016. How ironic that I'd been borderline mad and embarrassed to win what was essentially a participation trophy in 2016 to being disappointed to getting an inferior participation trophy in 2021. That is such a millennial reaction for me. More specifically, it was such a geriatric millennial reaction of me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The path I've traveled since I began dabbling in gravity racing five years ago hasn't been easy, but it's been the most satisfying I've had since I started riding bikes in 2003. I've learned that downhill is its own brand of Type II fun that is entirely different from enduro. I was afraid to fully invest myself this season, but now that I understand what I've gotten myself into, I actually want more. My sixth major reinvention as a cyclist may not seem like a rational choice, but let me enjoy my rose-golden years in peace.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">My new downhill bike arrived just a few hours after we return from North Carolina, and I signed up for the Fit4Riding program the next day, so I'll be less tired and sloppy in my races next season. There's still plenty of time left for bike park days before winter, and I plan to, in the words of Josh Prater, maximize. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It's still unclear which coast I'll be on next season, but Downhill Southeast or Northwest Cup, I'm looking forward to more downhill racing.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhyP8oPwwAmhQ-zLhcMYV-h0izenijSNFbuZecMgdU2CTZPqU-QUT7bE8NORpykKgCw0jKHfanE0jmQujiftI3umqycNWR69jRHiOk3mzN91rUNRLYFiTeMKpBUbJ2V6H2DN8x8pdkm12_/s2048/Demo+Delight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhyP8oPwwAmhQ-zLhcMYV-h0izenijSNFbuZecMgdU2CTZPqU-QUT7bE8NORpykKgCw0jKHfanE0jmQujiftI3umqycNWR69jRHiOk3mzN91rUNRLYFiTeMKpBUbJ2V6H2DN8x8pdkm12_/w400-h300/Demo+Delight.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span><p></p>Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-56685908657590779462021-06-03T17:21:00.003-04:002021-06-07T13:43:02.193-04:00Trust Your Talent; Manage Your Forks<span style="font-family: arial;"><i>So sorry for everything </i></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>You know I really wanted it to work out </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>I put the blame on everybody </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Was incapable of not being stressed out </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>I, I wanted to move on </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>But I, I kept writing the same songs </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Now that everything's burned down </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>I can put it all to bed </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>If only I could make sense of it </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>When it's swirling in my head </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>I'm so sick of being proud </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>And I've got nothing left to say </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Guess I'm really still the best at </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Getting in my own way</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I started my first corporate job and completed my first downhill race the same week. The old me would not have let either of these events go nearly six weeks without blogging about them, but the last couple of years have changed me a lot. I sat down to blog about the race when the pictures came out, but I quickly decided that this Instagram post was a sufficient public race report.<div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><div><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/COqQrGRBu1Z/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 0px 0px 1px 0px, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15) 0px 1px 10px 0px; margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0px; width: calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding: 16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/COqQrGRBu1Z/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 0; padding: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; width: 100%;" target="_blank"> <div style="align-items: center; display: flex; flex-direction: row;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div></div></div><div style="padding: 19% 0px;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0px auto 12px; width: 50px;"><svg height="50px" version="1.1" viewbox="0 0 60 60" width="50px" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g fill-rule="evenodd" fill="none" stroke-width="1" stroke="none"><g fill="#000000" transform="translate(-511.000000, -20.000000)"><g><path d="M556.869,30.41 C554.814,30.41 553.148,32.076 553.148,34.131 C553.148,36.186 554.814,37.852 556.869,37.852 C558.924,37.852 560.59,36.186 560.59,34.131 C560.59,32.076 558.924,30.41 556.869,30.41 M541,60.657 C535.114,60.657 530.342,55.887 530.342,50 C530.342,44.114 535.114,39.342 541,39.342 C546.887,39.342 551.658,44.114 551.658,50 C551.658,55.887 546.887,60.657 541,60.657 M541,33.886 C532.1,33.886 524.886,41.1 524.886,50 C524.886,58.899 532.1,66.113 541,66.113 C549.9,66.113 557.115,58.899 557.115,50 C557.115,41.1 549.9,33.886 541,33.886 M565.378,62.101 C565.244,65.022 564.756,66.606 564.346,67.663 C563.803,69.06 563.154,70.057 562.106,71.106 C561.058,72.155 560.06,72.803 558.662,73.347 C557.607,73.757 556.021,74.244 553.102,74.378 C549.944,74.521 548.997,74.552 541,74.552 C533.003,74.552 532.056,74.521 528.898,74.378 C525.979,74.244 524.393,73.757 523.338,73.347 C521.94,72.803 520.942,72.155 519.894,71.106 C518.846,70.057 518.197,69.06 517.654,67.663 C517.244,66.606 516.755,65.022 516.623,62.101 C516.479,58.943 516.448,57.996 516.448,50 C516.448,42.003 516.479,41.056 516.623,37.899 C516.755,34.978 517.244,33.391 517.654,32.338 C518.197,30.938 518.846,29.942 519.894,28.894 C520.942,27.846 521.94,27.196 523.338,26.654 C524.393,26.244 525.979,25.756 528.898,25.623 C532.057,25.479 533.004,25.448 541,25.448 C548.997,25.448 549.943,25.479 553.102,25.623 C556.021,25.756 557.607,26.244 558.662,26.654 C560.06,27.196 561.058,27.846 562.106,28.894 C563.154,29.942 563.803,30.938 564.346,32.338 C564.756,33.391 565.244,34.978 565.378,37.899 C565.522,41.056 565.552,42.003 565.552,50 C565.552,57.996 565.522,58.943 565.378,62.101 M570.82,37.631 C570.674,34.438 570.167,32.258 569.425,30.349 C568.659,28.377 567.633,26.702 565.965,25.035 C564.297,23.368 562.623,22.342 560.652,21.575 C558.743,20.834 556.562,20.326 553.369,20.18 C550.169,20.033 549.148,20 541,20 C532.853,20 531.831,20.033 528.631,20.18 C525.438,20.326 523.257,20.834 521.349,21.575 C519.376,22.342 517.703,23.368 516.035,25.035 C514.368,26.702 513.342,28.377 512.574,30.349 C511.834,32.258 511.326,34.438 511.181,37.631 C511.035,40.831 511,41.851 511,50 C511,58.147 511.035,59.17 511.181,62.369 C511.326,65.562 511.834,67.743 512.574,69.651 C513.342,71.625 514.368,73.296 516.035,74.965 C517.703,76.634 519.376,77.658 521.349,78.425 C523.257,79.167 525.438,79.673 528.631,79.82 C531.831,79.965 532.853,80.001 541,80.001 C549.148,80.001 550.169,79.965 553.369,79.82 C556.562,79.673 558.743,79.167 560.652,78.425 C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631"></path></g></g></g></svg></div><div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0px;"></div> <div style="align-items: center; display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px;"><div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px); width: 12.5px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12.5px; margin-left: 2px; margin-right: 14px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px); width: 12.5px;"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style="border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); border-top: 2px solid transparent; height: 0px; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg); width: 0px;"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="border-right: 8px solid transparent; border-top: 8px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); transform: translateY(16px); width: 0px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; transform: translateY(-4px); width: 16px;"></div> <div style="border-left: 8px solid transparent; border-top: 8px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); height: 0px; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px); width: 0px;"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0px 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/COqQrGRBu1Z/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Lindsay Hall-Stec (@slowpoke2320)</a></p></div></blockquote> <script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div>I religiously posted reports of all my races from 2007 through my last race in 2018. Race reports were then replaced with reports on my bilateral mastectomy, breast reconstruction, and recovery in early 2019. I never planned to take two full seasons off from racing, but the universe, as well as Frank's and my bones, had other ideas. I also never expected that when we raced again, we'd bring along two dogs in our camper van, but such is life. The person I've become is the mom of a stinky 11.6-pound Ewok dog who I am always trying to kiss on the lips.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've often bemoaned my lack of work/bike balance in the few posts that I've written since the end of 2018, but I think the change in jobs was necessary for me to actually start doing something about it. When I look back at the trajectory of my bike career and my work career during my seven years of employment at Penn State, a clear pattern emerges. </div><div><br /></div><div>I took the job at Penn State and moved to State College expecting that I would be there 1-2 years while Frank completed his Ph.D. and looked for a permanent teaching job elsewhere. It was awesome at first because it was a significant increase in pay over IU, a more relaxed work environment, a well-balanced team, and a gifted supervisor who I respected immensely. I flourished in my new role even though I theoretically didn't care about work that much since I saw the job as temporary. </div><div><br /></div><div>However, by the summer of 2016, Frank and I were still in State College with no real prospects of leaving. Despite "not caring" about my job, I had continued to take on additional responsibility and earn the praise of those above me on the org chart. I was rewarded with an unexpected job reclassification that came with a 10% raise. Looking back, that is when my "not caring" about work subtly pivoted to chasing my new high of professional achievement. </div><div><br /></div><div>The change wasn't that noticeable at first, and I still managed to complete the Wilderness 101 that summer using fitness that I can accumulate when I still had a healthy relationship with my job. 2017 saw my big dreams at work start to outpace the power of my role, which led to disappointment and conflict with my supervisor, while bike success came easily during my first season racing the West Virginia Enduro Series. In 2018, I spent my weekends checking parks off of my MTB Parks Pass and sometimes making time to race enduro in between. However, my weekdays were filled with increasing anxiety as I watched my supervisor play a key role in our organization's transformation, and I couldn't ever seem to do or say the right thing to get her to include me in her plans. The breaking point came when my mastectomy surgery and subsequent return to work coincided with her prolonged and painful transition to a central role outside of our department. Despite the positive changes that my next supervisor and I made in our department after she left, the next two years were filled with a long series of dead ends for my career at Penn State. </div><div><br /></div><div>Early in the pandemic, it became clear that remote work was here to stay, and I realized that I was no longer limited to the options available in whatever college town I happened to live in at the time. I'd always been a bit afraid of private-sector jobs because of the supposed longer work hours and lower benefits compared to university jobs. However, as I began looking into remote private-sector jobs, I found that those stereotypes were far from being true across the board. Plus, in my last couple of years at Penn State, I was putting in the corporate-level effort, so I figured it was time to try and get corporate-level pay. I eventually got serious about searching for the right remote job at a higher-ed related technology company, and an offer finally came through at the end of March. I'm nearing the end of my sixth week, and so far, I am thrilled with my decision.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVjOWCJLAXbbsLf_76HQzmKxz0Ac44dt3uCeTR2Ul4axaUewb_Zb_mlNe1c7cDZMmf8bXYkoPCVD2SHxIZTmGGry5Cj0yTlrzsBFVaB7p343tCsikI32JtCsdLC8mpVq3BXXdEhx40E086/s2687/IMG_9275.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2687" data-original-width="2687" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVjOWCJLAXbbsLf_76HQzmKxz0Ac44dt3uCeTR2Ul4axaUewb_Zb_mlNe1c7cDZMmf8bXYkoPCVD2SHxIZTmGGry5Cj0yTlrzsBFVaB7p343tCsikI32JtCsdLC8mpVq3BXXdEhx40E086/w400-h400/IMG_9275.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An appropriate start to my second bike racing career.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>It was a happy coincidence that the Downhill Southeast season opener at Massanutten took place at the end of my first week at my new job. The course was more challenging than expected, and I was more rusty and timid than expected. However, I gave myself a lot of grace since the last time I got on a chairlift, I left in an ambulance. I never had a clean run of the course in practice and felt very physically fatigued due to my lack of fitness. It took a certain amount of force of will just to get myself into the starting gate, and once I did, I walked an 18-inch drop and crashed three times during my race run. I still managed to get second place based on my ability to complete the race run with no significant injuries and a timing chip attached to my bike. I didn't get a podium picture because they did awards immediately after each category finish, and neither Frank nor I had our phones on us. None of that mattered, though, because I FINALLY RACED MY FORKIN' BIKE AFTER 2.5 YEARS OFF!!!</div><div><br /></div><div>Speaking of <a href="http://trainingonaprayer.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-gift-of-forks.html" target="_blank">forks</a>, it was nice to finally give some about bikes again. What I've come to realize in the weeks since my rebirth as a #professionalslashbikeracer is the beautiful coincidence of embracing a new job and a new bike discipline at the same time. I've decided to make the Downhill Southeast series the primary focus for my racing this summer. This decision is not because I imagine myself to be a budding downhill star, but because a four-race downhill series requires the ideal number of bike-related forks to optimize my mental health right now. It requires me to show up and give just a little effort when I might otherwise spend all weekend on the couch playing Fishdom. I don't need to "train" or really do anything other than show up, do practice laps, then eventually do a race run. However, the satisfaction of completing these tasks will help me rebuild my motivation around my bike and my body so that I can slowly become less of a depressed workaholic. </div><div><br /></div><div>In turn, pulling my bike-related forks up from rock bottom has enlightened me on keeping my work-related forks in check. Part of the reason that I was excited about my new job was the novelty of finding a job posting for a Marketing Business Analyst when I was pretty sure that it was just a job I had made up for myself at Penn State. I was motivated by the fact that my new company was advertising for someone to fill a role that I'd cobbled together based on process gaps I'd observed in my previous job. They were motivated because I had direct experience doing the thing that they wanted someone to do. It was a rare and serendipitous match. However, as I began the job, I was a bit anxious and frustrated that I couldn't pick up exactly where I left off when the new job was similar to the old one. </div><div><br /></div><div>It was a similar job, but not the same job. I didn't have seven years of institutional knowledge, established relationships with my coworkers, or access to the information and systems I was used to. I eventually realized it was similar to transitioning from enduro to downhill racing after 2.5 years of no racing in between. </div><div><br /></div><div>For the first time in either my bike or work career, I showed up with confidence in my foundational abilities, even if I wasn't ready to perform at my top level yet. I learned from racing enduro that even if I sometimes got frustrated with the pace of my progression, practicing going downhill fast and the skills related to it will lead to improvement in a much more direct way than I ever saw in the fitness-centric disciplines I'd raced previously. From this experience, I know that I'll be better at downhill racing by the end of the season just from doing more bike park days and completing the races. I'll actually probably improve faster if I don't try too hard. I feel like my new job might be the same. Rather than working too hard to force an outcome that I think I want, I need to just do what I'm good at and see what happens. I'm at peace with the fact that I probably won't see a category upgrade or a promotion for a while, but I know that I have what it takes to achieve both eventually.</div><div><br /></div><div>In my previous bike racing career, <a href="https://trainingonaprayer.blogspot.com/2017/11/talent-over-forks.html" target="_blank">I struggled to balance my forks given with my talent</a>, but I also discovered that I have more gravity racing talent than I initially thought. Working at Penn State revealed talent that I never knew I had and inspired me to work harder than ever before. Unfortunately, I fell into the trap of thinking that more forks would bring me more success, but it mostly just left me with no forks left for biking racing and little to show for it. It turns out that in both gravity racing and communication/soft skill heavy jobs, too many forks can lead to crashes. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now that I've been given a second chance at both, I'm embracing the mantra of "Trust your talent; manage your forks." I'm stuck with the amount of talent that I have in a given area of my life, and the number of forks I give can either enhance it or undermine it. Hopefully, I'm getting to the point in my life where I have the wisdom to know the difference. I think it will help to remind myself to modulate my forks between work and bikes and remember to save some for Frank, pets, and occasionally cleaning the house. If I get too stressed, angry, or anxious, rather than trying to give fewer forks, I'll examine my life to see how I can redistribute them.</div><i><br /></i></span></div>Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-41855765216431581312021-03-28T18:09:00.001-04:002021-03-29T13:45:45.283-04:00'Tis the Damn Season<p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">We could call it even</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Rock a number plate for the weekend</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">'Tis the damn season, write this down</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">I spent a year inside my house</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">And any race finish looks real good now</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Time flies, messy as ruts under mud tires</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">I'm maybe missing dirt miles, hear me out</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">We could just ride around</span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-size: medium;">But any race finish looks real good now</span></i></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Frank and I have joked many times over the past year that 2020 was 14 years long. I think that further proof of this is that Taylor Swift released about eight years' worth of albums in a year and a half. It's a lot to absorb, especially since I haven't had much commuting time to listen to music in the past year. I've recently begun to grow fond of her latest work, despite the lack of direct relatability of many of the songs to my life. For example, I've never taken personal responsibility for avenging a Haim sister's murder, while all the other sisters do is provide me with an alibi. Twenty-something me also never had the foresight to retain a hometown booty call for the holidays (probably because she also didn't have the foresight not to get married at 24), but there is something about "Tis the Damn Season" that's so...aspirational?</span></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4FuLqtmOT-4ZQiBm4RwkCjtsi48AIGpMgFhtZ32YgNOLZeJYbWJ6Bh4vSG5RyV5yBCOmedhJOoQqOMrsZGF-jhQ7OW5fyDJ-7AVgQo8P7Ksvi3STxTe9F7F86sG6_tV6yVRiTDnlK1lug/s521/Fork+it..png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="377" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4FuLqtmOT-4ZQiBm4RwkCjtsi48AIGpMgFhtZ32YgNOLZeJYbWJ6Bh4vSG5RyV5yBCOmedhJOoQqOMrsZGF-jhQ7OW5fyDJ-7AVgQo8P7Ksvi3STxTe9F7F86sG6_tV6yVRiTDnlK1lug/w290-h400/Fork+it..png" width="290" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Another sign of the past year's relative length is that I've done 23 years' worth of bike races in the past two and half years. By that, I mean I've done the same number of bike races that I did in my life up to my first triathlon in 2004. After that, I made it 15 consecutive summers, where I paid money to be timed while riding a bike in one capacity or another. Then it all unexpectedly fell apart. My bilateral mastectomy in 2019 was quickly followed by Frank's broken collarbone as soon as I was strong enough to think about racing again. 