My head is in a whacked out place and I want to write about it.

I got this really cool email from another blogger I consider a friend. It was about that syndicated post below that was chosen to be on BlogHer. The one where I spilled my guts. Emails like this are the reason I keep blogging.

"What I find inspiring about you is that you fight for your sobriety.

You fight to not go back to that dark place. You never give up, even when you stumble. You know what's out there, and you own it."

I also got a comment from a local person who knows me and is too pussy-ass to say something to my face. (I am pretty sure I know who you are Steddyst8!)

"I guess this explains your performance and behavior at the races this year. Mystery solved.

Sorry not to be as accepting as everybody else but if you call a doctor on a Sunday for an emergency prescription he/she probably doesn't have access to all of their patient records. You should mention any allergies or addictions."

Here is another nasty comment from someone I don't know. We went back and forth a bit and I was rude to her. Defense mechanism.

"...coming from an adult child of an alcoholic drug addict mom, I always felt that she never took responsibilty for her actions, and I think you have a problem with that too. It seems you want to blame the dr. when you knew that you should not have the codine you took it anyway. You are having money problems, buy buy a bike. It's always everyone else. You are a spoiled little brat that really needs to start and take a long hard look at yourself. Steeling pain meds from your mom, you should be ashamed of yourself."

BIG SIGH.

I want to shut this blog down somedays. Just be done with it. I just need to get out of defense mode for a second and think.

Here it is.

I don't blame the doctor's.
I don't blame the pharmacies.
I blame me.

I take full responsibility for my actions. I am addict. I will always be an addict. I fight this urge everyday of my life, every second of my life. My life is on the line. Don't you see? People die everyday from this disease of addiction. I know where I came from and believe me, I do not want to go back. I fought long and hard for what I have now, which isn't much, but it's mine.

If the Steddyst8's and anonymous "Karen"'s want to come here and leave harsh comments, so be it. I put it all out there for you, have at it.

BlogHer

I have a syndicated post on BlogHer. Check it out.

Still coughing.

And it's making me race like shit.

I raced last weekend in the Kentucky State Championships. It was my kind of course, except for it being brutally long. There was a barrier run up, some big hills to climb, and the sand pit I could actually ride through because it was only like 6ft long and all wet. The barriers were really short too.



I should have done well. I sucked.

I could blame it on a variety of things. A bad start, a clusterfuck of girls I had never seen before, and none of them knew how to ride in a close pack very fast. My cough set in during lap 3. I even fell once too. The actuality is - I just didn't have it in my lungs to make them hurt anymore.

I crossed the finish line coughing. I've been coughing on and off ever since the race.

The next test is Nov. 30th. My PCP called. She said my breathing function is "extraordinary" and that I don't have anything crazy like emphysema. Chest x rays are clear. No wheezing. Only coughing.

And it's all exercise induced.

I am racing one more CX race this weekend (the Ohio Cyclocross State Championships!) and then I am done for the season. I will have raced nine cyclocross races in the last two months. My lungs need to heal. I am ready for some long endurance miles this winter.

Speaking of endurance.

Mine is all gone. I have none. I don't know how it's come to this. I miss going for really long rides. And I am not talking about 3 hours. I am talking about those 6 hour century rides. I remember Amanda and I doing one this time last year just for the fuck of it. I am too tired from racing just about every weekend to do any more than the minimum Coach OB assigns.

I have been thinking about my "BIG" race for 2011 and have decided to do the Mohican 100m mountain bike race. It's June 4th. I am so happy! I am even more stoked about my new frame from Voodoo. It's a 29'er. Dominic is going to build it up and we will save $$ because Dominic can lace wheels (Ron! are you reading this?)!

I won't have the cash to have it completed until February but it's something to look forward to this winter.





My friend Debbie Baker takes the most intense CX pictures I have ever seen. She gets those hideous CX expressions close up. I love them. Debbie is the only girl I know who used to race BMX. She's got no fear on a bike and is doing the Mohican 100m with me this year. Here are a couple shots she got of me from last weekend.







Have a nice Thanksgiving everyone.

I went out on a Friday night.

Last night was the Howl at the Moon ride. I took off work for it. Priorities, people!

I don't ride at night, mostly because I work nights. I had my new lights we scored at Interbike from the guys at Fibre Flare. Neato lights.

