Childhood memories are pretty few and far between in my brain. I wasn't happy as the youngest of six in a strict catholic family. I loved my bike, but was forbidden to ride it outside of my yard. I was a complete spaz around every type of ball - they always ended up hitting my smack in the eye and knocking me down. I could run pretty fast, but couldn't kick a ball (or hit it with a bat or whatever) to save my life.

Learned to swim at a young age, but only from family. Feel confident that I could swim a long time and a pretty long way, but I am not fast and have no form.

I could balance well, always liked it when we had gymnastics in PE and I could play on the balance beem. Discovered this at far too advanced an age to start in gymnastics club, even if my parents would have allowed me to, which they wouldn't.

The family started downhill skiing when I was 7. I loved going fast, had crazy form, looked like a spaz, but liked the thrill. Hated the family trip to a fancy hill that year, as, again, I was forbidden to use the chair lift or even the t-bar and had to stay on the bunny hill with tow rope on my own, which quickly got boring.

We had gymnastics rings in our basement. I used to love playing around with those.

As I think about it, my athletic history, like so many of the things I do in my life, is staccato. Short bursts of thing that I did, never mastered anything, never really had physical goals.

In high school when PE rugby sessions started, they made the girls do something else, and, even though I asked, they wouldn't let me play. I really wanted to learn to tackle people!! Of course, I never would have been able to catch or throw the ball, so I guess it makes sense.

When it came to the bike, I got on a mountain bike first. I really instantly loved being out in the woods and found that everything to learn was kind of overwhelming, but if any neural transmitters were really activated when I was a kid, it was the ones that let me learn complicated things. So I liked all the complex rules to learn for bike handling. It did not come naturally at all, but I just would talk to myself about all the things I'd read, been told, learned from experience, to get myself around that tough bit, up that hill, through that root section. It took me years to be reasonably good. I finally got fast enough to be between the fast and the medium fast guys on a regular basis. That was soooo sweet! I really felt I'd earned it. And I would be so surprised that, after I learned how to fuel right, and what to drink, etc, that I could be well into a 3 hour ride or more, and still have some left! That was such a wonderful discovery!

I found road riding scarier, so it seemed harder. I think I had some pretty high expectations of myself by the time I started on it. If I was doing high end mountain biking by then, shouldn't I be a really good road rider right away? Well, not exactly. It took ages to figure out how to grab a water bottle while moving. I still have trouble with knowing the right gear to be in, fear of those tiny little wheels and tires tipping over, fear of cars, etc etc.

Funny, I took quite quickly to kickboxing. I was just suggesting to DH that I might have formed a few neural thingies when I was squirming to get away from all those older siblings.

Yes, I have issues about my childhood too.

Of course, when I turned 30 I decided that I would get younger from then. It has mostly worked.

Now that I'm 39, I've been recently diagnosed with Crohn's disease. The fatigue that came from the disease last year kept me off my bike and not doing anything except gentle yoga and walking to work, from July through to January....now I'm working on regaining fitness and trying to determine what my strenuous exercise tolerance is, and what recovery time I'll need. Yet another complicated thing to work out, so I think I'll get there! If it isn't complicated it's not worth the effort.

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~