2020 brought a canceled first half of the season, followed by my fractured vertebrae and subsequent spinal fusion. It's been...a lot.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">When the <a href="https://downhillsoutheast.com/" target="_blank">Downhill Southeast</a> series schedule was announced a couple of months ago, I set the opening race at Massanutten on May 2 as the end of my 2.5-year racing hiatus. I admittedly spent a lot of 2017 and 2018 poo-pooing the idea of downhill racing. Why would I want to drive 2.5 hours and sleep somewhere besides my own bed just to race for about five minutes? That makes the Philly-centric cyclocross racing that burnt me out after two years in Pennsylvania seem positively convenient.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I recapped this all for Frank as I reconciled it with my excitement for the Massanutten race. "I used to think five minutes of racing wasn't worth all the bullshit around it," I said. "However," I concluded, "It's been so long that I miss the bullshit of racing."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">It's true. I just want to go to new places and see people and attach some meaning to bikes again. I'm so out of shape that five minutes of "racing" is about all my body can handle right now, so I appreciate the convenience of being able to just jump in rather than waiting even longer to be in shape. I also never blogged about it, but we were driving to Missouri to buy our sweet <a href="https://www.vandoit.com/" target="_blank">VanDoIt</a> van the day the world shut down in March 2020, so I actually like having excuses to sleep away from home these days.</span></p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Eyovk7Xooozjz-1NBpVp_9Vn9dyrXtrqBfp-KG2vi70-33DZ6UsPmtWwJNLGihv6AJhX2unK54gqbopPyhnA59vy1UKinbybUIJkjiiRro9ekr31oySaV2lA4qb3x1aGPrID0THbAWjk/s1440/VanDoIt.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Eyovk7Xooozjz-1NBpVp_9Vn9dyrXtrqBfp-KG2vi70-33DZ6UsPmtWwJNLGihv6AJhX2unK54gqbopPyhnA59vy1UKinbybUIJkjiiRro9ekr31oySaV2lA4qb3x1aGPrID0THbAWjk/w400-h300/VanDoIt.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was en route to my breaking my back at Snowshoe in July, but you know, it's a nice picture.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><span style="font-size: medium;">This afternoon, I saw the number of spots available at Massanutten had dropped from 160 to 135 in a couple of days, so the race is likely to sell out. It felt a bit scary to put down an entry fee five weeks out, but ultimately, I knew it was what I needed to do—Tis' the damn season, after all.</span></p><p><br /></p>Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-9446408926283109312020-11-26T15:27:00.000-05:002020-11-26T15:27:10.652-05:00Still Not Unfixably Old<p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9dO5Eo7xDAwTw_tyrDImNcKUkCgBbKGydM7IipPvtbz3rUXtq8DXFJ774PvZ4sBtG1htW8rhX7c_gh9RByRtg3pfgZF3Id93ErGMKNHwJXaGxLN4UDR1Q0a0Hc_OKuXoLCAkI4n9F9Yg1/s2048/Rosario+Beach.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1539" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9dO5Eo7xDAwTw_tyrDImNcKUkCgBbKGydM7IipPvtbz3rUXtq8DXFJ774PvZ4sBtG1htW8rhX7c_gh9RByRtg3pfgZF3Id93ErGMKNHwJXaGxLN4UDR1Q0a0Hc_OKuXoLCAkI4n9F9Yg1/w400-h300/Rosario+Beach.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0e101a; font-family: arial;"><i>I hope you dance</i></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0e101a; font-family: arial;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></span></i></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #0e101a; font-family: arial;"><i>I hope you dance</i></span></p><p><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; font-family: arial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Buried deeply within my diatribe about how </span><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; font-family: arial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://trainingonaprayer.blogspot.com/2019/01/mastectomies-are-bad-mmmkay.html" target="_blank">mastectomies are bad</a></strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; font-family: arial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://trainingonaprayer.blogspot.com/2019/01/mastectomies-are-bad-mmmkay.html" target="_blank"><b> </b></a>(they still are), I once casually mentioned how the morning before my 32nd birthday, I decided that I wasn't unfixably old. Eight years later, I think, "Ugh, 32 was </span><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; font-family: arial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">so young</em><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; font-family: arial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">!" However, at the time, when I reflected on my life, I just saw a future with little to look forward to and a lot of time left to kill. I felt old because I had reached an adulthood that didn't suit me, but I felt stuck in it. </span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Right now, I imagine people with kids scoffing at my privilege of having so much time for self-reflection and so little responsibility. While it's true that caring for small humans might have grounded me and helped me grow out of the child I still am sometimes, it would have been really bad for everyone if it didn't work out that way. </span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I mention this because the last couple of years and my recent 40th birthday have caused me to begin feeling unfixably old again. The feeling isn't unwarranted, considering how many fewer of my original body parts I have now than when I turned 30. The past decade has indeed inflicted some damage to my body that I can't undo, but I know that I can restore it to better function than its current state, which is 30 pounds heavier than when I won the West Virginia Enduro Series in 2017. Two major surgeries and a global pandemic can do that. If declaring myself not unfixably old and ditching my binge eating habit at 32 taught me anything, it's that fixing my life and fixing my body are inseparable aspects of the same challenge.</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It's the fixing my life part where things start to get interesting. I have mentioned a few times in the past year or so about how I have become too focused on my career. As I think back on the past few years, I realize that late 2017 marked a transition from unexpected and effortless career growth during my first few years at Penn State to fruitless grinding, where I began working harder and rarely seeing it pay off. At least in 2018, I had my newfound love of riding ALL THE BIKE PARKS to distract me, but 2019 and 2020 weren't so kind. </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">At the beginning of 2020, I came frustratingly close to getting my dream job in my dream town of Bellingham, WA only to have it fall through.</span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Even a casual toe-dip into the mountain bike YouTube-verse will likely expose you to Bellingham's hundred or so miles of a gorgeous loamy, steep, and amply jumpy singletrack. There are also multiple pump tracks and dirt jumps scattered through the town, and Whistler is a mere three hours away. </span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Oa73aIKapjPIucx7J2wb698NwweBwV6RgRw4xKhVsU6QuPtvRA8VgjPP-7XhZwsYKjl3B3FIFMiaW-bZKafUyO6_02U-HgamTdhwwvQf0Hw5va5k6FSWqS9eIKZ8P7WK2S2-7G6DctuW/s2048/Whatcom+Falls.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1539" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Oa73aIKapjPIucx7J2wb698NwweBwV6RgRw4xKhVsU6QuPtvRA8VgjPP-7XhZwsYKjl3B3FIFMiaW-bZKafUyO6_02U-HgamTdhwwvQf0Hw5va5k6FSWqS9eIKZ8P7WK2S2-7G6DctuW/w400-h300/Whatcom+Falls.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p>Beyond the mountain biking, the whole place just makes me feel like I'm embraced by the warm (okay, cold and damp) hug of Mother Nature's wonder. On the other side of town from the lush, mossy green fairy forests of the mountains is the dark, moody Bellingham Bay dotted with rocky islands. As someone who is resolutely not a beach person, it's the kind of ocean I can get into. Plus, porcupines were cool and all when I moved to State College, but I'm yearning to see a whale that isn't at Sea World.</span></span><p></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy2Gk-Jc1W6CvvlJTj4dcRZO-k9PmUEjdvSq8J9OOTrcJ4YWVkp5PHrqamxdJdjpC0I8tUFABSYmoplMf_jNDBpejINConlaUkwuVth5lrYE6yMFBdHjCYE7tMDxVzbXT0GIXDZMko3-Pr/s2048/Teddy+Bear+Cove.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1638" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy2Gk-Jc1W6CvvlJTj4dcRZO-k9PmUEjdvSq8J9OOTrcJ4YWVkp5PHrqamxdJdjpC0I8tUFABSYmoplMf_jNDBpejINConlaUkwuVth5lrYE6yMFBdHjCYE7tMDxVzbXT0GIXDZMko3-Pr/w320-h400/Teddy+Bear+Cove.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></div><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p>Finally, when I visited Bellingham for my interview at Western Washington University in January, it felt like home in a way I haven't felt since I left Bloomington. It's hard to explain other than to say that the town has a personality. Within my first week in State College, I ran into another former Bloomingtonian who joked, "Yeah, there's a lot fewer crust punks here." I don't think I necessarily need crust punks to be happy, but it spoke to the diverse spirit of Bloomington vs. the upper-middle class football-obsessed homogeny of State College. I'll forever be grateful to Rothrock for turning me into a real mountain biker, but this town has never been a good fit for me. </span></span><p></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Plus, I'll never get good at jumping while I live here, and my ability to progress as an athlete has become more important to me than my race results. </span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">When the job at WWU fell through, I did my best to resign myself to living my best life in State College, but COVID-19 had other plans. The possibility of any career advancement was shut down, as Penn State and the handful of PNW universities I'd been watching all went into hiring freezes. There were no races to race, and bike parks weren't even an option until June. Then my accident in July killed what was left of 2020 for me. I realize that 2020 has still been great compared to many others', but it has been hard feeling helpless for so many months just when I had hoped to get my life back on track.</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Well, do you find you like to fall in love with people that you're never gonna meet?</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It's easier than breaking up and crying in the street</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Do you curse the happy couple?</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Do you cringe at wedding bells?</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Do you drink up all the punch while you wish 'em all to hell</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At some point in August or September, I watched something on TV about people looking for orcas in the San Juan Islands, and I reached a breaking point. Yes, it was the freakin' whales and not the mountain biking videos that got me. I wanted to be THERE and have those experiences before I was too old to enjoy them. Afterward, I listened to Alkaline Trio's "Love, Love, Kiss, Kiss" a bunch of times and cried. I know that sounds like a weird choice, but it's a song about wanting something so badly that comes seemingly effortlessly to others. Believe me, I listened to it many times before I met Frank when I could take the words more literally. When I declared myself not unfixably old at 32, romantic love was the thing I was missing, and I mustered the strength to repair that missing piece, even when it meant tearing down my life and starting over. </span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That is when I started to see the silver lining in COVID-19. It had already become clear that I would likely never have to go back to work in person at my current job unless I wanted to. Frank had also mentioned he would probably be able to continue teaching online for Penn State if I were to get a job somewhere else. I realized that nothing was really stopping us from moving to Bellingham and working remotely for Penn State. The challenges would be the higher cost of living on the same paychecks and the fact that moving to full-time remote would likely kill my hopes of career advancement at Penn State. I also realized that maybe it was time for those hopes to die, as they had caused me so much more misery than joy in the past three years. The money part would be more challenging, but we could handle it.</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ultimately, we decided to buy a lot in Sudden Valley, have a house built there, and move when it is complete in about a year. That means we will be riding bikes on the East Coast for one more season, and I am okay with that. I still have to wait a bit more for my Bellingham dream to become a reality, but I will still get to spend most of my 40's in that magical place. I will probably benefit from the extra time to refocus my energy and rebuild my body before heading out there, anyway.</span></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">When I was 32, I realized that I been unsuccessfully and unhappily focused on my career to cover up a big missing piece in my life. I somehow manage the strength to pull myself together and find that missing piece despite the risks it posed. The events of 2020 have shown me that I've reverted to using my career to cover up other missing pieces in my life. I couldn't have named my missing piece at 32, and I can't exactly name it now. I've just realized that when my mind starts to hate my body instead of taking care of it, and I blame it on my body, the truth is that neither my age nor my body is the problem. The beautiful thing is that the risks I took last time I felt unfixably old led me to the love of my life, and now I have a wonderful partner to join me in whatever comes next. </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Such a big change is scary, but so is growing unfixably old. </span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Why would you live anywhere else?</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Why would you live anywhere else?</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We've got the [mountains], got the [bay]</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Got the [loam], we've got the [lake]</span></em></p><p style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is the only place for me</span></span></em></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></span></em></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><em style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></em></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><em style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRiieE4HwNeVz5ScJeBvFBya0c3iig3FtSuBkHaZ4yvrpLaEzjILtB0qiQMWQ8Dtezf42PpgQlFctIS-W3qDJvFiytDowcR_6SvwpS8yFyG1gIwq4ugZAPbMd48XEQzktfRE9GHaNE3nm/s2048/Welcome+to+Bellingham.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRiieE4HwNeVz5ScJeBvFBya0c3iig3FtSuBkHaZ4yvrpLaEzjILtB0qiQMWQ8Dtezf42PpgQlFctIS-W3qDJvFiytDowcR_6SvwpS8yFyG1gIwq4ugZAPbMd48XEQzktfRE9GHaNE3nm/w400-h300/Welcome+to+Bellingham.jpg" width="400" /></a></em></div><em style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></span></em><p></p>Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-3357410147112574552020-09-29T13:16:00.002-04:002020-09-29T13:16:40.449-04:00Me (and My Back) Are Back<p>So...2020 amiright? A lot of stuff has happened since my last post, but the one thing that didn't happen was me racing bikes again. I kept thinking I would write something early in the COVID shutdown, but unlike all of the supposedly bored people I kept reading about, I remained as busy as always. Eventually, I got so behind on the events of 2020 that I didn't know where to start and considered abandoning this blog altogether. Blogging is a dead art form these days, what with the YouTubes and all. </p><p>However, a few days ago, I re-read some of my mastectomy posts, and I realized how helpful this dead art form was for me. Because I didn't end up racing in 2019, my posting dropped off drastically as soon as I was allowed to "resume normal exercise" following my second surgery. In retrospect, I can see how rudderless I've felt since then, and I initially attributed this to a lack of racing. A string of disruptive life circumstances has continued near-constantly since my mastectomy recovery, and it emotionally disconnected me from racing and bikes in general. I don't miss wrapping my self-worth up in my race results and can no longer fathom crying after a race. However, I do miss that sense of purpose.</p><p>The biggest challenge of resuming blogging after a long break is knowing where to begin catching up on what has been missed. In this case, I think it makes sense to pick up where I left off, although not in the way one might expect. I lost my sense of purpose and stopped posting regularly upon my recovery from major surgery. In that case, it is only appropriate to pick it up again under similar circumstances. You see, on the Fourth of July, I pushed myself off a rock drop Snowshoe without a proportional push to my bars and fractured my T7 vertebrae and a few ribs.</p><p>Snowshoe hadn't opened until that weekend due to COVID. It was only our second bike park trip of the season after visiting Thunder Mountain a couple of weeks before. Despite only two bike park days in 2019 and the late start in 2020, I had been riding with a confidence that I'd never had before. We visited North Park in Pittsburgh to check out their jumps and freeride line at the end of May. I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to just go out and hit drops bigger than I'd ever done before despite having not having done a drop of any size in a year. </p><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CA1DS0DgPjZ/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="12" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 0px 0px 1px 0px, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15) 0px 1px 10px 0px; margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0px; width: calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding: 16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CA1DS0DgPjZ/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 0; padding: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; width: 100%;" target="_blank"> <div style="align-items: center; display: flex; flex-direction: row;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; 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font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0px;"></div> <div style="align-items: center; display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px;"><div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px); width: 12.5px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12.5px; margin-left: 2px; margin-right: 14px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px); width: 12.5px;"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style="border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); border-top: 2px solid transparent; height: 0px; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg); width: 0px;"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="border-right: 8px solid transparent; border-top: 8px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); transform: translateY(16px); width: 0px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; transform: translateY(-4px); width: 16px;"></div> <div style="border-left: 8px solid transparent; border-top: 8px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); height: 0px; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px); width: 0px;"></div></div></div></a> <p style="margin: 8px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CA1DS0DgPjZ/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">I overcame my Centre County agoraphobia today to go try out some jumps and drops in Pittsburgh. North Park’s little freeride line is really well built, and I was able to do bigger drops than I ever have before like it was nothing. #senditsaturday</a></p> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0px 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/slowpoke2320/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" target="_blank"> Lindsay Hall-Stec</a> (@slowpoke2320) on <time datetime="2020-05-30T22:36:32+00:00" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">May 30, 2020 at 3:36pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script><p>I arrived in Snowshoe eager to progress, although I knew their janky rock drops would be more challenging than the smooth takeoffs and perfectly sculpted landings of North Park. I was determined to hit the log drop on Lincoln Log before the weekend was over, but I began to doubt myself when I realized how slow and rough the entry was. During my second run of the trail at the end of the first day of riding, I skipped the log, but I felt like I could hit the 3-ish foot rock drop a turn or two later. However, when I came around the bend, I saw Frank stopped above the drop, which caused me to lose my nerve, as well. We were well within sight of riders going back up on the lift, and their jeers of "just stay off your brakes" didn't make me feel any better.