Outdoor Mindset 8/23/23 Outdoor Mindset 8/23/23

Adventure Blog Entry #2

Wednesday Aug 16th, 2023

One more sleep until my flight. Flying with a wheelchair and an adaptive bike is a lot of work. The bike has had a tune up, the battery was shipped last week and has been received in Colorado. I have a friend bringing a backup battery for me to use. The course I'm doing at SBTgrvl is 37 miles. My battery is a small one so it will last approx 18ish miles. I've sorted out a rough plan on swapping on course which involves a race volunteer shuttling it to one of the aid stations. There are so many moving parts. I've also had to consider where to keep my wheelchair while I'm out on course. Also, since I can't stand and walk I have no way to get off my bike to use a porta potty so.....I will have to just find a spot and pull over to catheterize. It's not easy to do off the side of a bike but I've practiced on a couple other mountain adventures so I am ready for it. I've enlisted some help from the famjam, who have run up and down stairs for me, photocopied my accessible parking pass, helped to get my travel wheelchair ready (including changing tires and adjusting brakes).

The bike is locked and loaded, suitcase is almost there, and a friend is picking me up at 4:30am to leave for the airport. Airports with wheelchairs can be tolerable or awful, I'd say my experiences have been 50/50.

Breathe.....I'm excited to meet my teammates and won't be alone in both stoke and nerves. There are 20 riders from all over the US and a couple of us Canadians.

4 sleeps til race day.

@bionic_heart_roller

I'm Jen (she/her), 44y/o mom of 3 (1 neurodiverse teen, 1 broody teenager, and a chatty hilarious 9yr old). My partner and I have been together since high school and we live near Toronto, Ontario. In the daytime when I'm acting mostly like a grown up, I work as a Doctor of Audiology in private practice.

Adventure Blog Entry #1

Episode #4590 of late night/ accidental race signups: I love to sign up for races, especially ones that seem impossible. I also have a habit of doing this after a major surgery or medical event and can say I have lived a life filled with medical drama and have lived well past my expiry date. Races and events give me a goal to work toward in recovery.

I signed up a team of 12 for a Ragnar Relay from a bed after having a hysterectomy in 2016. Luckily, I easily found 11 others willing to have type 2 fun with me. In the fall of 2017 after open heart surgery, I decided I would attempt a 50km trail ultra the following summer. It was the first 50km I completed, and it was an incredible hallucination/fatigue inducing, snack munching, overnight tromp through the woods. I finished!!!!!

Trail running/crawling/hiking/suffering as well as crewing for other people had become apart of my identity. Every weekend was spent outdoors for hours, often having my partner and kids show up with snacks or stoke to keep me moving forward. On an otherwise non-adventurous day in June of 2021, I sustained a spinal cord injury and that brought my trail running days to an abrupt early retirement. In the early days afterward, I naively thought I'd be back walking/running; maybe it would take a lot of rehabs but nothing can stop me.

It did stop me, albeit temporary. Fast forward two years later I have been learning how to get back into adaptive sports, specifically adaptive mountain biking, or aMTB for short. I stumbled across the Outdoor Mindset group online and e-met an ambassador who is local to me. After a few months chatting occasionally about the local trails, my new trail guide and AB (able-bodied) support rider, Peter and I met up at the Hydrocut, a local legend of a trail network. I decided I would sign up for another seemingly impossible event-the SBT grvl race in Steamboat Springs, CO in August of 2023 and I applied for an OM Scholarship to help fund this adventure. Months of planning went into this event, including becoming part of the 2023 All Bodies on Bikes Team cohort to be supported by ABOB co-founder Marley Blonsky. Now, the countdown is on with just over a month to go. Shit's about to get real.

@bionic_heart_roller