A whole bunch of people, not sure how many, I heard 80+ riders from Jeni, showed up for the ride. Everyone met up at Reser, an LBS nearby that a couple of my friends race for.

We headed out on a casual ride around Newport, across the Purple People bridge, blinky lights flashing like crazy. We rode downtown, around OTR, came back uptown, across a really fucked up bridge that terrified the shit out of me, and I had to get off my bike. Christa walked across it with me. A few guys hung back with us. We caught back up with the group at a bookshop where they had cider and doughnuts lined up for us. One dude rode without a shirt on, on a dare. (I need that video Debbie!)

Then we headed back to Newport, and me, Amanda and Jeni sprinted for the finish.

Psych. We did kinna sprint though.


Photos by Debbie.


After the ride, we all went back to the shop. Jason Reser, the owner, had kegs of beer, hot chocolate, cheese, fruit, crackers, and everyone drank a whole bunch of alcohol.

Except me and Christa. Which was cool. For some reason, I like seeing my bike friends drunk. Cuz then we can talk shit to each other about racing.



Amanda and John after a few beers (John is my back up mechanic, he rocks).



It felt good to go out and ride chill, laugh, have fun, on a Friday night.

Good times, good times.
More coming.

Getting this off my chest once and for all.

I really have a shitload I want to unload here, it's just hard. You know, how much to share, that sort of thing.

Here it goes. I don't give a fuck anymore. This is more for me than it is for you.

I've been struggling with some prescription medications for the last year. I guess it started when my Mom had her back surgery last year. I stole a couple of her pain pills, and that was it. I was on a roll.

My own PCP knows all about my past, but she totally thought I had my shit together and she gave it no thought when I asked for Vicodin. I just told her I had some back pain. Later, last winter, she gave me cough meds with codeine when I was sick.

I was also taking a non-narcotic pain pill called Tramadol. Even though it is a non-narcotic medication, it works in the same way opiates work, latching onto my opiate receptors, giving me a slight buzz that I definitely liked. This is a pill I don't need to have anything to do with EVER again in this lifetime. They made me insane.

But I kept taking them because, hey, they are NON narcotic ya know and my PCP gave them to me whenever I wanted.

Everything came to a head at the end of July. I told Dominic everything. My emotions were all over the place. I was wrecking friendships and lashing out at people I loved. I was on my way to bigger and better drugs and I knew that if it didn't stop like rightfuckingnow, I could be back to sticking needles in my arm.

I am not stupid. I saw it in NA and AA all the fucking time. People with 10+ years clean, and all of the sudden they are back on the street, back on dope. I went back to a few meetings, talked to people, got myself under control, and told my PCP to never, ever give me any Tramadol or Vicodin ever again. I made an actual appointment with her just to tell her face to face: DO NOT GIVE ME NARCOTICS.

I've been doing just fine up until two weeks ago. The CX cough I was experiencing after my race was out of hand. I couldn't stop coughing. I couldn't talk, we left the race early, my inhaler wasn't working and neither was the OTC cough stuff. It was a Sunday, so the on-call Doc called me in some cough medicine to help suppress the cough.

When I picked up the bottle I was shocked to see that the medicine had codeine in it. They should know from the computer system NOT to give me narcotics. But did you think I was going to hand them back the bottle and say "no thanks" ?

Fuck no. Shit, my dog just died anyways.

I took the rx'ed amount and ended up wasted. High as a mother fucking kite.

And taking opiates of any sort will throw me into a tailspin of obsessing about how and when I can get more.

The last couple weeks have been a struggle. I am still coughing. I've had one breathing function test, only to learn that they will have to do a second breathing function test at the end of the month. I skipped last weekend's CX race but I am still coughing on and off. Regular workouts don't really make me cough, it's just those anaerobic efforts that a CX race is all about.

So there ya have it.

Am I embarrassed? You bet.
Am I ashamed? Hell yes.

But it happened.

There's nothing I can do about it now but try to make sure it doesn't happen again.

The expressions from CX racing are hideous....

Gun CX Pictures from Jeff Jakucyk

Stuck in 4th

Gun Club CX was the hardest race I did last year. I remember how muddy it was, impossible to ride so much of the course. Much running was involved. It was my 1st 4th place and I did it on a singlespeed. I was SO proud of myself!