</p><p>Fast forward to the next morning when I set out on my first run with renewed determination to hit both drops on Lincoln Log and move on with my day. Frank and I sessioned the log drop, and after a couple of roll-ins, I completed it, albeit with an ugly landing. A less stubborn person would have taken the ugly landing as a sign to just roll back to the lift and focus on other things for the rest of the day, but it was me. </p><p>I paused for a few seconds to compose myself and rode straight for the rock drop, but made a last-minute switch in my line choice. As I rode off, my front wheel dove, and I could see the ground come up way too fast beneath me. I landed on my head first, then my upper back, before my body came to a full stop, and my bike ended up somewhere downhill. I did a quick check to confirm that I could still feel and move my arms and legs, but the pain prevented me from moving beyond that. I just lay there crying and moaning until Frank found me. </p><p>Luckily, the person who came along next does ski patrol in Michigan in the winter, so he got to work on the boilerplate trauma check. This time I benefitted from being within sight of the lift, as all the onlookers were able to direct the bike patrol to my location relatively quickly.</p><p>The bike patrol arrived, and I began my harrowing journey to civilization. I passed all the initial checks for a spinal injury, and all of my pain was to the right of my spine, so the bike patrol guy had me walk to the nearest clearing. It wasn't far, but every step was excruciating. I joke that Frank slow danced me down the hill, as I put my hands on his waist as he slowly walked backwards downhill to lead me. </p><p>At the clearing, an ATV pulling a trailer with a stretcher picked me up and drove me to the bottom of the lift for an ambulance to pick me up. I was sorely disappointed to arrive at the ambulance to find that they could not give me pain meds because there we only EMTs and no paramedics on board. After a 30 minute drive to the nearest hospital, I finally got pain meds and a series of CT scans. They diagnosed me with the T7 vertebrae and rib fractures, along with a partially collapsed lung. They transferred me to a helicopter to the WVU hospital in Morgantown, where I could receive proper treatment.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2V2P9CdRzBkj-UiQMiMq7FU1JJrmMXmFowwfgogYAJTvVYGw6fsavAlyBF4pNxx9-LJey3Xau1axyocSiNlXZEc8C9MnhkAGx22KCDk_hpXGRHmGmT6qN2xt8jHbo-W5vOUXWwDewDEeC/s1440/helicopter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2V2P9CdRzBkj-UiQMiMq7FU1JJrmMXmFowwfgogYAJTvVYGw6fsavAlyBF4pNxx9-LJey3Xau1axyocSiNlXZEc8C9MnhkAGx22KCDk_hpXGRHmGmT6qN2xt8jHbo-W5vOUXWwDewDEeC/w400-h400/helicopter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>The next morning, I had surgery to repair my fractured vertebrae, which meant fusing it to four others, two on each side, using titanium rods and screws. I'm fortunate that this happened in the least flexible part of my back, so I won't lose a ton of mobility in the long-term. Once the surgery was over, I didn't need a back brace or anything, and they made me start getting out of bed to use the bathroom within hours of the surgery. By about 36 hours post-op, I was able to take a short shower and freely get out of bed to walk around as needed. I still needed a ton of pain medicine to function, and spent most of my time sleeping, but my rapid independence was pretty amazing.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpU6czn7VT7YJlgKBvKo_ZfyqQBe9Hgju-KgOM_8bHWUkLk6VsBMW9-moZu_p7gg7WDamlh2pJ4Xe2hkoekQ_D7zI634_ixoPmy477KsEjCs0LpHS5ChyYai-VtLNsHKgbMUlLMIZ9YJn2/s1440/x-ray.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1439" data-original-width="1440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpU6czn7VT7YJlgKBvKo_ZfyqQBe9Hgju-KgOM_8bHWUkLk6VsBMW9-moZu_p7gg7WDamlh2pJ4Xe2hkoekQ_D7zI634_ixoPmy477KsEjCs0LpHS5ChyYai-VtLNsHKgbMUlLMIZ9YJn2/w400-h400/x-ray.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>I had to stay in the hospital a week while my lungs recovered, and the doctors made sure I was safe from fluid build-up in my chest. Once I was home, the next few weeks were a saga of pain management. Since I had already been working remotely for months due to COVID, I tried working part-time as soon as I was out of the hospital. However, it was four more weeks before I could stand to sit upright at my desk for more than an hour straight, so I got really good at taking Zoom meetings in bed. Around five weeks after my injury, <a href="https://www.jnarbermassage.com/" target="_blank">a thorough cupping session with Jason</a> helped me break through to tolerating work and everyday tasks, like walking the dogs.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_OR9uW2VzfroJamr-WcNlSb3MuTsYbsprxUD5zcnjxJFLQ7LOgD7KI1tM3WdJfaea6XBa5QLsNiIQtBJAMVsYopBbZn5HsRldfbNzuXjXtwgD0SLc7ZZja0wRecouwdXi6ldTmtjfj2cZ/s1388/Incision.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1388" data-original-width="1388" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_OR9uW2VzfroJamr-WcNlSb3MuTsYbsprxUD5zcnjxJFLQ7LOgD7KI1tM3WdJfaea6XBa5QLsNiIQtBJAMVsYopBbZn5HsRldfbNzuXjXtwgD0SLc7ZZja0wRecouwdXi6ldTmtjfj2cZ/w400-h400/Incision.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>I was given permission to "ride rail trails and stuff" at my six-week follow-up appointment with my spinal surgeon as well as some light PT exercises to do. I've ridden my full-suspension mountain bike on gravel a couple of times a week since then. Still, I've been pretty careful not to overextend myself until I hit the three-month mark when the spinal fusion should be fully set enough to support my lifestyle. Some new flowy beginner trails opened in State College last week, and I've ridden them a couple of times. However, the fact that I'm sitting at 17 out of 21 among women on Strava on one of the two downhill-only sections is a testament to how careful I'm still being.</p><p>My three-month follow-up is on Thursday. I'm expecting to be released to start lifting weights again and generally return to everyday life within reason. My surgeon came to check on me the morning after my surgery and laughed when she saw that I was watching American Ninja Warrior. I pointed and asked if I would be able to do that within three months. She said no, four. It's been a nice change from my plastic surgeon's vague instructions after my mastectomy to being given very clear guidelines as to exactly what I am and am not allowed to do at various points in my recovery. Until the last couple of weeks, I was often "allowed" to do things well before I felt like doing them.</p><p>So here I am at the end of two full years where life has kept me from racing entirely and away from bike parks much more than I would have liked. Another long winter stands between me and my next opportunity to do either. This is a good thing in many ways, as I need time to get my body strong enough to race and send it again. It's also going to be tough to motivate myself to get through the blah stuff to benefit the fun stuff that is still many months away, though. Perhaps starting to write again will help.</p>Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-50208234043380102972020-02-06T19:34:00.003-05:002020-02-06T19:36:12.274-05:00#professionalslashbikeracer<i>Tonight I'm gonna dance</i><br />
<i>For all that we've been through</i><br />
<i>But I don't wanna dance</i><br />
<i>If I'm not dancing with you</i><br />
<i>Tonight I'm gonna dance</i><br />
<i>Like you were in this room</i><br />
<i>But I don't wanna dance</i><br />
<i>If I'm not dancing with you</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>And darlin', it was good</i><br />
<i>Never lookin' down</i><br />
<i>And right there where we stood</i><br />
<i>Was holy ground</i><br />
<br />
In my last post, I said that I didn't have a New Year's resolution for 2020. I later realized that I did have one and that it could be described using a favorite hashtag from my former teammate, Elisabeth. My resolution was to be a better #professionalslashbikeracer again. After surgery took me out of the bike racing scene for the entirety of 2019, I turned all of my motivational forces toward work in a way that I never had before. As a result, I didn't race for the entirety of 2019 and never regained my pre-surgery fitness. I came into 2020 ready to realign my work/bike balance. Still, I ended up spending January distracted by the possibility of the ultimate #professionalslashbikeracer move.<br />
<br />
One morning in December, while cyclocross nationals were in progress, I started looking at a map of Washington to see where they were being held. As I looked at the map of Washington, I thought of my friends Sam and Kyle, who had recently moved to Bellingham, which is arguably the most optimal place to live as a mountain biker in the United States. I vaguely remembered that there was a mid-size university in Bellingham, and I decided to look at the job listings there.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwL7P8LFA4L2eMry0idgWqLsURIG-B4BnZ2vuVzVO2s4U78E8kuOIJwyMj_bbZ51UkXH7s1_Ai32KsrrDMrjrHKqyYJ4RdJpvsh1QFjOBTgSLJHVAGr0ypGGnXN0DGYbOsp-nbt_jP3Kq9/s1600/Outfit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwL7P8LFA4L2eMry0idgWqLsURIG-B4BnZ2vuVzVO2s4U78E8kuOIJwyMj_bbZ51UkXH7s1_Ai32KsrrDMrjrHKqyYJ4RdJpvsh1QFjOBTgSLJHVAGr0ypGGnXN0DGYbOsp-nbt_jP3Kq9/s400/Outfit.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Testing out my #professionalslashbikeracer outfit.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Typically, mid-size universities in top-tier mountain biking locations don't have a lot of jobs listed, and rarely do they have any for which I would want to apply. However, on that fateful day in December, Western Washington University just happened to have my dream job listed. What I mean is that if I made up a perfect job for myself, this would have been it, plus a couple of other things that I wouldn't have to add myself. I immediately started working on my application and then waited for them to begin reviewing applicants.<br />
<br />
They contacted me for a phone interview over Christmas break, and once that was complete, things really started moving. They contacted me the next day and arranged for me to fly to Bellingham the following week. They covered all of my expenses and offered to introduce me to a realtor to show me houses, so it all seemed very promising.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYMhrAivMx0lus7O9B2ECpWhAYpkc14CHNY50Yndz7lZOReSDaz8Z_qt83GLEZXY5p4vW-H60OEnwcZPFw3bXY18qc9_5b2ySACYc9fsUqDdd1FUOE7ysXp2O-nqzpiffTa6PvT35cdpLN/s1600/Plane+Views.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYMhrAivMx0lus7O9B2ECpWhAYpkc14CHNY50Yndz7lZOReSDaz8Z_qt83GLEZXY5p4vW-H60OEnwcZPFw3bXY18qc9_5b2ySACYc9fsUqDdd1FUOE7ysXp2O-nqzpiffTa6PvT35cdpLN/s400/Plane+Views.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ocean on the left, mountains on the right, and a million trails, pump tracks, and jumps in between. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
My trip and my interview went well. I got to see Sam and Kyle as well as tour some houses. I took a class <a href="https://www.terraingym.com/" target="_blank">Terrain Gym</a>, which is a little like Crossfit, but better planned and targeted at outdoor athletes. I was starting to make plans for how I was going to move five pets across the country and which house to make an offer on.<br />
<br />
***<br />
Five pets you ask? Yes, I never managed to post about my one success of 2020 with all of the excitement of a potential move to Bellingham. This is Willie, the #fixerpupper that I acquired in the first week of January. I'd been trying to adopt a Brussels Griffon for a year and a half with no luck when this guy popped up on Petfinder. He was located at a small Central Pennsylvania animal shelter that required applicants to show up and apply in person, so I thought he might finally be my shot after way too much competition for all of the other for which I'd applied. However, when we got there to meet him, there was already another couple in line to meet him before us. When I called a week later to check on our application status, they said they had so many applications that they didn't know how they would choose. I wrote an email explanation why I thought we'd be a good home for him, but quickly moved on due to all my other rejections, it was long before Frank was ready to drive to Chicago buy me a Brussels Griffon puppy. The night before he was supposed to leave, we got the call that we were getting Willie and instead drove to Dubois to pick him up the next day.<br />
<br />
He had been very poorly taken care of at his previous home, and not much better at the shelter. He was filthy and overweight, and when we took him to the vet, we found out he had Lyme's disease. His teeth were in terrible shape, but we couldn't get those fixed until he had been on antibiotics for a while. His toenails were also growing around into his paw pad making it hard for him to walks.<br />
<br />
He finally got the teeth done and big, nasty wart removed from his head this week, so it is nice to have vet stuff behind us. He's started to be less scared of us and spends most of his time outside of his crate after 2-3 weeks always hiding in there except for walks. He can get on the couch himself and has started barking sometimes, which is a sign he's getting more confident. He has a professional grooming appointment next week, which took a while because our dog groomer friend was recovering from surgery and then was booked for a while after returning to work. I'm hoping his upcoming makeover will mark the first day of the rest of his life as a healthy, confident, and loved little pupper.<br />
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***<br />
Things took a nosedive when I got home. First, I got a gnarly viral infection from my travels, from which I'm still not fully recovered. They notified me by email six days after the interview that I didn't get the job.<br />
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It was hard to get over the shock and disappoint at first, and in some ways, I'm definitely still not over it. To come so close to getting the perfect job in the perfect place immediately after the shitstorm of 2019 felt like a cruel tease. I definitely had a couple of depairing days where I couldn't really even conceive of what it was that I wanted if I couldn't have my dream scenario. However, part of my realization was that I really, really needed to start racing my bike again to start feeling whole.<br />
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Due to my illness, I've only been to the gym once since returning from Bellingham. I'm going on a ski trip to Vermont this weekend, so it will be a few days before any more "training" can occur. However, when I return, it will be time to get serious about achieving #professionalslashbikeracer status in Central Pennsylvania, limitations and all. I'm in the process of hiring a coach for the first time since 2012, so I'll be updating on that once it's all finalized.<br />
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The last year and a half has brought a lot of disappointment as a bike racer and quite a bit as a professional, as well. I've also had some pretty big wins in the professional realm. I plan to keep building on these until someone at Penn State, or even better, some picturesque little campus in the Pacific Northwest, realizes my true potential. Until then, I've got to slip back into my East Coast #femdurobro identity and keep in touch with the other, less talented but more gritty, half of my personality.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-46284349845364277662019-12-29T16:41:00.002-05:002019-12-29T16:43:08.923-05:00Hindsight is 2020It's hard to believe that it's been nearly six months since my last post. 2019 has been a strange year for sure, and once Frank broke his collarbone, it became clear that it would be the first year since 2003 that I did not pay money to be timed while riding a bike in any format. The fall became busy with non-bike stuff, and at some point, I decided that I would wait until winter break to post again.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My new Baby Jeep is a great symbol of the adulting that I've been doing in 2019.<br />
Goodbye, Lime-a-Bean. Hello, cruise control and heated seats.</td></tr>
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After the year that we had, Frank and I decided to give ourselves the gift of zero holiday travel this year. We had Thanksgiving at our house with one friend, and haven't done a whole lot over Christmas break. For Christmas day, we went to see the new Star Wars movie and went to dinner at the Chinese/Hibachi/Sushi restaurant across the street from our house. Unfortunately, it will be changing locations soon, and we had never eaten Hibachi there, so we gave it a shot. The group whose gathering we crashed were good sports about it, and we all had a good time.<br />
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2019 certainly wasn't devoid of bikes, but they took more of a backseat than they usually do. I was most concerned about having the chest strength and nerve to still ride downhill fast after my double mastectomy and reconstruction, but that turned out to be the easy part. Within a few weeks of being cleared to mountain bike again, I was riding downhill as fast as I ever was.<br />
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In fact, after several monthly sessions with a massage therapist, I have no lingering pain, tightness, or discomfort. The only remaining negative effect is that I still don't have much feeling in my chest, left armpit, or the back of my left arm. However, the numbness has improved slightly over the last few months. Still, it makes sense that skin stuffed with inorganic material will never regenerate nerves that well. Now that all of the remaining inflammation from the surgery is gone, I can also confirm the rumor that reconstructed breasts feel cold to the touch most of the time. This prompts me to believe that people need to be more sympathetic to witches if the saying about them is accurate.<br />
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In addition to Frank's and my respective surgeries, my shortage of races and bike park days 2019 can mostly be attributed to just plain adulting too hard last few months. I found out right before my surgery in January that my supervisor of nearly five years was transitioning to a different role within the organization. I'm assuming that coming back from a two-month leave is always tricky, but I came back to an especially strange situation. I was greeted back to work with the opportunity to join a couple of high-profile project teams but also a heavy load of tactical tasks meant to achieve my old supervisor's exit strategy. I scrambled through April and May to complete my 'want to do's' and my 'have to do's' within the required timelines.<br />
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I was nervous about having a new supervisor in June, but that part has gone exceptionally well. Our good teamwork and some favorable conditions within our department have allowed us to make a lot of positive changes in the last few months. My excitement has led me to voluntarily spend many evenings and weekends preparing documents to help our leaders make their next important decision. It has also meant that I don't have a lot of motivation left to get into shape or wake up early on weekends to go to bike parks.<br />
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Even during our lovely winter stay-cation, I've spent time each day studying for another certification exam that will help me to be even more effective at my job. I've also been really terrible at going to the gym or doing Zwift workouts, despite having plenty of time to do so. The exam is tomorrow, so, considering that I pass, I hope to have more mental energy for bikes soon.<br />
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I don't have a particular resolution for 2020, but I want to rekindle my motivation for riding and racing. The challenge will be finding emotional space for this while still maintaining my hot streak at my day job. I don't have a plan yet but will start getting back into the posting habit over the next few weeks to let you know how I do.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-17891140087498963922019-07-21T18:29:00.000-04:002019-07-21T18:33:54.057-04:00Baby Got BorkedAnother month of 2019 has flown by much differently than I expected. Just a few days after we returned from Tennessee, Frank slid out on some wet rocks during a normal weeknight training ride and broke his collarbone. Considering that the two of us had more than a quarter-century of accumulated bike riding with no broken bones, the fact that this was coming for at least one of us at some point was nearly inevitable. That still doesn't make the actual occurrence any less unpleasant, especially since I was just getting back up to speed after my own downtime.<br />
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I jokingly told him that we would both look a little funny with our shirts off after 2019. At the very least we're going to end the year with scars and numbness. According to my plastic surgeon, my new boobs are "stunning", and he released me from his care last week. I guess that means no free liposuction in the fall, but I'm okay with that. They are still a little asymmetrical if you look closely, but I'm past the point of caring and ready to move on with my life.</div>
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As for Frank, he's still several weeks away from being able to move on with his life. His original x-ray from the ER showed some fractures, but the bone was still aligned correctly, so the orthopedic surgeon said that he did not need surgery. However, at his three-week check-up, the x-ray showed the bone to have completely collapsed. Apparently, there were more fractures than the original x-ray showed. He ended up having surgery four weeks after the original break, so now he is only four days post-op, and it will be at least eight more weeks before he can ride again. </div>
