If my semester could be summed up in one word it would be Supernova. Which the way Molly and I use it is we burn so bright and then explode.

After the Birkie I switched back to training for biking. I was planning on doing marathon nationals in May and needed to start building my base. I won an entry into the TommyKnocker 10 in southern New Mexico and rerouted my spring break flight to Phoenix. With a week to go until the 10 hour race something in my mind clicked and I realized that racing my bike for 10 hours would amount to 80-100 miles of riding—and I had been on my bike for 12 days at that point. I still had my flight to Phoenix and switched to the Cactus Cup, which had 3 days of racing: shorttrack, cross-country, and enduro. I supernova-ed so hard. The race started and I burned so bright and then exploded. To save you the mundane details I’ll summarize: my bike got lost in shipping, I tracked down a rental for short track, showed up with what I thought was 11 minutes to spare, turns out I was 20 minutes too late so they started me in the group after; got the hole shot and immediately faded to the back (everyone went by me as if I was pedaling backwards), my time is reflected of my initial starting position so something like 56 minutes (for a 20 minute circuit); I tracked down my bike and picked it up from a fedex warehouse at 11pm; assembled it as best I could, got to the race early and Sully put on my brake rotors (because I didn’t travel with the tool);

I started the cross country race and got into a groove after the first 10 minutes; I started to move up in position and approached maybe the one long hill on course and downshifted my chain behind my cassette, had to hop off, fish it out, got it back on the cassette, spun the pedals around, immediately threw it back behind the cassette because I forgot to shift it out of that placement, fished it out again, looked around me and realized that everyone was gone. Got back on my bike and pedaled the remaining 36 miles being mindful to not shift it down too easy. I debated doing the last day of racing with the enduro but figured I would cut my loses, and caught a ride with Sully to Sedona.

Not great for the first race of the season but also not terrible for not planning on racing till April. I planned on doing a few crits throughout April but it seemed that between the weather and my workload it never lined up that I felt like I could get to one. I still had it in my mind that I was going to do nationals, and it would have been similar to last semester where I finish finals and immediately turn around and race my bike–but I did it last semester so can do it again, right?

My plans started to change mid-April. It’s the 100^th anniversary of the Grand Canyon (still so impressed it only took 100 years to create-ha) and really wanted to make it down there at some point. Sully had been training for a 25 mile trail race and there was one weekend at the end of April that he would be in Sedona and I could leave to meet him and do a big run/hike down to Phantom Ranch with the plan to make it to Ribbon Falls because the bridge was washed out the last time we went. At that point committing to the Grand Canyon scrapped my thoughts of marathon nationals. Even if we didn’t run the whole thing, I didn’t think my legs and mental stamina would be ready to race 60 miles three weeks later. I would rather get to The Canyon anyway. Unfortunately, the weekend before our trip Sully’s grandmother passed away and there was no way he was going to make it back to go to The Canyon, rightfully so. I thought about going by myself but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it. I had been battling some inner demons the week before Sully called me. One of the girls I used to coach in the summer league was out hiking in Arkansas and lost her footing, fell off a rock outcrop, and passed away (If you want to read about her, this is a great write-up). The most freak accident ever, she wasn’t near the edge but stepped down and rolled her ankle, lost her balance and went over. It seemed like my whole town went into mourning for this beautiful life that was cut short with no rational explanation. I think anytime something like that happens it ultimately leads people (me) to reflect on their (my) life, how many times you (I) could have misstep, or the adventures you (I) take for granted, or the fact that you (I) hit your (my) head just right to make a full recovery. I talked to Molly a lot that week about the life that we choose to pursue and the risks that come with it. I even called my best friend who is a child psychologist to get coping mechanisms for when I went to The Canyon. It was very unfortunate that Sully’s grandma passed away but it made it easier to pull the plug without thinking twice.

I then thought of meeting my friends May 4th for a ski day but didn’t think I could take the time to travel and a day out to have fun while being in the midst of final prep. So then I thought again about doing marathon nationals but at that point, it seemed that the logistics for marathon nationals was too much to orchestrate. My race bike was in Boulder, I was in Indiana, and the race was in Texas. Figuring out the logistics while about to go into finals seemed more than I could mentally handle and instead bought a ticket to Denver to go ride for a week before graduation. The last few weeks of law school were pretty rough. I joke about how I spent the first two months of law school crying and I think I ended a similar way. When I pulled the plug on nationals and the canyon it created this inner dialogue that all the sacrifices that I had made for racing were now moot. But also if I wasn’t racing how do I define myself, am I still an athlete, or am I just now a law student. One of my friends is a nutritionist and actually posed this question to me a few weeks before all this happened. I said yes but also sometimes I don’t know.

 I arrived in CO Thursday with one paper left to submit. I finished formatting it, attached a table of contents and with it submitted had turned in 194 pages of written work over seven days. Okay so maybe that’s why I was constantly in a state of feeling turned inside out. I was able to get on my cross and mountain bike over the seven days and it was amazing. Saturday I crewed for Sully at his 25 mile trail race which made me realize I never want to do one—it looked pretty miserable. Sunday he shuttled me to a trail and rode part of it with the plan that I would attach a few more trails and then ride back to town.

I carried on without him and about 20 minutes into my solo ride kicked a rock up and into my rear derailleur. It threw the shifting off and after battling it for 10 minutes realized it was a lost cause, sent Sully a text to please me meet at the next trail head to pick me up and then hiked my way to the top of the hill. Fortunately at that point the rest of the trail was mostly down hill so lowered my seat and used my feet to gain enough momentum to carry myself the two miles down to the trail head. I had twisted the derailleur and needed to get a new one. I was able to ride with a few friends but did a 6 hour solo day while the bike was getting fixed. I put my phone was on airplane mode and my garmin died after 3 hours which was amazing.

Being disconnected from the world helped a lot. I feel like I have gotten to the end of law school and have so much left unfinished– there are a few papers that I’m still trying to push out for publishing and honestly thought I would have one out by the time I graduated, I also felt like I had sacrificed a lot of my mental health and happiness in favor of grades this semester –and when I got to the end and was only left with grades I wasn’t sure it was worth it.

The weekend of graduation brought waves of emotion that were the size of the ocean. It was a bittersweet day, I was happy to have completed and gotten though but it was punctuated with a loss of a beloved professor and compounded with leaving academia after four years and uncertainty about the future.

I knew that last semester was going to set me up for this, what other possibility was there when I raced five national championships with law school. So I’ve failed when I’ve only gotten good grades and competed in zero national races. I know writing this out sounds so absurd. I think I have a lot of fear moving forward because I don’t feel like I’m done wanting to race but I feel like right now I’m having to prioritize other things. I’ve talked about it before but the personal sacrifices that go into racing have always been worth it, but when I’m not racing and it still feels like I’m sacrificing is it worth it? It all comes back to peaks and valleys. Sometimes you ride the high, sometimes you ride the low and you just hope that the peaks last longer than the valleys, just like in races. Sometimes it just requires a bit of shifting gears. The nice thing about the cycling community is that it’s small and plenty of people have felt similar to me so when I reach out they are there to remind me that racing will always be there and it’s okay to take a step back with a different approach–but still working on it.