Scratch Test Dummy

After spending the weekend sulking and feeling sorry for myself about my less than acceptable result at the Fire Hill Criterium I decided I needed to do something about it. First thing Monday morning I called the Oklahoma Allergy & Asthma Clinic and was hoping they would be able to get me in sometime within the next couple of weeks. As fate would have it, they just had just received a cancellation for 9:45 that morning and I was more than happy to fill it.

I spent the next four hours of my day undergoing asthma and allergy tests. For the first time, in probably my life, I was happy to spend some time with a doctor. I have known for the last two years that I have asthma but here lately it has been really bad. Probably due to the fact that my allergies have been worse than usual. I don't have any problems on just a normal day to day basis but any time I'm under exertion it's like someone is strangling me and I'm left gasping for air. It doesn't matter if it's jogging, climbing stairs, or riding my bike if it's a hard effort I'm at a loss and usually waiting several minutes to recover. This is not a good thing in a criterium race when a majority of the race is spent jumping, accelerating out of corners, and pretty much red lining the entire race. I knew at Fire Hill my race was over before we hit the hill the first time. For those of you who weren't at Fire Hill or know the course, there's about a 200 meter straight to a sharp right hand turn up a hill, so in those short 200 m's I was toast. The jump off the line left me "breathless" so to speak. It didn't matter how hard I tried I couldn't get my breathing under control. It sucked. I don't think I have felt more disappointed in myself in a race than that day. I spent the whole drive home thinking and being pissed off at everyone. I hate failure, failure at anything not just on a bike. I love racing but for the rest of Saturday and some of Sunday I really considered just giving it all up and forgetting about it. If I was going to have to race with a limitation like this, it wasn't worth it to me. I'm not going to race and just hope to finish, I'm racing with the hope of winning or helping one of my teammates win. I wasn't even able to help them in that race, they did excellent and I wish I was part of that.

Then, I guess I don't know what happened but I stopped looking at it in such a bad way and started thinking maybe I could fix this. Maybe if I went to a specialist who knew what I was talking about something could be done. I started feeling motivated again, this is just something new to overcome. This is like it's own race. So, Monday morning at 8 a.m. I dialed up the Clinic and BAM they had an opening for me. Call me crazy, but I think God wants me to race my bike. Maybe it was just luck or coincidence or maybe it was someone saying, "don't give up on yourself just yet."

I'm pretty behind in my posting, so stay tuned. I've got some great pics of Addi's birthday, our trip to the zoo and a post I've been meaning to write for the last month about some great things that have happened in my life.