During a bike race or a group
ride, you’re sitting comfortably in the pack.
The pace is not easy, but you seem to have managed to hide enough from
the wind, following the best wheels to make it seem that way. You struggle a tad up the hills, but when the
road levels out again, you’re able to recover and maintain contact with the
pack. The illusion created makes
you feel like you can keep this up for the entire duration of the ride or race. The level of suffering is bearable and almost
seems normal after a while. The legs
seem to spin the pedals automatically until they suddenly don’t. You try to concentrate harder on the task at
hand, you dig deeper to try to hang on, but deep down you know your time has
come. You’ve been dropped. You look up to see the rest of the pack ride
away. They’re not attacking, the pace
hasn’t changed, it’s simply your legs that have reached their limit. You’re done.
I mean, you can still ride, just much slower now. If you’re a cyclist, you know the
feeling. Complete exhaustion. You try to eat or take a drink of water to
turn things around, but the feeling can’t be fixed. The only thing to do is finish the ride or race at
your own crawling pace.
After our Type 1 odometer
rolled over the 10 year mark last fall, that’s basically how I have been
feeling. In this Type 1 game race, I’ve
been dropped. The energy and enthusiasm
that I once put into Type 1 awareness and fundraising just doesn’t seem to be
there anymore. The effort turned out to
be unsustainable after a while. I really
don’t like it, but it’s still how it is.
In the end, the legs (or body) have the final say in getting dropped
even when the mind is still committed to hanging on.
So that’s where we’re at. I understand that we still mostly don’t
really know what we’re doing even if by now we know exactly what we need to
do. We have also learned that textbook
Type 1 math is always a simplified version of it’s practical application. The goal is always independence. Adolescence, a first step towards this goal
has given us more breathing room, but also more time and things to worry about.
Type 1 gaming is so much more
than needles and numbers. The
psychological aspect of Type 1 gaming is likely the biggest part even if it is
sadly the most overlooked.
On Saturday, September 7th, I will again be riding my bike 200 kms during the 6th annual Mike's Bike Shop Cyclebetes Ride to Cure Type 1 Diabetes. If you can, please help us reach our goal of $20,000 raised for Juvenile or Type 1 Diabetes research by clicking the Support me! button on the page below and making a pledge.http://jdrfca.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=199481
Thank you
No comments:
Post a Comment