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Before his accident, we had signed up to do a Pumps, Jumps, and Berms clinic with Hillary Marques at the Gravity Soul dual slalom track near Frederick, MD. Even though Frank was unable to ride, he and Gunnar came along for moral support and sat in the hot sun for four hours while I practiced jumping. </div>
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I can't say that I made any huge breakthroughs during the clinic, but after reviewing some video that Hillary took of me, I realized that I needed to "pull up with my body and not with my arms". Although I haven't been able to practice this on any real jumps since then, I was messing around in the driveway and made some major progress towards a true bunny hop. Unfortunately, I also gave myself a nasty blister on my hand in the process and haven't been able to practice since, but I'm pretty excited about the possibilities this could open up.</div>
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With Frank unable to ride, I've been a bit unmotivated myself. I'm still riding 2-3 times a week, but I've only been to the gym once since he's been hurt. My rides are often short and even less structured than they were before. I guess I've just kind of embraced that 2019 is not my year for bikes.</div>
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Because of this, I've been spending a lot more time hiking with Gunnar over the last month. When we first got him, he quickly bonded to Frank, and I didn't really know how to deal with having a smelly dog around that was stressing out the cats. The cats eventually calmed down, and I eventually realized that he was a cute boy, doggo smell and all. However, he was not so quick to turn on his unconditional love switch. </div>
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I was taken aback by this at first, but now I respect him for it. I always joked that Clemmie was my real daughter because of her personality, and Gunnar is definitely my long lost son. I had to make the choice the meet that neurotic little doggo where he was and find ways for us to bond. I learned that he likes carrots and actually listens to me more than he listens to Frank, so I'm doing my best to teach him some trick using carrots as rewards.</div>
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I also realized that he needs more exercise than regular walks around the neighborhood or backyard zoomies can provide, so I've started using this as an excuse to explore parts of Rothrock that I don't normally see on my bike. Frank sometimes comes along, depending on how he's feeling. It's been fun getting to see new trails and spend quality time with Gunnar. I've even started trusting him to run off-leash and have even done one short bike ride with him running along behind me. </div>
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I'm not sure how I'm going to balance dog parent life and training life once I'm ready to try and get serious about racing again, but for now, we're having a good time.</div>
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<br />Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-87500213858289255632019-06-18T17:56:00.000-04:002019-06-18T17:56:29.740-04:00The Windrock Beneath My WingsIt’s been seven weeks since my last post, so I’ve obviously fallen off of my plan to make bi-weekly updates on my mastectomy recovery. As I mentioned in my previous post, work quickly ramped up to an unsustainable level pretty much as soon as I came back full-time, and I’ve spent the better part of three months digging myself out of a hole, which often included working a couple of hours at home most Saturdays and Sundays to try to catch up. I simply didn’t want to spend any more time in front of a computer, making updates on my physical health while my mental health was falling apart.<br />
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Frank and I just returned from a five-day trip to Tennessee, and I took an additional day off of work today to recover from the trip. I’ve caught up on all of the work email that came in while I was gone, and I am happy to say that, despite having back-to-back meetings for my entire morning tomorrow, it appears that my upcoming workload will finally be manageable for the foreseeable future. Today is the closest that I’ve come to feeling relaxed and sane in about a month, and even then, that was a very short window.<br />
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Despite the stress, my physical health has continued to improve. I realized soon after returning to riding that I would need to choose whether to focus on my pedaling fitness or my downhilling skills for the rest of the summer. Ultimately, I made the fun choice to just do a lot of practice runs and bike park days for the rest of the season and not to worry about the stamina that I had lost. It’s better than it was a couple of months ago, but it’s more incidental improvements that come from pedaling up to downhill runs than any concerted effort to get back into shape. I figure that I can work on that this winter when the weather is too crappy for fun stuff.<br />
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The good news is that, as far as downhilling speed, I’m 100% back to where I was last year and even beginning to set PRs again. My stability and muscular endurance still have room for improvement, but I can basically make it down any trail in Rothrock fully pinned without falling apart now. Any fears that I might not be able to return to enduro racing after my double mastectomy have been officially put to bed.<br />
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However, despite knowing that I’m physically capable of returning to racing, I’ve still decided not to do so for a while. This weekend was supposed to be my first race of the season at Cooper’s Rock, but race weekends can be exhausting and stressful, despite how fun they can also be. A big part of my feeling relaxed and sane right now is the fact that I decided to stay home, rest, and do chill rides in Rothrock instead of racing. There are no WVES races in July, so I also decided the ESC and MASS “maybe races” that I had on my calendar for July also weren’t worth it. We are taking a big trip to Colorado in August, which conflicts with any races we would have done in that month, so it’s looking like my entire race season will be eight days long in September. The WVES final in Snowshoe is September 22, and the Raven Enduro is September 29. Snowshoe is my favorite race, and the Raven is, well, the only one State College has. (That’s a little Crazy Ex-Girlfriend joke for you.)<br />
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Besides just needing more time to rest, my reduced race season can also be attributed to the feeling that I’m “behind” on my bike park riding for the year. We went to Blue Mountain once a few weeks ago, but we still haven’t been to Mountain Creek or any other of Northeast or Mid-Appalachian parks. Leaving July open for bike park trips definitely seemed like a better use of the time than races. Luckily, we did get cross Windrock off our list for the year, albeit much later than planned.<br />
We headed down to Maryville, TN on Thursday and returned yesterday. We got to see three out of four Prater brothers, as we stayed with Sarah and Josh, and Jayne and Luther were staying there, as well.<br />
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Friday was an easy warm-up day with a few leisurely laps of Baker Creek Preserve. Last year we rode all three of the downhill trails, including Devil’s Racetrack, but ultimately just ended up doing laps of the green trail, which we liked the best. This year we skipped Devil’s Racetrack, knowing that it was still well outside of what we would actually enjoy at our current ability level. However, it was a pleasant surprise to find that the green trail was now a little boring and that the blue trail now served the size of jumps that we enjoyed the most.<br />
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Saturday was our big day at the Windrock downhill park, and it was extra fun because Josh rented a downhill bike and joined us. He used to race downhill professionally in the early ’00s, so even with a rented bike and slightly rusty skills, he was still way faster than us. We benefitted from being significantly less rusty than the last time we visited, since our previous visit was an attempt to escape winter in late March of 2018, and we found Windrock to be quite a shock to the system when you haven’t been riding much.<br />
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Although I can still attest that a Windrock blue is equal to a black at most parks and even a double black at some of the places we visited last year, we were much more confident and capable this time. This time we were smart enough to ask locals about the progression of the black trails, and we did pretty okay on the two “easier” black trails that we tried this time, Shark Fin and Snake Rock. I pulled off a few moves that on these trails where I really surprised myself at how far I’d come, even to the point where I found myself passing Frank and singing “I’m a Big Kid Now” while cleaning a gnarly section that he had walked. I definitely enjoyed Windrock much more this visit and left feeling sad that it was 10 hours away.<br />
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Our final day of riding was the Windrock XC trails, which we’d never ridden before. Sunday was the hottest day, and I was very sore from so many long, strenuous runs at the bike park the day before. The singletrack climb to the top of the ridge is called “EZ Up”, but it is anything but. The grade is rideable but unrelenting steep, with very few flatter parts on which to recover. There are also quite a few very tight, steep switchbacks, and enough technical spots to mess me up when I’m already gassed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd-n0aMLLMXBgFuKcpfWnpsu7DHidYmqAFWBO_5vTyWNv-tAuEQ1yQMMcolzyf-V-crUQ0P6VMhz-0wuuDsflHzLW2mtDqcepOa7yiFKJASrmGCK2YnrXuSSpLYJbkCJQEZxLLIU1JUGhz/s1600/Windrock+Selfie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="671" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd-n0aMLLMXBgFuKcpfWnpsu7DHidYmqAFWBO_5vTyWNv-tAuEQ1yQMMcolzyf-V-crUQ0P6VMhz-0wuuDsflHzLW2mtDqcepOa7yiFKJASrmGCK2YnrXuSSpLYJbkCJQEZxLLIU1JUGhz/s400/Windrock+Selfie.jpg" width="398" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mixtape also offers a good #scenicvistaselfie opportunity, if you're willing to slow down.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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While I was glad to be wearing my lighter-weight “XC” kit (I’ve officially broken up with spandex), half-shell, and no knee pads on the climb, it did affect my confidence on the two downhill trails we did. The first one was called Mixtape, and it was really fun, but the second was called MR2, and I was not a fan. It started as narrow, technical bench cut with a steep drop off from the edge, which always scares me, and dissolved into WV-style off camber where you can see where people have slid down the hill. We ran into a giant, impassable downed tree before we finished this trail, but luckily, we were able to find a reasonably easy way back to the car. Although my first visit to these trails wasn’t the most fun, I would love to come back less tired and better protected to try them again.<br />
<br />
Although taking a big trip after weeks of work stress was difficult, I’m glad we got to visit our human friends and trail friends to the south. I’m also happy that I’ve built some time into my schedule to recuperate the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, the rest of the summer goes a lot more smoothly and is filled more PR’s, bike parks, and just enough pedaling.<br />
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/By0XB1ll40L/" style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">Tiny booter action at the Windrock XC trails yesterday.</a></div>
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A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/slowpoke2320/" style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" target="_blank"> Lindsay Hall-Stec</a> (@slowpoke2320) on <time datetime="2019-06-17T16:48:17+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Jun 17, 2019 at 9:48am PDT</time></div>
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<script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-38144728458035908862019-04-27T14:38:00.001-04:002019-04-27T14:38:44.173-04:00No More MilestonesIt is a little weird beginning my first post-mastectomy post where I don't have any milestones to report. I feel like I've crossed the border from being in recovery from surgery to just being out of shape. I decided to stop physical therapy after this week because it was reaching the point where the stress of taking time during the workday to have some college student watch me lift baby weights was outweighing the physical benefit of doing so. My chest strength and mobility no longer seem any worse than the rest of the body, so I'd rather focus on regaining whole-body strength at the regular gym at times that fit my schedule better.<br />
<br />
My goal is to eventually work back up to three days a week on the bike, two days in the gym, and one day per week of parking lot skills practice. Last week I managed one day in the gym and three days on the bike. This week has only been one bike ride and no gym so far, although I'm hoping to ride today and tomorrow.<br />
<br />
Work has been a nightmare since I came back full-time, and I expect it to remain so for at least 2-3 more weeks. I had planned to accompany Frank to the first West Virginia enduro race this weekend even though I'm not up to racing yet, but I decided to stay home because I was afraid that my workweek next week would be too much after a weekend away from home. I'm not really feeling much better staying home, though, because I'm still stressed about work, but now I'm home alone with no one to talk to or ride with.<br />
<br />
I've been having regular sessions with massage therapist with the weird suction cup machine that feels awful but does wonders for my mobility. It's a bit hard because it costs over $100 per session after the tip, and of course, it's not covered by insurance. However, it seems to do more good than most things that insurance does cover, and I should be able to cut down on the frequency of sessions soon.<br />
<br />
These treatments have really done a lot help me move better as well as to break up the scar tissue so that my fake boobs are becoming a lot softer and more natural looking. A big goal for me is to get my chest flexible enough to sleep on my side again comfortably. It seems to be getting there, although it gets better or worse depending on what I've done that day. There's also a chance that the "cupping" could help me get sensation back at some point, although I'm not getting my hopes up too much for that. My plastic surgeon said that 99% of women don't so it will be a pleasant surprise if it happens for me.<br />
<br />
Before the surgery, the thought of never having feeling in my boobs again was the most upsetting part for me because, as many really crappy aspects as there are to the experience, that's the only permanent one. Once the surgery happened, everything else that was going on distracted me from worrying about my boobs being numb as I counted down to each milestone until it was over. Now I've officially passed all of the milestones, and I'm becoming a lot more aware of how weird and dead my chest feels when I bump into stuff. It's tough because I look and seem fine to everyone else, but several times a day I get this reminder that I'll probably never be completely fine again.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDFtG70qf_ayVFO4_dhydkcL0QM16-Byh7IcVC5Uj0KRkqaOUlEKWCRUJSpkJqbH7jgYvXPgsYmgX66-9eX40pCqCA7xQpwy7t7r0NT5xSDcOd_ei7e6EeK6rnfcKJelW-kfNZpl9uSeO_/s1600/Chicken+Peter.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1079" data-original-width="1440" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDFtG70qf_ayVFO4_dhydkcL0QM16-Byh7IcVC5Uj0KRkqaOUlEKWCRUJSpkJqbH7jgYvXPgsYmgX66-9eX40pCqCA7xQpwy7t7r0NT5xSDcOd_ei7e6EeK6rnfcKJelW-kfNZpl9uSeO_/s400/Chicken+Peter.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Riding is going better, although it's still slow in both pace and progress. I tell people that I'm a super extra special kind of out of shape right now. Regular out of shape is going on a ride that I expect to be easy only to find that it's hard and slow. Then I rest for a couple of days, come back and do the same ride again, and it feels a little easier. With the kind of out of shape I'm experiencing now, I often still feel worse after a couple of days of rest in between rides. It's annoying, but the only thing that I know to do is to keep coming back and doing whatever easy rides I can a regular frequency until they start feeling less terrible.<br />
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Aggressive descents are still a bit much for me right now, although my pectoral muscles are not the limiting factor the way I would have expected. It's really all of my muscles that are my limiting factor. So far I've stuck to descents that would have been under three minutes for me last year, and I'm usually 60-90 seconds slower than my PR's. My arms, abs, quads, and glutes start burning halfway through these short descents, which makes it hard to keep going fast. I guess I need to put in some time on the RipRow in addition to the regular gym to try and build up some descending-specific fitness quickly because I don't even think I could get to the bottom of Wildcat or Old Laurel without a rest break right now.<br />
<br />
Since my body isn't up for descending the way it used to, I've been spending on more time on the flat or rolling technical trails that I've largely ignored the last couple of years. Even before my body forced me to slow and step back in my riding, I committed to riding flat pedals this season until I was as competent on flats as I was with clips. The fact that I'm slow anyway right now has made it easier to keep that commitment. It's kind of cool because I'm starting to get decent at riding flats on the terrain where they are most challenging. Last weekend, I even made it up a difficult little uphill on Chicken Peter that I'd never made before, even when I was fitter and clipped in.<br />
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Although I won't have any more recovery milestones to share in my next post, I hope that I will pass some at work so that I can be a little saner by then. It's even more likely that I will reach some more milestones on the bike considering how tiny those are for me these days. Who knows? Maybe I'll break into double-digit mileage on a ride or something.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-10581333394459104152019-04-12T20:32:00.000-04:002019-04-12T20:32:22.115-04:00Free To Be MeYesterday I passed the magic four-week mark after my implant placement surgery. I now have full license to "resume normal exercise", and tomorrow I can officially stop wearing my surgical bra. As we all know, I actually did my first very baby mountain bike ride two weeks ago, and I already wore a wireless push-up bra to work a couple of days this week because my outfit warranted it. I still *want* be wearing my surgical bra pretty much all of the time when I'm not wearing form-fitting or low-cut tops. I was never used to be one of those women who longed for the moment that I could take my bra off at the end of the day, but now anything except the surgical bra gets swapped as soon as I walk in the door.<br />
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Despite a little cheating on the rules and a lot of stressing out because the rules were stupid and sucky, yet I was afraid of the consequences of breaking them, it appears that I am no worse off for my indiscretions. At my check-up on Wednesday, my plastic surgeon seemed very happy with how everything turned out and did not accuse me of illicit mountain biking and bra wearing.<br />
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I, however, am not sold on how great my new boobs look, but it's hard to be too stoked when my chest is 90% numb, and yet I'm still very aware of the foreign objects embedded in my body. The one silver lining that I'd looked forward to as part of what eventually became a two cup size increase was having cleavage, which so far hasn't manifested. I'm supposed to start massaging them daily to help soften the scar tissue, which should help.<br />
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If I really want, in six months I can get fat liposuctioned from my hips and strategically injected into my boobs to improve the cosmetic results, but any fears about needing actual revision surgery seem unfounded. I will have to see how things go the next few months because I don't really want to do any more procedures, but also, hey, free liposuction.<br />
<br />
So 11 weeks and 1 day after original mastectomy surgery, I'm basically done from a medical standpoint. Now I just have the rest of my life to make peace with what my body has been through. Since my last post, I started physical therapy again, and that has really helped.<br />
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Admittedly, the physical therapist's pep talks are probably the main reason for the vast improvement between my first and second post-surgery mountain bike rides. The first session back, I told the physical therapist about all of the anxieties that I was feeling after my first ride. I explained how I felt like I was okay to start riding, but that I still had a lot of fear about damaging my reconstruction.<br />