Yesterday's race was DRY and cold. The morning dew was frozen when we arrived which made everything slick.

The mountain bike racer girls I lined up with were happy. The course was technical.

Staci, the guy doing the story, was there filming. At the start line, I was busy making funny faces to the camera when the gun went off and my foot slipped and I fucked up my own start.

We headed up on a false flat, going into the woods around a few switchbacks and back down a long flat, right into a ride-able sandpit (even for me!), a 180 into another sandpit and then another 180 around some off camber crazy shit. One turn I couldn't make, of course this happened to be right where all the spectators were, and I had to get off my bike to get around the turn. Then there was a little bit of an uphill into the barriers, which made me just walk over them, and then down a hill, up another hill with a barrier, and then into the woods again. More crazy turns, over a rickety old bridge (fun!), a creek crossing, and then a really steep, long, muddy run up, a downhill into some fun turns, and then back out of the woods where the cheering was.

That course whipped my ass! 30 minutes of allballsout.

Me and my friend Jeni, who was at Interbike with us, rode together the 2nd lap, passed each other back and forth a couple times and then she caught me on the downhill flat, I let her go, then caught up to her going into the sandpit, which we both rode through, and then she looked back at me and stopped. I endo'd, right over the bars. Jeni yells out "sorry" and rode away. That was the last I saw of her and we were on the last lap.

She got 2nd.

I got 4th.

Out of seven CX races I have done in the last 6 weeks, I have gotten 4th place in FOUR of them. These are the local, smaller races, with maybe 20-25 3/4 women, 10+ in the 35+ category. In the big UCI events I am lucky to get in the top 30.

My chest burns so bad and I cough during the race. That's what gives out. My legs can do the work, but my lungs are fucking me.

The coughing continues after each race for a good 48 hours. My chest and rib cage are so sore. I puked both last week and this week after racing, just from coughing so hard. My PCP set up some kind of breathing function test for next week.

Perfect shot of me coughing during last week's race.
Photo by Debbie.


Thanks so much for all of your kind comments regarding the loss of Lucy. We got her ashes back on Friday. Her urn sits up on the shelf in between Bruno's and Cheeko's urns. It's still kind of unreal.

I wanna get fucked up.

I want to get like, over the top, wasted and out of control. I don't want to feel this. Dominic took all the money, both sets of keys and my purse with him to work today. I don't do heartache well at all. Physical pain I can handle, but heartache and emotional loss, not so much.

Mornings suck horribly bad. I miss her the most during our walks because she was always right by my side, no matter if she was on leash or off.

2007, at a rescue event.


It feels weird walking just two dogs. The boys run off in the woods and leave me standing there alone, screaming for them over and over. Lucy always stayed with me. Tomorrow I am going to start running with them. I never could run with three dogs. Maybe that will help this heartache.

Sorry for the sad post. It just really sucks around here right now.

RIP Lucy 9/9/00 - 11/1/10

I lost my Lucy this morning. She just fell over after she ate breakfast. I screamed for Dominic to get up and help me, and she died right there in his arms.

She just turned 10 last month. I think it was a heart attack. 65% of every Doberman will die of cardiomyopathy.

I adopted Lucy on 7/4/04. She was almost 4 years old at the time. I was volunteering for a Dobe rescue every weekend, scrubbing kennels and walking dogs. She was so freaked out when she came in to rescue. So scared.

She picked me. I didn't pick her. I didn't want two dogs. I had my hands full with Cheeko, my first Dobe. The two of them got along so well, and she didn't want anything to do with anyone else. Lots of families came out to meet her, but she'd stubbornly run away in the yard.

We had a big adjustment when she came home, but she settled in and was the most loyal dog I have ever had. Lucy followed me from room to room. She never took her eyes off of me, sometimes she'd stare so hard I felt like she was looking into my soul. She slept with one eye open. There's a dog bed in my office just for her. She never left my side in the woods (well 99% of the time). She didn't even want to go for a walk without me. When Dominic took them, she'd try to run back in the house to me.

I don't know what I am going to do without my fierce and loyal protector, Lucy-Lu.

2006


Queen of the couch


Therapy Dog Reading Program at the library, 2006-07


She was so beautiful.


Running on the beach