"Backing" out

This weekend is the Bike MS, a 175 mile, 2 day bike through the country roads of Illinois. Last year I started the YMCA team and in our first year had 40 team members and raised $20,000.00 for the MS Association.

This year was no different, I began recruiting team members the day after the ride last year and was looking forward to being the captain of a now experienced team. My cycling training wasn't as rigorous this year, mostly because of the amount of time I was spending running. But with teaching spinning classes each week and riding my bike 4-5 times per week, I was confident that my endurance training would take me through most of the ride.

A few weeks ago I organized a 40 mile training ride for my team. I felt my back start to stiffen up during the ride, but thought little of it as my back bothers me 80% of the time regardless of what I'm doing.

When I got home from the ride the cramping started to worsen, and I felt severe pain in my back. I did what I usually do - take some medicine and laid off of it for the rest of the day. The next few days I took my workouts down a notch and thought that it would just be a few days of pain, as usual.

It never really went away completely, but again, that's been pretty standard for me. Last night after playing beach volleyball, I came home and the pain slowly got worse and worse. To the point that I couldn't stand or sit, and even rolling over in my bed was excruciating. I took some medicine again and went to sleep for the night. It was a horrible night, I couldn't even toss and turn because the pain was too severe.

I knew that there was no way that in 24 hours I could set out to accomplish my 100 mile bike ride. I called in sick to work, and slept for another 4 hours. When I finally got out of bed this morning around 11:00am, I felt much better than last night, but still stiff. I walked to Walgreens, spent $50 on ice packs, muscle creams and hot pads and officially decided not to ride.

I'm still planning on heading to Dekalb for the race. I am the captain, and I am so proud of my team for their training, fundraising, and team camaraderie. I'm not even going to take my bike with me, for the fear of temptation of "just trying" to ride 35 miles or so. If anything makes this pain worse I'll be incredibly upset with myself. So instead, I'm swallowing my pride and listening to my body - reluctantly and with a sad heart.