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Her reply was in line with what I suspected all along, although I had started to let doubt creep in: I shouldn't do anything that hurt, but otherwise, it was safe to start pushing myself within reasonable limits. She agreed that the rules and scare tactics were for "no pain, no gain" types, but since I'm not one of those, I needed to start trusting my body again. Then she took me into the gym and put me through a gauntlet of shoulder exercises to prove that my upper body still worked, even if it is pretty weak right now.<br />
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Since then, I've been back to my own gym a couple of times where I'm mixing her upper body routine with various leg, ab, and glute exercises. There are still a lot of things that I'm not ready to do again yet, but I can do enough stuff now to at least start rebuilding my strength and stability.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD916CJL_bOs4r0TOkdMd_FZ3F-a0dCAck-LonijCRucYqtNTVmD-sLFqcenki9aN_1Gbh86iT6fQEAd5Kx0uu55PC1TDMLx06t_kU87OEjFVJW_XXZk3jxEZByZEpAd6EnZU-M8W5dJsM/s1600/Lower+Brush+Ridge.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD916CJL_bOs4r0TOkdMd_FZ3F-a0dCAck-LonijCRucYqtNTVmD-sLFqcenki9aN_1Gbh86iT6fQEAd5Kx0uu55PC1TDMLx06t_kU87OEjFVJW_XXZk3jxEZByZEpAd6EnZU-M8W5dJsM/s400/Lower+Brush+Ridge.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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The combined lack of courage, then lack of time, caused an eight-day gap between mountain bike rides. Luckily, two physical therapy sessions and a trip to the gym in between really boosted my confidence. The second ride I was able to ride a lot more singletrack and a lot more rocks. I even rode some of the short rocky chutes on Brush Ridge, although I went slowly and actually chose a line instead of just charging. I now feel confident enough to ride any of the rocky XC trails around Rothrock, although I'm still not ready for the big descents yet.<br />
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***<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq7hq5OGF3rS2lWmLUTGeqlBvsa8MT_dRXoMMuMcSGMQrXUMBmsojn3eJqV4_839EahMJt6OfVkU6HnABenGUMcxjGiD6_F_L-LBozjkJ0wl5hcDclEAJ2jRg1Ww8Z87miiRLSpVnInnX_/s1600/Gunner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1080" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq7hq5OGF3rS2lWmLUTGeqlBvsa8MT_dRXoMMuMcSGMQrXUMBmsojn3eJqV4_839EahMJt6OfVkU6HnABenGUMcxjGiD6_F_L-LBozjkJ0wl5hcDclEAJ2jRg1Ww8Z87miiRLSpVnInnX_/s400/Gunner.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Unrelated to my recovery but interesting nonetheless, Frank and I are "fostering to adopt" a dog this weekend. His name is Gunner and he is a 1.5-year-old blue heeler, or as my research today concluded, more specifically an Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog. He doesn't have a tail, but it seems 90% likely that he was born without one, and it wasn't docked. So far, Clemmie has responded to him about as well as she responded to Dash and Tutu. She's really not a fan of us bringing other animals into the house but isn't terribly intimidated by him. Dash and Tutu, on the other hand, are terrified and will only the spare bedroom for a couple of minutes at a time. He gets overly excited when he sees the cats, although I think it's friendliness, not aggression, it definitely freaks them out. Hopefully, everyone can learn to live together happily.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-16486951240953105282019-03-30T19:23:00.000-04:002019-03-30T19:23:57.111-04:00Resume Normal ExerciseThe past week has in many ways marked the return to normalcy in my life, but it's also proven that there is no single clear boundary to mark the end of my mastectomy recovery. I returned to officially working full-time this week, although mounting fatigue and a nasty cold meant the last half of it were working from home. I passed the two-week post-op mark on Thursday where I removed the final layer of tape from my incisions and became officially allowed to raise my arms above a 45-degree angle, although I had realistically already been back to blow-drying my hair and wearing pull-over shirts for a week. Likewise, I have two upcoming milestones at the four-week mark: I can switch from wearing a surgical bra 24 hours a day to wearing the wireless bra of my choice, and I can "resume normal exercise."<br />
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Could there be any more fraught statement than the latter? Although it is entertaining to speculate into the intent of those instructions, I am 99% sure that lifting weights twice a week and chattering down steep, rocky surfaces on a bike the rest of the time is not what the author had in mind. I also know that there's no way that I'll be able to do that again in two weeks. The question is, when will I be?<br />
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I haven't and probably won't bother having that conversation with my plastic surgeon. I don't expect that it would lead anywhere productive, and it would likely only increase my frustration with this situation. As with many so many things in the past couple of weeks, I just need to move on with my life. I restart physical therapy on Monday, so hopefully, that will provide more practical guidance on my path to being an athlete again.<br />
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With all that in mind, I ventured onto that path yesterday. I managed to remain sedentary for the two-week post-op period that seems to be the most critical after implant placement, but I decided that I would start testing my boundaries after that was over. I formed this deadline in my mind based on the combination of the two-week milestones from my own post-op instructions and anecdotal evidence from other cyclists who had over-the-muscle reconstruction.* Once again, don't try this at home, kids.<br />
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I was at the point where nothing hurt anymore, and although I'm still very stiff and have not yet come to terms with the numbness. Basically, I was at the point where I realized my body will never feel the way it did before, so I wanted to start making peace with how it did feel, rather than sitting around waiting for something that I wasn't even sure what it was.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I like to think Rothrock missed my obnoxious colors.</td></tr>
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So yesterday I rode my mountain bike on the easiest trails I could find because I wanted to know how it would feel. We drove to Cooper's Gap and parked at the shale pit. This meant a decently steep one-mile gravel climb, followed by another gentle mile of singletrack climbing before we turned around and descended back again. I had intended to climb the entirety of the Dutch Alvin trail, but when we reached the first intersection, I decided that the two-mile climb was a sufficient test for the first time out.<br />
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How was it? Satisfying and a little scary. I'm obviously super out of shape, both in how heavily I was breathing on the climb and the way my shoulders and butt are sore this morning. I tried to be careful not to strain my chest muscles the too much the first time out, which meant that I was afraid to pull hard enough to go over a four-inch log. Afterward, my incisions were a bit irritated from my heart rate monitor, and there were a few tender spots in various areas of my chest, so I decided to wait a few more days before I try riding again.<br />
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Although yesterday's ride was proof that I'm a long way from where I want to be, at least now I feel like I'm somewhere.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Also, Specialized had to go and release this Mix Tape edition Stumpjumper while I was at the height of post-op depression, so I was like, "<a href="http://trainingonaprayer.blogspot.com/2018/12/thank-you-next.html" target="_blank">Thank You, Next.</a>"</td></tr>
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*Side note: If I had one thing that I would do differently about all of this, I would have at least looked into finding a surgeon that was comfortable and skilled in over-the-muscle reconstruction. Unfortunately, the surgeon I used referred to it as looking "like a ball stuffed into a sock," so I did not consider it as a viable option until I spoke with someone who had chosen that option just a couple of days before my mastectomy. Considering my mental state at the time, the conversation spun me into a full-on panic as I worried that I was making a terrible, unfixable decision by going with under-the-muscle reconstruction.<br />
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Although OTM reconstruction has a faster recovery time, if I would have pursued a different surgeon in a bigger city, the delay in scheduling my surgeries would have eaten up all of the time saved until now. Right now it seems like I'm "done" just as fast as I would be with OTM, but I'm still a little nervous that the disadvantages will come to light as I tried to rebuild my chest strength in the coming months.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-35956682317109728932019-03-19T15:06:00.000-04:002019-03-19T17:52:33.434-04:00What to Expect When You're Expecting New BoobsHa! I can only wish that I could give relevant advice on this topic, but it seemed like a good title.<br />
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I thought it was time for an update since I was having such a tough time when I wrote my last post. Things actually got a lot worse when I tried to pull a pillow out from behind my head with my left hand while I was half asleep Saturday night and woke up with an extra swollen left boob on Sunday morning. It's already the more problematic side because that's where the cancer was and where the lymph nodes were removed. Frank told me that the doctor had closed up the pocket (space where the implant sits) a bit on that side, so I got very anxious that I had damaged the pocket and that I would have to go through another surgery to fix it. I called the emergency number, and the doctor told me to come to the office on Monday. Then I spent most of the rest of Sunday engaging in periods of panicked crying.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cats are the one upside to not being able to do stuff. Also, this post needed a thumbnail image.</td></tr>
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When I saw the doctor, he didn't seem concerned. He said unless there were bruising or darkness that would indicate bleeding, it was probably fine. I was worried because I can still feel pronounced puffiness when my left arm is flat at my side, but he said that it wasn't a concern right now and was probably something that could be fixed in a few months if it still bothered me.<br />
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I felt a tiny bit bad because he was seeing me in between surgeries at his in-office clinic, but I also wanted to resolve some of the frustrating lack of communication surrounding my latest operation. I felt sort of abandoned when I woke up in the hospital on Thursday without having spoken with him in nearly four weeks except for a very brief chat right before I went into the OR. I was left with only confusing second-hand information about how and why things had, at least for me, significantly changed from what I expected going into surgery. So I used the time I had to try and clear up some of the issues that were bothering me.<br />
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The white tape is supposed to be "defining the crease" under my boobs for the first week. He said that since I'd already been in once this week and everything looked fine, I could take it off myself on Thursday and that I didn't need to come back again for three weeks. I tried to explain my perspective and how being unexpectedly stuck with something that would double the amount of time that I had to go with showering with no warning or explanation had affected me, but my efforts fell flat.<br />
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My takeaway was that I would be better off if the tape remained stuck to me until Thursday, so Frank carefully covered it in waterproof Bandaids, I took a shower, and it did wonders for my mental health. I sometimes think people throw around the phrase "ride or die" a little too casually, but the fact that Frank actually pitched this plan before me may be the true embodiment of that phrase. He really is the best.<br />
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Of course, the Bandaids didn't work 100%, and the tape did get a little damp. It dried out within an hour, and it still seems fine now. However, I feel that I should throw in a "Don't try this at home, kids," like the old cartoons used to do.<br />
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Most of my stress for the past week can all be traced back to unclear expectations. This was pitched as a very minor surgery to me, and physically, it was. After five days I'm experiencing only the most minor discomfort, and I think a lot of that is actually the tape restricting my movement. The intense burning feeling that I felt immediately after surgery was almost entirely dissipated within 48 hours, and honestly, I think most of my negative physical sensations since then can be attributed more to stress and lack of movement than the actual incisions.<br />
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However, my mistake was to interpret the expectation of minimal physical pain with minimal life interruption. What I didn't understand was that the real challenge of this surgery would not be the physical impact on my body, but all of the rules and restrictions meant to help my boobs look good in the end. Since no one really explained the difference between health rules and cosmetic rules to me, it was very frustrating because none of it seemed to make sense.<br />
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I want there to be a lesson learned here, especially given the title, but the fact of the matter is that I didn't have valuable information that could have helped me get into the right headspace to make this experience more tolerable. Partly because I'm not a typical plastic surgery patient and partly because of the archetypal disconnect between the medical professional and the patient perspectives, no one understood the need to explain how a minor physical procedure can still cause major life disruption. At this point, yesterday's conversation is as close to "fixing" the situation as I'll get. As stressful as this experience has been, I'm nearing the end, and hopefully, I won't have to face this situation again.<br />
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In regard to not facing this again, I mentioned in my last post that I was disappointed when I saw my boobs immediately after surgery. The right one has improved a lot, although the left still looks pretty weird due to the aforementioned swelling that sent me to the doctor yesterday. In the context of the puffiness under my left arm, I was told that I wasn't "allowed to pass judgment for six months." After that, most imperfections can be fixed with fat injections, or in the case of any remaining underarm puffiness, liposuction. And, of course, those procedures would be "even more minor." LOL.<br />
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I suppose that is my lesson learned: If and when it comes down to it in a few months, I should meet supposedly "minor" procedures with an appropriate amount of skepticism. At some point, correcting minor imperfections might just not be worth the "minor" procedure. At the same time, by that point, it will be winter again, and maybe I'll be better emotionally prepared to handle it. For now, though, I just need to make it through a few more restrictions, and I'm free to live my life for six months, or forever, as I choose.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-71302200423266443292019-03-15T18:05:00.000-04:002019-03-15T20:03:02.359-04:00#newboobdayYesterday I reached a significant milestone in my recovery from my double mastectomy when I got my expanders swapped out for permanent implants. At one point I was really excited about this, but as I described in my last post, my pre-op appointment quickly rained on that parade. Things didn't really get better from there.<br />
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I struggled through a couple of weeks of part-time work while getting more and more nervous about my surgery. I managed to slip in a couple sunny outdoor rides on the road, which felt like progress except that I knew I was only days away from regression. I was looking forward to the expanders being gone and hopefully perhaps at least downgrading to a chainmail bralette from the iron bra I usually feel upon waking. I was not looking forward to anything else that a second surgery would entail, and it sort of made it worse that I didn't have a clear idea of how bad it would really be.<br />
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With the mastectomy surgery, I was in a state of unequivocal dread regarding what I was facing. I steeled myself for the worst experience of my life, and with the exception of the extra days where I was stuck with the drains, almost everything was less bad than I was expecting. This isn't to say that it wasn't still terrible and not something that I ever want to do again, so the fact that my implant swap surgery has turned into even a miniature version of that is finally breaking me.<br />
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I woke up at 3:30 yesterday morning and decided that it was unlikely that I would fall back to sleep in the bed again, so I got up and reassembled my pillow fort since I would have to go back to sleeping on an incline for at least a few days. I spent a couple of hours on the couch watching TV and trying unsuccessfully to doze for short periods. Despite getting up so long before we needed to leave, I put off removing my nail polish until the very last minute. It took longer than I planned, and we ended up leaving a bit later than scheduled.<br />
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We still arrived a couple of minutes early, which didn't matter because it turned out to be four hours before they actually took me to the OR. During this time, two different nurses tried unsuccessfully to insert IVs, leaving me bruised and bleeding in the crook of each arm. I broke down in tears when the second one chastised me for not drinking enough water the day before surgery, and it really got to me because I'd had a busy afternoon of meetings at work the day before and probably did drink less than normal. It felt almost like a punishment for trying to reestablish myself in regular life again.<br />
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They finally took me upstairs, and the anesthesiologist inserted an IV quickly and easily into the back of my hand. After the sweet respite of anesthesia, the first thing I did when I was awake enough to move my arms was to feel my sides for drains. I wasn't supposed to have any, but not finding any was still a relief.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was before I talked to the plastic surgeon's office and before I knew I had Trump-neck.</td></tr>
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I was awake enough to go back downstairs around 3:00. I was already in a lot more pain than I expected, and it took another hour before I was released. The plastic surgeon and his staff were already gone by the time I woke up and had left a somewhat confusing instruction sheet for me. The pre-op instructions said that I could shower after three days if I didn't have drains, but the new sheet said I had to wait until they removed the white tape at my first follow-up. I quickly checked, and yes, I did have white tape that I didn't have after the first surgery. As soon as we left the hospital, I called the plastic surgeon's office to find out that I was stuck with the white tape and no showers until Wednesday.<br />
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So that brings me to today. I'm depressed, in pain, and completely dreading the next few days. The worst part is that I have quite a bit of both class work and work work that I need to keep up, so I can't just shut down and do nothing the whole time. I may have overcommitted myself because I thought I'd feel better at this point than I do, and I'm getting so impatient to be a normal person again.<br />
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I also took a peek at my boobs when I got home and was pretty disappointed with what I saw. No one explicitly told me not to look, but I think it's not generally recommended to look that soon. I guess I was hoping they would look good and make me feel better, but that wasn't the case. I mentioned to the doctor on multiple occasions that I was worried about my chest looking too wide, and he said that was just the expanders and that he could choose a shape of implant that would fit my body better. However, when I looked yesterday, they looked very low and very wide. They can fix little things like asymmetry or unevenness with fat injections in a few months, but now I'm worried that he chose a shape of implant that just isn't going to look good on me.<br />
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Anyway, despite my smiling pictures on social media lately, I'm having a really tough time right now. I know that it really is almost over and this is just a few more days, but I just didn't think it would be this bad.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-62516154419155297992019-03-02T14:10:00.000-05:002019-03-02T14:10:39.067-05:00Back to WorkIt's been a busy week and a half since my last post. The biggest change was that I started back to work half-time this week. I went in on Monday morning because there was a meeting that I didn't want to miss, but I worked in the afternoons for the rest of the week. Despite only being there half-days, it still made my week surprisingly hard.<br />
