"I'm not an athlete," I just road my bike 200 miles.

As I mentioned in my last note to you all, which I scheduled for the day after this event, I participated in the STP. This annual 206-mile bike ride from Seattle to Portland, which takes place over a weekend in July, has intimidated me since I moved to Seattle in 2006. I wasn't ever a serious cyclist - I always thought of myself as more of a swimmer--not that I thought of myself as an athlete at all.

I decided to do STP a year ago. I hired a coach, and trained for almost a year, six months specifically for cycling long distances. But I'm not an athlete. I trained increasingly long distances starting in March through the end of June, completing my first century ride on June 23rd. But I'm not an athlete. I went to the gym on days I didn't ride, studying weight-lifting optimization, nutrition, and sleep (and working hard on all three) for months. But I'm not an athlete.

I'm just a woman who is terrified of becoming frail and helpless If I get to be old because I don't know that there will be anyone willing to take care of me due to an especially persistent symptom of Oldest Child Syndrome: if I don't do it, it won't get done. I'm just a late 30-something seeing and feeling the signs of aging (and possibly the degeneration of EDS) "too soon" who's been motivated more by fear than anything else her entire life and doesn't know how to rest. I'm just a not-super-young-anymore girl who struggles to name any accomplishments in life so always needs to have 187 full, spinning plates at all times to feel like I'm worth the space and air and time and resources I take up on the planet (though, to be fair to myself, part of that gnawing existential guilt is due to the unethical storytelling of the environmental movement, of which I was a card-carrying member of for long enough to have psychological trauma I'm still neuro-plasticizing my way out of). I'm just an Aspie (I know we're supposed to think that word is offensive now, but the SJWs didn't ask those of us with the "lived experience" they claim to champion and "center" so much what we prefer, actually) with an increasingly difficult time focusing and prioritizing the thing I claim is my raison d'etre because that (aka writing) is the thing I'm actually intimidated by. I did not decide to do the STP because I'm an athlete.

I'm not an athlete. I was the slowest at any sport I tried, even ones I was good at. I was afraid of the ball so that knocked out a whole bunch of sports to me. Even after completing 206 miles on a bike in 22.5 hours total (not consecutive) riding time in 90-degree heat three hours ahead of my estimated finish time? What will it take to change my mind?