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I tried going to the gym after I left work on Monday, but I was already noticeably tired and only ended up walking one mile on the treadmill. I had quite a few appointments and other things that I had to do in the mornings, so I didn't even try to go for the rest of the week. On Friday morning, I tried riding my cyclocross bike on the rollers for the first time since my surgery, and it went pretty well for the half-hour I put in. I'm going to try to keep up a regular roller habit in the remaining 12 days until my implant swap.<br />
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Work itself went well enough, although it was a little weird. Since most of my work is project-based, everything I was working on prior to my surgery was either put on pause or transferred to someone else. Since I spent the week figuring out when the paused work would resume and what new projects I would be starting, it mostly felt like practice going to work again instead of actually working. I guess that's better than coming back to an overwhelming pile of stuff to do immediately, and let's face it, I still needed the practice at getting dressed.<br />
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The one other awkward observation that I made was that about 70% of the people at my job don't actually know why I was out, so they don't know what to say to me now that I'm back. There are over 100 people in my department, and the director sent out an email to everyone the first day I was gone but didn't give details. It totally makes sense that he wouldn't have given the details an email to everyone, but I had kind of hoped that more of the people who did know what was wrong with me would have told more the people who didn't while I was out. It's been very weird having people ask how I'm doing, and my not knowing how to answer at the appropriate level detail. I've mostly been defaulting to "Pretty good. I have one more minor surgery on March 14, and then I'll be done." I have no idea if this is helpful or not, but it satisfies my need to explain why I'm going be out again so soon after returning without having to tell the whole story to everyone to whom I talk.<br />
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As for the appointments that kept me out of the gym all week, they included my first session of physical therapy, a "massage", and my pre-op appointment for my implant swap. The physical therapy was pretty uneventful, as the therapist agreed that trying to do any substantial work before my implant swap might not be a great idea. So my exercises are mostly just stretching my arm up over my head against the wall or a table. It was good to at least get some professional guidance as to what is and is not okay in regard to pushing my physical limits right now.<br />
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As for the massage, someone else who had recently had a double mastectomy referred me to a massage therapist in town who has special training in mastectomy recovery. I went to see him once about 2.5 weeks post-op, but at the time I wasn't healed enough for him to do any serious work except for trying to calm down my angry lats and hips. When I went back on Thursday, it was a much different story. He actually spent about 75% time using suction cup machine to go over all the scar tissue around the edges of my expanders and in my armpits. This was pretty painful and a little scary, but I reminded myself that he had a lot of training and experience with this stuff and tried to trust that he wouldn't cause any damage. It seemed to have worked since when I showered immediately after, I discovered that I could finally shave my left armpit for the first time in five weeks. Although I've been a bit sore since then, the "iron bra" feeling when I wake up in the morning has been significantly reduced.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI2ZPmv0iEbUty3uQ4lAdjU-RisqVGNYz4oBsOtVKeB0MSm9kzRhO41U-YeiZqwQ29CKGyAyaUk6ajqGWv1qe23yArnd96IwtaMtAEk1fq77B-tplN7VMVu2DuSUCzJULIWQmrBgdXl56s/s1600/Armpit.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="901" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI2ZPmv0iEbUty3uQ4lAdjU-RisqVGNYz4oBsOtVKeB0MSm9kzRhO41U-YeiZqwQ29CKGyAyaUk6ajqGWv1qe23yArnd96IwtaMtAEk1fq77B-tplN7VMVu2DuSUCzJULIWQmrBgdXl56s/s400/Armpit.JPG" width="225" /></a></div>
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Finally, I had my pre-op appointment for my implant swap surgery yesterday. It was a little weird having it that far out, but apparently, there weren't a lot of appointments available. It was pretty annoying because it was basically just sitting there listening to a nurse read off the information booklet that they'd given me at my previous appointment, which was 90% the same as the booklet from my last surgery. Since the appointment, my excitement about getting the next surgery done has been dampened pretty badly.<br />
<br />
Part of it is a just a generally bad mood from having to listen to long condescending explanations of things like why I can't have gum or mints the morning of the surgery. I don't use gum or mints normally and it's my third surgery in four months. I know the drill. The other part is the anxiety that comes up from having to sit there and listen to someone read all of the crappy parts of having even minor surgery and all of the things that could possibly go wrong. I'm technically supposed to go back to the 45-degree arm restrictions for two weeks after the next surgery, and I'm getting stressed about that. I really don't want to have to take more than a few days off work since I just came back, but I just don't think that arm restrictions and physically going into the office are compatible.<br />
<br />
In general, dealing with the plastic surgeon's office is so much worse on so many levels than it is with my surgical oncologist's office. It might have something to do with the majority of their patients being there voluntarily, so they're less understanding about how hard it is when you didn't choose the implant life, the implant life chose you. The doctor himself is nice, and as I've said before, he's known for his good work, but often the way that they do things is making an already unpleasant experience even worse.<br />
<br />
All I can do at this point is hope that the next 12 days go by quickly and that everything goes right instead of all of the things that can go wrong. The two big milestones to which I'm really looking forward are waking up from the surgery to the news that everything went well and when the two-week post-op period is finally over. I'm getting very anxious to move on with my life.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-20700400067989059102019-02-20T16:52:00.000-05:002019-02-20T17:40:50.588-05:00The End Is In Sight<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I got two surprises when I went see my plastic surgeon on
Monday. The first was that I told him that I was debating on whether I should
get another 50 ml added to my expanders, so I asked for his professional opinion. I
somehow walked out with 100 ml added. That surprise was weird, but admittedly
my boobs looked better when he was done. Of course, expanders are meant to be
temporary and therefore inherently don’t look that great no matter what, so I
might have been fine just living with them the way they were for a while. That being said, I'm getting used to the idea of being "busty" now.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNBR9Q4jqN9Mjpz8agbcqa_BxxiBWUcJUTGBxT-VS1c7qGFBxHZhIMc1EbrFKYKGxfPr2ucbOOVF7HYqGvETBBnul-G5emQFkmQqal5F4M7z05hqGtR5K-XohgG_2zrAiYTt7fd2uSE7Ek/s1600/lieutenant-dan-you-got-new-legs-19406251.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="500" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNBR9Q4jqN9Mjpz8agbcqa_BxxiBWUcJUTGBxT-VS1c7qGFBxHZhIMc1EbrFKYKGxfPr2ucbOOVF7HYqGvETBBnul-G5emQFkmQqal5F4M7z05hqGtR5K-XohgG_2zrAiYTt7fd2uSE7Ek/s400/lieutenant-dan-you-got-new-legs-19406251.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Every time I think about getting implants, I think of this meme. Hopefully, my results are more convincing.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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The second, and more definitively positive, surprise is that I
will only be living with the expanders for 22 more days. After he added the extra 100 ml, I assured him that I was definitely done filling at that point. He told
me that if that was the case, I could go ahead and get my permanent implants in
“one week to whenever”. March 14 was the first opening at a hospital that took
my insurance, but the extra time is probably good for the bruising and swelling from my
first surgery to clear up a bit more.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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This means that I am still three weeks ahead of the absolute
best case scenario that I could have imagined when I set out on this journey.
Heck, I’ll have six weeks between getting my implants and the first WV Enduro
race. I’ll almost definitely be riding in some capacity at that point, but I’m
not sure how well, so we’ll see. A friend asked Frank if we wanted to split a
rental house for that weekend around the time I was diagnosed. I told him to go
ahead and say yes, because it would still be nice to see everyone, even if I
had to watch from the sidelines. At this point, it looks like I’ll at least be able to pre-ride the course on Saturday, even if I don’t have the energy to actually race.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The only slight downside to my second surgery being so soon
is that it falls during the week that I had planned to come back to work
full-time. In a way that is annoying, but I guess it’s maybe better than being
back for a few weeks and really starting to build momentum, only to have to take time
off again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve still only worn real shirts a couple of times so far,
and with the exception of the one slightly loose button-up shirt that is my
own, I’ve still needed Frank’s help dressing and undressing. That makes me a little nervous in
regard to going back to work, but I’ll manage somehow. Wearing real clothes
again also means wearing a real bra again, although “real” is still relative. So far, I’ve
kept wearing the thin white cotton front-closure bras with Velcro straps that I got in the hospital, but I’m trying to find something that looks better
under clothes that aren’t baggy men’s shirts. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All of my old bras are too small,
and I couldn’t wear them because they have underwires, anyway. Per the
measurements that I took yesterday, it appears that I have gone from a 32C to a
32DD. This isn’t as extreme as it sounds, because cup sizes are not universal across
the board, rather they are a function of the difference between your bust measure
and your rib measurement. My ribs aren’t that big, so another few inches above
that still isn’t that big. It’s been interesting shopping around for something
that will get me through a couple of weeks of work, but won’t become obsolete
with the continuing changes that will happen over the next few months. I ended
up ordering two colors of <a href="https://www.wearlively.com/products/the-busty-bralette-toasted-almond?variant=43507150924&fbclid=IwAR3x8yZjfbkSv-M0DJ4ZlZrvPbw20ep9mf-toaCsuHmcDekJ7NyR7NhQ6DU" target="_blank">“The Busty Bralette”</a>,
which will hopefully accommodate some size and shape variations until
everything is settled.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I saw my surgical oncologist today, and it will be my last
appointment with her for six months. She gave me a referral to start physical
therapy, which I will begin next week. Although I probably won’t be able to
accomplish a lot in physical therapy before the next surgery, I figured that getting
my chest muscles even a little looser beforehand will probably make things
literally and figuratively smoother. I’ve really been pleasantly surprised with
how quickly everything is wrapping up. I still have some anxiety about getting
back into shape, and whether I’ll be able to ride as aggressively as I did
before, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.</div>
Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-43934372018335228052019-02-16T18:33:00.000-05:002019-02-16T18:33:06.987-05:00Small VictoriesProgress has slowed, or at least become less noticeable, since my last post. After passing most of the big post-mastectomy milestones in the first couple of weeks, the wins have become smaller, but still important. I’ve started driving myself on short errands around town, and I’ve started doing a few small household chores. I’ve blow-dried my own hair a few times, and even did full hair and make-up to have lunch with a friend yesterday. I was even to get a regular t-shirt and sweater over my head with Frank’s help after three weeks of exclusively wearing his snap-up Sombrio shirts that are way too big for me. I’m basically to the point that I can more or less function as a normal person, but doing so is still incredible difficult and exhausting. I have nine days before I go back to work half-time, so I’m hoping that I’ll be doing better by then.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAOE8oh9gbj8iB5MShRsOZ0_2lOVdYRReRS6NwU3PiDx6MR5knKWdRJ26g6glGaHqocvtZ0RIRiJPiAJ8Gzcwlmn8tb3yt6yeYg7d13z33Be-vwHaJneRUYpWza0eEzbiGrCHtsm2z15Hl/s1600/Real+Shirt.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAOE8oh9gbj8iB5MShRsOZ0_2lOVdYRReRS6NwU3PiDx6MR5knKWdRJ26g6glGaHqocvtZ0RIRiJPiAJ8Gzcwlmn8tb3yt6yeYg7d13z33Be-vwHaJneRUYpWza0eEzbiGrCHtsm2z15Hl/s400/Real+Shirt.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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I’ve been to the gym most days since my last post, and I’m up to walking three miles on the treadmill in about 48 minutes. Yes, I’m still me, so I have to try to go further and/or faster every workout. Because I can’t comfortably swing my arms in race-walker style, or even let them hang loose for long periods of time, it’s a fun challenge to see how fast I can go while still holding on the little HR monitor handles for stability. It requires a lot of concentration to focus on a strong core and quick, precise turnover without bouncing or swinging my arms. After walking, I’m playing around a little bit to see what else I can do, but it’s still not much. Basically, I can do crunches on the incline bench or split squats with no weight. I tried out the belt squat machine today, which I was able to do with Frank there to help load the weight for me.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGPDnd9l-skllnBhWaNzWqlDgfaTuS60sllT9AU4pa4knoDe9nSpnEeldPkMLeJ5XmtPcRvNCFrKMrzD2P98onVbW2BvDPlZ37ZPvh46nirQwbMRnxpqMte6VLu3ivqYq9RqbbKNbZMC_/s1600/Belt+Squat.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1458" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGPDnd9l-skllnBhWaNzWqlDgfaTuS60sllT9AU4pa4knoDe9nSpnEeldPkMLeJ5XmtPcRvNCFrKMrzD2P98onVbW2BvDPlZ37ZPvh46nirQwbMRnxpqMte6VLu3ivqYq9RqbbKNbZMC_/s400/Belt+Squat.JPG" width="363" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I also have to steal Frank's full-zip jerseys for the gym to avoid over-the-head clothes.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I think the thing that is surprising me the most at this point is how well I’m doing emotionally. Admittedly, I’ve hit the sweet spot where the really hard/gross/painful part is over and I’m living a life of (slightly immobile) luxury: sleeping 9-10 hours a night, going to the gym at my leisure, and generally not having a lot responsibility. I’m still taking an online class this semester, so I still have to try to muster a couple of hours of concentration every afternoon, but it’s not too bad. I’m a bit worried about how well I’ll handle dragging myself through work with a stiff, awkward, exhausted body that may or may not still fit into most of my work clothes.<br />
<br />
However, if I think back on the fact that I literally lost part of myself three weeks ago and how terrified I was beforehand, I’m amazed at how well I’m doing. Maybe I got all of my mourning out before my surgery, because now that the brutal part is over, my feelings about losing my boobs have gone from utter devastation to occasional moderate sadness. I feel occasionally annoyed that my body doesn’t work as well as I want it to, and anxious to get my permanent implants so that I can move on with my life. <a href="http://trainingonaprayer.blogspot.com/2019/02/wtf-are-expanders.html" target="_blank">I’m way more interested in my reconstruction than I imagined I would be, too.</a> Since they’re really just there for looks at this point, I guess I want them to look good, so I’ve spent a lot of the last week staring in the mirror trying to decide if I want that extra 50 ml or not.<br />
<br />
I said before my surgery that people learn to be okay with most anything once it’s happened, and that’s been the case for me, as well. Something really terrible happened to me, but I got through it. Now I’m trying to maximize what I’m left with once it’s over (and not just in terms of filling expanders). At this point, I’m really glad that I have shared my feelings of this at every point along the way. As weird as it is, the terrified and devastated me from a few weeks ago and the surprisingly chill me of today are both important parts of my experience. I’m sure there are more hard time to come, but for now I’ll just enjoy my last nine days of freedom.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-69820410009028802852019-02-16T18:13:00.001-05:002019-02-16T18:13:23.773-05:00WTF Are Expanders?I started writing a regular post, but I realized that I was making a lot of reference to expanders and implants, and that I’ve never actually explained breast construction on this blog. I’ve had enough questions from friends to realize that a full explanation might be in order. So I’ve decided to save the update for tomorrow, and instead tell readers everything they never really wanted to know about breast reconstruction. If nothing else, it will make my posts over the next few weeks make a little more sense.<br />
<br />
There are two basic types of breast reconstruction: implants, a concept with which most people are familiar and “flap” reconstruction, which uses fat and skin from other parts of the patient’s body to form a new breast. I don’t know a ton about the flap reconstruction option, because it was never really even pitched to me as something that I should consider. I believe it is mostly employed by patients whose original breast skin can’t handle implants due to removal or radiation. Although it can yield more natural-looking results and has a better potential for some sensation returning, it requires additional surgery on other parts of the body to get the donor tissue and that did not sound like something I wanted to deal with.<br />
<br />
I am having the most common type of implant reconstruction, which is a two-step process. During my original surgery, the surgical oncologist took out the breast tissue, a few lymph nodes from the side where the cancer was, and biopsies from behind the nipples, leaving all of my breast skin in place. This was done through 3-4 inch incisions in the fold under each breast which should fade and become unnoticeable in a year or so. Before I was closed up, the plastic surgeon came and created the “pocket”, which would become the infrastructure for my reconstructed breasts. This included inserting temporary implants called expanders, which are filled with saline over time.<br />
<br />
In my case, they were placed under the pectoral muscles, which is why my arms are in such bad shape now. In some cases, over the muscle placements are done, and the recovery time is a lot faster, but my surgeon said that he prefers the results of under the muscle placements.<br />
<br />
Because of the trauma to my skin, the expanders were left completely deflated for the first six days after surgery to make sure that I had good blood flow to my skin and nipples before the expansion began. This is why the two-step process is more common than complete reconstruction during the mastectomy. Unless the patient is wanting their reconstructed breast size to be smaller than the original, it is unlikely that their skin can handle a full-size, permanent implant being placed at the same time as the mastectomy surgery.<br />
<br />
For patients using the two-step process, saline is added to the expanders in the weeks after the surgery until the desired size is reached. How quickly this is done depends on how healthy the skin is and the size to be reached. I have now had my expanders filled twice, and now they are somewhere between 10 and 30% bigger than my original breasts, depending on how one counts. I still have a lot of swelling in weird places and the expanders are a lot stiffer than the implants will be, so it’s hard to imagine what the final result will look like. I’m planning on discussing this with my plastic surgeon on Monday, and I may or may not get a smidge more saline added, depending on what he says.<br />
<br />
After Monday’s appointment, I’m expecting to have permanent implants placed in about 4-6 weeks. Once again, the length of time between the final fill and the second surgery varies from person to person, depending on things like the health of their skin, if they are trying to get significantly bigger than before, or if they require other treatments like radiation or chemotherapy. Everything is looking good so far for my having a relatively short wait time, although we still not close enough for my doctor to commit to actual surgery date yet.<br />
<br />
The second surgery should be a lot easier than the first, because as my doctor said, “The pocket is already there.” It’s just a matter of reopening the incisions, pulling the expanders out, and putting the permanent implants back in.<br />
<br />
I’m looking forward to having the second surgery, because then it will finally feel like this is really, really over. There is a chance that the surgeon might want to do some minor tweaks six months after placing the implants, but that really just comes down to how everything looks at that time. If another surgery is required, it should also be pretty minor and it will be in November or December, which is the least bad time to be sidelined from riding for a couple of weeks. However, I’m really hoping everything looks good, and I don’t need any revisions in the future.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-82912586568187519512019-02-07T12:00:00.000-05:002019-02-07T14:44:02.559-05:00Just Waiting for My Arms to WorkI finally got my drains out on Monday and was able to take a shower. In my eagerness to take a shower, I forgot how hard it would be to actually do so. I technically wasn’t supposed to lift my arms above a 45 degree angle until today, although I’ve been using comfort as my guide rather than carrying around a protractor to confirm that I’m not lifting my arms too high. I’ve still been very careful, and if a movement feels weird or tugs even a little, I back off. However, this has still resulted in much better arm mobility than I’m “supposed to” have at this point. Better than I’m supposed to have still only means that I can kinda sorta barely reach the top of my head to wash my hair.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-QvUb2GPmm2lm9GS-M2C2Fz72WjC7mdm-QNTe5r92Ri3t_2HjQILOWcrIvlrzC6nm-YKh_ys0raTpyLa3BTlK-L62Na0WyNHVYw2esMB7jlEUtAuhmHySl10CV-MGNIbU3v96JiLdfTg3/s1600/IMG_6665.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-QvUb2GPmm2lm9GS-M2C2Fz72WjC7mdm-QNTe5r92Ri3t_2HjQILOWcrIvlrzC6nm-YKh_ys0raTpyLa3BTlK-L62Na0WyNHVYw2esMB7jlEUtAuhmHySl10CV-MGNIbU3v96JiLdfTg3/s400/IMG_6665.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Embracing my natural hair texture until I can hold up a blow dryer again.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I think this is a case where my athletic background may have really helped me. I'm sure the 45 degree rule was based on some sort of conservative average for women with a wide range of ages and fitness levels. Because I'm used to making judgement calls about how hard (or not) to push my body, I felt comfortable safely observing what my muscles were capable of within the context of the 45 degree guidelines. I suspect that whoever wrote those guidelines saw too many cases of "no pain, no gain" go badly. I'm lucky to live within the mindset of "test your limit, recover, then test it again". I hope that this means that I will continue to make rapid progress over the next couple of weeks.<br />
<br />
Tuesday turned out to be the first day that I was home alone while Frank taught since the surgery. He only teaches Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, and his mom was with me the first Tuesday, and then classes were cancelled last Thursday. The temperature was nearly 60 degrees, so I used my newfound freedom to walk to a coffee shop a mile away, get tea and a muffin, and come back. Since walking is really the only exercise I can do right now, I’m trying to work up to an hour a day, but that first outing really took it out of me.<br />
<br />
Yesterday I finally got my pathology results back, and they were more or less what I suspected. Nipple and lymph node biopsies were clear, as well as all of the breast tissue margins. This means that I won’t require further treatment like radiation or chemotherapy. I didn’t expect that I would, but it’s nice to have confirmation. They did find two previously unknown spots of DCIS in the left breast, once of which was in a different quadrant, which confirms that the mastectomy was the right choice. If I’d gone with just a lumpectomy and radiation this round, I would almost definitely would have still had to have a mastectomy in a few years when the DCIS in the other quadrant got big enough to become noticeable, and I probably wouldn't have the option to do reconstruction with an implant at that point.<br />
<br />
So now I have entered what I am calling my “Just Waiting for My Arms to Work” phase. The worst parts of the recovery are over, and I still have about 2.5 weeks before I go back to work part-time. This will be my time to get back to the point where I can do things like put on clothes that are men’s sized snap shirts, style my hair, and drive. It will also be my time for getting my endurance back to the point where I can do all of those things back-to-back without total exhaustion. I was warned that fatigue would be pretty bad a few weeks in, and now it is really making sense. It wasn’t that tiring when I couldn’t do anything, but now that I’m beginning to be able to do stuff, I'm realizing how tiring doing stuff is. Luckily, I planned for this, and I have the time off from work that I’ll need to rest and recover.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-88319388913581119382019-02-02T14:26:00.000-05:002019-02-02T14:26:38.797-05:00DrainedI am now on Day 9 post surgery, and it’s not pretty. However, I will begin with the good news: First, it appears that looks like my nipples will live. Next, I just realized that I haven’t had pain meds of any sort since bedtime last night. Finally, I got 190(L) and 155(R) cc’s of saline put into my expanders on Wednesday, so I now have ~60% boobs again, although they are still very weird looking between swelling in my armpits and blue ink drawing all over them that I can’t clean off yet. I’ve maybe even begun researching what different size implants actually look like. I can never stress enough how the implants are no substitute for my real boobs, but I guess I’d rather have something than nothing. I’ll admit that I’m at least curious how a little bigger would look since I’m doing it anyway.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTcbn_RPpfUlXXAq6CgWmsn-J7L8p95F-clv0f7GWmUr6YC_NExoTBDNo1Ek73o9h7_zoJViPG_uGB2xof4h3nxRmhCsMVMzrwTcD5Qem7lBDs0CBqzd87Rxjjh9wvv2hg_B-kaL4K-69h/s1600/IMG_6650.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTcbn_RPpfUlXXAq6CgWmsn-J7L8p95F-clv0f7GWmUr6YC_NExoTBDNo1Ek73o9h7_zoJViPG_uGB2xof4h3nxRmhCsMVMzrwTcD5Qem7lBDs0CBqzd87Rxjjh9wvv2hg_B-kaL4K-69h/s400/IMG_6650.JPG" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When you're so bored you start sexting pro enduro racers. <br />It looks weird, but the Bandaid is just covering the saline port, <br />nothing more exciting than that.</td></tr>
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<br />
As for the downsides, after more or less losing count of the number of Percocet that I was downing the first week after surgery to manage my pain, I finally got fed up with the associated constipation on Thursday and quit cold turkey once I was allowed to begin ibuprofen again. Ibuprofen isn’t allowed the week before or after the surgery due to bleeding risk. At first quitting the Percocet seemed relatively easy considering that opioid addiction is such a massive problem in the United States today. However, I have noticed that since I stopped, that I’ve gone from being amazingly patient with my situation back to my old irritable, anxious, depressed self again. It’s probably partly the drugs and partly the fact that despite my decreased pain, I’m still so far off from normal life again.<br />
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The bane of my existence right now are the surgical drains which will not come out until Monday at best. Most of the women I talked to only had theirs for 6 or 7 days, so 11 seems excruciating for me. I can’t shower until they’re out, they dig into my sides, and I’m tired of having pouches and tubes in the way whenever I go to the bathroom. The benchmark for getting the drains out is less than 20ml of output over two days, so I’m already in the measurement period if I want to get them out on Monday. I can’t do much to affect this except be as still as possible and hope.<br />
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I have been super self-conscious about my pale skin and dark body hair since I was a pre-teen, and there are only a handful of times in the last twenty years that I have gone to bed without freshly shaved arms and legs. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I find a way to make it happen. It’s probably my biggest barrier to doing one of those big multi-day stage races where you have to sleep in a tent between stages. The only other big break I’ve had was when I had my pancreas surgery 8 years ago, and I was in the hospital for a week. I still managed to shower and shave before I went home. Knowing this, you can maybe start to understand what 11 days without a shower is doing to me.<br />
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Yesterday was especially tough for me because one of my drains has been leaking, and despite being redressed at my appointment on Wednesday, it was still soaking through to my clothes by Thursday evening. I went back to the doctor on Friday with the hope that they’d just pull it since basically nothing was making it into the drain tube anyway, so what’s the point? Rather just ending my misery, nurse sat there yanking on it for 10 minutes until she came up with 25 ml of new fluid in the bulb. By this point I was bawling my eyes out because it feels so hopeless and out of my control, and all she did was stand there and say a bunch of condescending bullshit about “magic numbers”. I can’t explain how it feels when a person has the power to make a little piece of your nightmare a little less nightmare-like, and they absolutely give no genuine forks regarding your misery.<br />
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As angry as I am at her right now, I should pause and acknowledge people who actually have tried to make my suffering a little less. My regular hairstylist washed and dried my hair on Monday for free, and when I posted about how excited I was on Instagram, another friend got me a gift certificate for another blowout, which I got yesterday. I also gave in and took a sort of crappy waste-down bath and shaved my arms and legs yesterday, so I feel a little better. However, the drains are still the biggest barrier between me and normalcy right now, and the thought of having to get through 48 more hours with them is killing me.<br />
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Finally, I wanted to mention the whole numb boobs thing since was one of my biggest fears before the surgery, and now I’m actually experiencing it. It was less noticeable before they filled my expanders because my chest was flatter and the fact that I was in so much pain masked the fact that I couldn’t feel anything else. Now that I’m in less pain and have something protruding from chest, it’s really confusing. I have a sense that my body is taking up more space, but a really bad sense of where that space ends. When I hug Frank I get nervous because I can’t tell if I’m pressing too hard or not at all. Since they added the saline, everything feels pokey and pully when I burrow into my pillow fort at bedtime, and then I wake up several times each night unable to feel any of the skin on my chest, in my left armpit, or down the back of my left arm. It still scares me every time because I feel like there’s something wrong like the circulation being cut off to those body parts, although I’m coming to realize this is just the new normal. I’m starting to be less compulsive about shining a light down my shirt every time I wake up to confirm that everything still looks okay, but it’s just really scary when you can’t tell if you’re okay or not from feel.<br />
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I’m hoping that this weekend is the low point in my recovery, and that things start to look up once the drains are out. I want to start doing more than just laying around hoping to minimize the how much fluid comes out of me. My plan has always been to start walking on the treadmill at the gym once my drains are out so that I can at least get some exercise even if my arms don’t work. I think it will make me feel a lot better once I can do that.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-85215309516997880512019-01-27T12:29:00.000-05:002019-01-27T19:39:39.535-05:00First UpdateOnce again, I thought I’d wait a little longer before making an update, but I find myself with a lot of free time on my hands and not a lot of range of motion in my arms. I pretty much have my <a href="https://www.ihearitssunnier.com/2018/01/08/mastectomy-recovery-pillow-fort/" target="_blank">bed pillow fort</a> for night and my couch pillow fort for day, and I can only leave those for short periods of time to use the bathroom or maybe sit at the kitchen table to eat. I’m already getting pretty bored, so I decided to see how I did sitting at the computer for a little while.<br />
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I successfully made it through my double mastectomy on Thursday and stayed in the hospital until 5:00 on Friday. I lost enough blood that they were on the fence about giving me a blood transfusion and they were not able to put any saline into my expanders during the surgery because the blood flow to my nipples was iffy, but I would call these pretty minor setbacks in the grand scheme of things. They didn’t do the blood transfusion and just watched me in the hospital a bit longer than planned. I have to have nitroglycerin cream put on my nipples every few hours to encourage blood flow, but it seems to be working, and they look healthy now. Hopefully, they can start filling my expanders on Wednesday. The only other issue I’ve had is swelling in my arms and legs, but it’s not too terrible.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhif0ST-4MgjhOoCRv6QVFiaoKIUkgQ917bqOOcLaOuuoNXF047bHBXVLmpZ12CYgw7ozFPNdym1MX7X3vicDzpLyZD0DMMcy59UQEB_ia-HZEobonJC35wDsfYx9EV5cnPwVUeRxtjklGt/s1600/Flowers.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhif0ST-4MgjhOoCRv6QVFiaoKIUkgQ917bqOOcLaOuuoNXF047bHBXVLmpZ12CYgw7ozFPNdym1MX7X3vicDzpLyZD0DMMcy59UQEB_ia-HZEobonJC35wDsfYx9EV5cnPwVUeRxtjklGt/s400/Flowers.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It melted my heart to get flowers from the other WV Enduro ladies before I even got home from the hospital.</td></tr>
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<br />
I’ve now spent two nights at home and my main issues are pain management and boredom. The pain is actually worse than I was expecting, because the women I talked to made the actual pain part seem not that bad. I’m definitely struggling with it, and I’m maxing out my allowed pain med dosages. I look and smell terrible, but I’m not feeling well enough to care yet. My first shot at a shower is Wednesday, if my drains slow down enough to come out by my first check-up with the plastic surgeon. I will hopefully also get my pathology results that day. I’m not too worried about those, but it will be nice to have 100% confirmation that I don’t need any other treatment.<br />
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Frank has been amazing at doing all the annoying little things that I need done like handing me anything that isn’t within my very limited range of motion, helping me in and out of bed, changing my drains, and putting on my nipple cream. The dude definitely deserves an award for this, but so far the best I could do was encourage him to go out for an hour when they tapped a new keg of Hopslam at a local bar. His mom is also staying with us, so she’s been able to back him up if he needs to leave the house.<br />
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So that’s where I am three days post-surgery. I hope to give some good reports regarding drains and pathology later in the week.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-52109636719523197842019-01-19T14:33:00.002-05:002019-01-20T10:34:06.040-05:00This is HappeningBefore I met with the plastic surgeon on Wednesday, I went back and reread my last post. I was surprised by how much more at peace I felt just a week and a half after writing it. I went through so much emotional change in such a short period of time. When I wrote my last post, it was definitely beginning to seem like a double mastectomy was what I should do, but I really wasn’t ready to face that yet. I still don’t know that I am, but it’s happening this Thursday.<br />
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Before coming to this conclusion, I went through one more angry, rebellious period where I was willing to do just about anything to save my boobs. I was pissed because DCIS is such a stupid, tricky little disease, and no one could tell me how dangerous it actually is. Although one must take internet research with a grain of salt, it seemed as if a lot of the problem with DCIS research is that it’s really skewed by older women for whom it showed up on a routine mammogram, and this seems to be the population for which it is a lot less dangerous. Apparently women with palpable lumps have a greater chance of future invasive cancer than those who just found it on a mammogram, so it's hard to guess the future for a 38-year-old who has had two palpable lumps in two years.<br />
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Speaking of invasive cancer, if I have to look back and point to one moment that really sealed the deal for me, it was an Instagram post from another cyclist who recently had a double mastectomy. I don’t know her, but a friend referred Frank to her IG account when I got my diagnosis, so I’ve been following her progress. Her case is pretty similar to mine, except that her cancer was just a smidge more aggressive/advanced than mine, but luckily still very small in size. When I saw that she’d recently found out that her margins still weren’t clear after her mastectomy and would still need radiation, it was the final push I needed to cash out of the cancer casino as soon as possible.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsFTwOEJBaWOY7lvlJ0-sxzUz_MHCbZ6j-fouv15dyvElL4L0TLEGKcKyy0R1uYa2wB7O1qMR2IGqw97d_cRAqNmLtvzE_tj9jNeaYV02IvJ36WLe552tFeJcwP25GpY2NAlB_wzwDIfF3/s1600/XL_DissentCollar_2_cropped_800x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsFTwOEJBaWOY7lvlJ0-sxzUz_MHCbZ6j-fouv15dyvElL4L0TLEGKcKyy0R1uYa2wB7O1qMR2IGqw97d_cRAqNmLtvzE_tj9jNeaYV02IvJ36WLe552tFeJcwP25GpY2NAlB_wzwDIfF3/s400/XL_DissentCollar_2_cropped_800x.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is so much better than a pink ribbon.</td></tr>
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I quickly went from willing to take some big, unconventional risks to “Fuck, fuck, fuck, get it out before it gets any worse” in a few days. I think a lot of women jump right to latter immediately upon getting their diagnosis, regardless of the severity. Although it’s caused me a lot of emotional turmoil, I’m glad that I fully embraced every possible option before coming to my decision. I’ll admit now that I even went through a phase where I fantasized about getting an <a href="https://dissentpins.com/" target="_blank">RGB Dissent Collar </a> underboob tattoo once my reconstruction is done to symbolize my personal dissent in regard to the lack of options for women with DCIS. Who knows? I still might do it.<br />
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For now though, I’m just coming to terms with the fact that all of the gnarly things that I outlined in my last post are about to become my real life. I’m also terrified about unlikely but possible complications like losing my nipples or having to have unplanned radiation like I mentioned above. At this point, my biggest concern is just getting past those milestones safely.<br />
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Of course, when I’m not freaking out about that stuff, I am also concerned about when and if I’ll be able to race bikes again. Barring unforeseen complications, the current estimate is that I can have my second surgery about 12 weeks after the first, and then maybe a couple more weeks to heal from the second surgery. At that point, I should be cleared to return to “normal” life, but I don’t know how long it will actually take to get back to my pre-surgery self. Fatigue and poor recovery are things that I have trouble with already, so I can’t imagine they’ll get any better after this. Pectoral muscles are also kind of a big deal when it comes to rough, aggressive downhill riding, so there may be a big time gap between being “able to ride” and being able to ride the way I want to. On top of that, I’ll now have the extra worry that if I go crash and slide several feet on my chest across rocky terrain as I did at Blue Mountain last summer, I’ll now pop an implant instead of just having a few scrapes and bruises that heal in a few days.<br />
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A big thing for me lately is wanting to talk to an enduro or downhill rider that has successfully recovered from a double mastectomy with reconstruction and made it back to the level at which she was riding before. It scares me a little that I’ve done a lot Googling and put feelers out through a few channels and still have come up with nothing. I realize that although female gravity riders and mastectomy survivors both seem pretty common in my world, that they are both still relatively rare in the general population. So maybe it’s just a problem with how those small population cross over in a Venn diagram. Regardless, if you’re reading this and know someone who fits the description above and is willing to talk to me, please send them my way. Otherwise, I suppose my posts over the next few months will be here for anyone desperately searching for “downhill mountain bike mastectomy”, “enduro mountain bike mastectomy”, or “park rat mastectomy” as I have been lately.<br />
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Okay, never actually tried the park rat one...<br />
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I’m going to try and keep up with at least bi-weekly posts over the next few months to track my progress towards what I hope to be a glorious comeback. This should help to keep me motivated and hopefully continue to shed a little more light on this journey for anyone else who has to go through it or wants to support someone going through it.Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-59356219513225177972019-01-05T16:14:00.001-05:002019-01-16T11:07:56.394-05:00Mastectomies Are Bad, Mmmkay?<i>We’re going down, down in an earlier round</i><br />
<i>And Sugar, we're going down swinging</i><br />
<i>I’ll be your number one with a bullet</i><br />
<i>A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it</i><br />
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I thought I’d wait until there was an official decision and surgery date scheduled before I posted an update on my boob situation, but that still won’t happen for almost three weeks. As I alluded to in my last post, a thing that is really getting to me about this experience is how much is missing from the “breast cancer” narrative of the collective conscience. I don’t want to say inaccurate, because everyone’s experience is different, but I guess I’m just not seeing myself reflected popular breast cancer culture. Haha. Although I’m mostly writing this to work through my own feelings, it can’t hurt to inject one more perspective into the collective understanding of what I’m learning is a terrible and way too common experience.<br />
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Since I found out about my second DCIS recurrence a few days before Christmas, I have done a lot internet research on mastectomies and chatted with a couple of acquaintances who have recently gone through the procedure themselves. My conclusion is that no one who hasn’t gone through it themselves or at least faced it as a real and imminent choice they had to make (none of this “if it happened to me” shit), grasps the gravity one takes on when they accept a mastectomy as their choice. Because many people who make that choice are faced with a much graver second option, the consequences of the choice are often glossed over to everyone but those closest to them. I’m sure it’s easier for some people than others, but a lot of people to whom I mention the choice that I’m facing seem to think it’s not that big of a deal based on what they’ve observed from a friend or relative. I’ve heard way too many flippant comments about “getting new ones” the past few weeks.<br />
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Below are some of the parts of the experience that I don’t think most people realize unless they have been through it or are intimately close to someone who has. I didn’t include the universal “surgery is scary and painful” on my list, because I think most people know that part, but it’s a thing on top of everything else.<br />
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1.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The surgery cuts the pectoral muscles, which means limited arm strength and mobility for many weeks or months after the surgery.<br />
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2.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Dealing with surgical drains, not being able to shower or wash your own hair for a week or more.<br />
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3.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4-6 weeks off of work from the first surgery.<br />
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4.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you’re able to keep your nipples through the procedure, they may still die and have to be removed within the first few weeks after surgery.<br />
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5.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Even if the skin is preserved and the breasts are reconstructed, there is a high likelihood that they will never have sensation in them again.<br />
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6.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Reconstruction will require at least a second surgery. This won’t take place until at least three months after the first, extending the overall time it takes to get back to “normal”. I’ve heard conflicting reports on the recovery time for the second surgery, but we’ll say somewhere between 2 and 6 weeks for now. I’m hoping to get an estimate specific to me on January 16.<br />
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7.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Reconstruction is not necessarily a one and done thing. “Revisions” may be required, especially in situations like mine where I could be likely be stuck with the “new ones” for 50 or so years, which is way longer than I’ve had the originals.<br />
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I know each of these points can be range from a minor to major deterrent, depending on an individual’s tolerance, and that people tend to learn to be okay with most things once they have happened. I also know that some of this can be avoided by opting out of reconstruction, but to do so adds a whole new layer of feelings with which an individual has to make peace. For some people that’s the right choice, and for some it isn’t.<br />
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Not to be all “fuck the patriarchy”, but what if it were common for cis men to have to cut off their penises and replace them with fake ones that have no sensation? Would they have to listen to asinine comments about how they can make the new one bigger? Or would the subject be treated with a lot less frivolity?<br />
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All of this is to say, “Mastectomies are bad, mmmkay?”<br />
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My alternative to having a mastectomy now is to have a lumpectomy plus radiation plus hormone blockers plus have a very expensive MRI every six months for the foreseeable future. The one caveat of all of that is that it really, really has to work, because a third recurrence means a mastectomy at a later date with even more limited and gruesome reconstruction options. Over Christmas break, I came to the conclusion that my desperation to keep my boobs was strong enough that I was willing to take that chance if I could get some assurance that the odds were in my favor.<br />
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After a conversation with the radiologist who has followed my case from the beginning, it really sounds like they are not. I have more than a 100 small spots on my MRI that could be DCIS or not, and it’s impossible to biopsy each one to find out. We’re all heard the term “death by a 1,000 cuts”, so “death by 100 core biopsies” would probably equate to a really brutal mastectomy in and of itself. She’s going to do one more MRI-guided biopsy to get a better read on the situation, but the more I think about it, I’m not feeling good about the odds that each of those unbiopsied spots is benign, or that the radiation will wipe out any and all microscopic DCIS cells in there. So as I was having my 3 a.m. “spontaneously wake up and freak out about things” time yesterday morning, I decided that it was important that I document the reasons I was so desperate to keep my boobs beyond just all of the mastectomy downsides that I listed above.<br />
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I will begin with a bonus explanation of how Taylor Swift came to become such a major source of my song parody material. I never listened to pop radio and had heard surprisingly little of her music until the day before my 32nd birthday, when I lay in bed scrolling through the interwebs before getting up. I came upon an Buzzfeed article called something like, “Why Taylor Swift Hates Hipsters” with clips of her videos as evidence. Much of the case was built on the song, “22”, and upon hearing the lyrics, I felt incredibly, unfixably old. I somehow rebounded to the decision that I was not “unfixably old” rather quickly, and it led to what some would call a midlife crises, except that it resulted almost completely in net positive effects on my life. I quit binge eating, got in the best shape of my life, ended an unhappy marriage, met Frank, moved to State College, got a way better job that I’d ever had in Bloomington, and learned how to actually mountain bike after years of just pretending that was what I was doing.<br />
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I spent my teens and early 20’s feeling as though my body mostly only existed to try and make dudes happy, because achieving a long-term heterosexual romantic relationship was my primary objective in life. I can’t really explain why now, because it seems so dumb in retrospect, and I could have done so many more cool things with my life without that distraction. The worst part is that I don’t think I actually had much deep-seeded confidence in what I to bring to the table for the relationship I so desperately wanted, so I was always just trying to be good enough and “hot” enough with no real sense of self. When I finally found someone with the same “need to be coupled up now and you seem acceptable enough” priorities as me, I settled down and eventually became exhausted with trying to be good enough and hot enough. This led to a few years of becoming an asexual being for the first time since puberty. Although I still cared about how I looked, it became more about my own enjoyment than that of other people. Part of realizing that I wasn’t “unfixably old” was realizing that I was still too young to be asexual forever. In my own mind, I became “hot” again, but now I was an adult, and my body was for me. My relationship with Frank has never been about performing or trying to be something that I am not for him, although I am thankful every day that he seems to appreciate what I have to offer in all of my forms.<br />
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Nevertheless, six years later I sometimes feel like I’m on the brink of “unfixably old” again. Despite everything I did to create life that is objectively better than the old one on all fronts, I still struggle with depression, binge eating, and just generally dealing with the weight of normal everyday life. Having a better job made me realize that I actually had talent, but that caused my forks given to exceed that talent (or at least others’ recognition of it) much too often in the last couple of years, because the <a href="http://trainingonaprayer.blogspot.com/2017/11/talent-over-forks.html" target="_blank">equation doesn’t just apply to cycling</a>. My crazy, head-spinning, butterflies-in-stomach Internet romance has evolved into a stable, long-term relationship where we love each other deeply, but living together as functioning adults has made our priorities a lot less exciting than they used to be. I gained all of the weight back and then some, and somewhere along the way, the lines around my eyes got a lot more noticeable, and no skincare product seems to turn the tide.<br />
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All of this has made me realize that no amount of fixing my life will ever be enough, and I need to work on being happy with my life however it is. I’m sure that I’d heard that at many times earlier in my life, but I guess I just needed to perform a really grand experiment to understand. Now I understand, although I still have a lot of work to do on actually putting it into practice. I’m still struggling to find the balance of putting an appropriate amount of effort into doing well at work and getting better at bikes without pushing myself to point that I’m resentful if the outcome doesn’t meet my expectations. At the same time I’m trying to reduce the amount of effort I put into chasing things, I’m trying to repurpose that effort into appreciating the good things in my life that I don’t want to change and giving them more attention.<br />
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This is why the imminent possibility of losing my boobs is especially, brutally, devastating for me right now. I feel as though I’ve only had a few years of having my body as my own, and I probably didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have during those few short years. I think it will be very hard for me to not feel asexual again if I lose them, and I feel like I’m still too young to go back into that hole.<br />
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Coincidentally, a few days before my diagnosis, I was listening to a Science VS podcast called “<a href="https://www.gimletmedia.com/science-vs/the-science-of-being-transgender" target="_blank">The Science of Being Transgender</a>”. I’ve pretty much always been of the opinion that consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want to each other or themselves, as long they aren’t hurting anyone who isn’t consenting or isn’t an adult. However, I could never fully wrap my head around the idea of feeling so out place in the body in which you were born that you want to surgically alter it, because surgery is universally scary and painful. I’ve just accepted that some people do feel that way, and that it has to feel more painful than the idea of surgery, so I want to do what I can to help them feel better and not worse about that. Anyway, the podcast said something about how all people have some inherent thing in their mind that tells them, “I am (blank)” and that for some people, the disconnect between that thing and their bodies causes them great distress. Although I will never fully understand that experience, a few days later when I had to face the idea of losing parts of my body that are so strongly connected to the thing in my head that says “I am a woman”, I could better imagine the equal and opposite reaction of someone feeling that something about their body is definitely not supposed to be there.<br />
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A lot of the Headspace meditations that I’ve done lately have included something to the effect of, “You are not your thoughts. You are not how you look. You are not what you do.” Part of learning to be happy in the life that I have might have to be the realization that I don’t have to feel asexual because I have lost my real breasts. If that is what has to happen, it will be the healthiest thing for me to work toward getting to that place. However, if six months or a year from now I seem fine, I don’t want the pain of what I’m going through, or what many other women will have to go through to be minimized, as I feel like it often is. I want to place that pain here, so that it can be preserved and remembered without my having to hold it in my heart.<br />
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Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7179951188120392834.post-58410431129346610702018-12-23T17:12:00.000-05:002018-12-23T18:19:25.491-05:00Same Boob, Different Story<i>Oh, a simple complication</i><br />
<i>Miscommunications lead to fall out</i><br />
<i>So many things that I wish I knew</i><br />
<i>So many walls up I can't break through</i><br />
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<i>Now I'm standing alone in a crowded room</i><br />
<i>And we're not speaking </i><br />
<i>And I'm dying to know</i><br />
<i>Am I killing you? Or are you killing me? Yeah</i><br />
<i>I don't know what to say since the twist of fate</i><br />
<i>When it all broke down and the story of us</i><br />
<i>Looks a lot like a tragedy now</i><br />
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It turns out that I can write Taylor Swift parodies about bikes, trails, dudes, races, and now, even my own body parts. I debated on even sharing the news about my breast surgery in November because it was so minor, and it turns out that it was basically a false alarm. There was a lot of miscommunication when my old doctor retired last December, and when I finally went to see his replacement a couple of months later than I was supposed to, she immediately wanted to do surgery based some year-old biopsy results that I’d been told were fine during my last conversation with my old doctor. I just sort of went along with it, she did the surgery, and they found nothing but healthy tissue and an old biopsy clip. At least I got some extra days off work, I guess.<br />
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This story wouldn’t even warrant telling except that a few days after the surgery I noticed a clearly discernible pea-size mass in my left breast which is just generally lumpy now due to all the scar tissue from the last lumpectomy and a couple of other subsequent needle biopsies. It’s had a rough couple of years. Unfortunately, this was something distinct from the normal generally lumpy feeling, and the concerning part was that it seemed to have suddenly popped up out of nowhere.<br />
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I went through yet another round of the mammogram, ultrasound, MRI, and needle biopsy, although the radiologist who did the biopsy wasn’t completely convinced that it wasn’t just a sebaceous cyst that she was going to inflame by poking at it. Everything seemed so routine that I didn’t even have a follow-up appointment with my surgeon, so when she called me on Wednesday morning to say I needed to make an appointment to get my pathology results, I knew it was a bad sign. However, I was expecting, “You need to have another lumpectomy” bad. Frank offered to come with me, but I knew I had to rush back to State College for a dentist appointment after and I really only expected the whole thing to take 15 minutes.<br />
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Unfortunately, she told me that the latest biopsy was DCIS, which I had a couple of years ago. At the time I opted to forgo the recommended radiation, because there was a good chance that the surgery had gotten rid of it, and it wouldn’t come back. Now that it did, she was encouraging me to get a mastectomy on the left side, or at the very least, get another lumpectomy plus radiation this time.<br />
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The thing about DCIS is that while it is technically cancer, it is non-invasive, and it there’s still some debate as to the general likelihood that it will ever be. Of course, I’m glad to not have “real cancer”. I don’t have to have chemo, and if I give in and consent to the mastectomy, no radiation. If I give in now, I can get a high-quality implant and keep my real nipple, albeit likely cold and numb for the rest of my life. I’m afraid of the recovery time and its effect on my next race season, but realistically it’s comparable to the collar bone break from which the bike injury gods have somehow spared me for 13 years, so maybe I’m just due for an ill-timed hiatus. What I can’t shake is the feeling of dread when I imagine spending the rest of my life looking down at the aesthetically acceptable but basically dead mass stuck to my chest and wondering if it was worth it.<br />
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“Cancer has a language problem--not just in the way we speak about it, as a war that drafts soldiers who never signed up for it, who do battle and win, or do battle and lose. There's also the problem of the word itself. A 57-year-old woman with low-grade DCIS that will almost certainly never become invasive hears the same word as the 34-year-old woman who has metastatic malignancies that will kill her. That's confusing to patients conditioned to treat every cancer diagnosis as an emergency, in a world that still reacts to cancer as though it's the beginning of the end and in a culture where we don't talk about death until we have to.” – <a href="http://time.com/4057310/breast-cancer-overtreatment/" target="_blank">Time Magazine Article</a><br />
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My biggest problem in relation to the quote above is that I am not a 57-year-old woman with DCIS; I am a 38-year-old woman with DCIS, so doctors don’t know WTF to do with me. Friends and acquaintances don’t know what do with me, because DCIS doesn’t fit into the “breast cancer” narrative in anyone’s head. For something that accounts for 25% of breast cancer diagnosis, I’ve yet to hear about anyone else with a story similar to mine (age, diagnosis, etc.), so it’s hard to know where to look for guidance. I’ve come across a handful stories of 30-something-year-old otherwise healthy cyclists who suddenly discover invasive cancer, accept their mastectomies like champs, and altogether embrace the “brave survivor” story that we love to hear about in others while we not-so-secretly fear it for ourselves.<br />
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I can’t see myself as a “brave survivor” right now, because I’m not even sure what it is that I’m supposed to be surviving. My life isn’t in danger right now; my future quality of life is, and all of the options seem equally bad in their own way. I realize that regardless of the diagnosis; invasive cancer, recurring DCIS, or BRCA positive; everyone who faces it probably goes through a similar stage of, “Why is this happening to me? I want this to not be happening to me.” Then you’re supposed to be brave and do what you have to do. People expect it. Except they aren’t the ones that have to live with it. That’s the part they never tell you.<br />
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I think this is the part of the post where I’m supposed to end on a positive note, but I’m nowhere near there yet. I’m still struggling to write my own story, which hopefully will be useful to someone else later. I think it’s important share a “cancer” narrative that doesn’t fit the mold, but that is brutal its own lonely way.<br />
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Lindsay Hall-Stechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05610922530479256952noreply@blogger.com0