Accident Recovery Day 26 – New Goals

Saturday, and Day 26 post-bike accident.

The half cast for my pinky will stay on for at least another three weeks but my ortho doc wants me to take it off a few times a day and do hand exercises. Without the cast I can type a little bit faster, and therefore, I am able to write this post, finally.

Race Schedule Update

Due to the injury I was able to roll my Mountain Man Long Course race to next August. It’s going to be a long road to get back on a bike.

I’ve been thinking of new goals and trying new things. I have some exciting activities planned for this new lifestyle: 

I am a travelling, endurance athlete-writer.

1 – A Marathon In Every State

I love to travel. I want to see and do everything. I also want to visit friends and family along the way. I want to run in the places where friends can show me their world, their place!

Since I’m taking a break from biking and racing triathlon, I want to run. I want to trail run and I want to road run.

My new goal: I will finish a marathon distance or longer in every state by 12/31/2019.

I have already finished a marathon in Colorado and Arizona. I’m not counting the marathons completed as part of an Ironman; the race must be a standalone marathon or ultra distance running race.

2014
I am registered for the Duke City Marathon in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the Hoover Dam Marathon in Nevada. In Nevada I will hang out with my friend Meghan who lives in Las Vegas. I'm trying to convince her to run one of the races! Just do it! 

2015
I plan to sign up for the Mississippi Blues Marathon in Jackson, MS in January. This location was decided because I get to see my friend Rich. He has visited me in every state I’ve lived in since moving from New Hampshire. He lives just outside of Jackson now and I can’t wait to see him and take a tour of his southern place. Rich says he will run the quarter marathon! It's going to be an awesome week in Jackson.

I plan to run the Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach, California in February since I have yet to see the California seacoast.

I will finish a few marathons before signing up for more in 2015.

Pinterest - Follow My Journey on Pinterest

2 – Yoga, Pilates, and Spin classes

I have been training and racing triathlon for 10 years. This lifestyle didn’t leave any time or energy for group, indoor activity. In May I started weekly Yoga and Pilates classes at the Northwest YMCA at the urging of my friend, Libby. I was pleasantly surprised how much I loved the classes and instructors. Now, these classes have become part of my new lifestyle post-injury/crash. I've convinced my friend Kassandra to come to the weekly Power Yoga class and she has added it to her weekly training plan. She is training for her first Marathon - Tucson Marathon in December. (woot!) I also attended my first spin class since moving to Tucson last week and really liked it, too. I never thought I’d need a spin class since I always thought I’d be biking outside in Tucson.

Adapt – Change – Discover

Book Review: Unless It Moves the Human Heart

Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing by Roger Rosenblatt.


I bought this book because I remember riding in an elevator with a woman who just discussed the book during a panel at AWP Conference in Washington DC. She had the book in her hand and was telling someone that the book made her cry because what it taught her was so important. I asked her what the name of the book was and she showed me the cover. A book that moved a woman to tears - I needed to know more. I bought the book a month later and just finished reading it today.

Rosenblatt’s chapters are from his writing class in New York. The best part was the end. I got a bit tired of reading all the dialogue during each chapter, but he did captured my attention on page 10 when he said the writing life practically guarantees writers “rejection, poverty, and failure.” I read and hear this over and over again, yet something continues to draw me to a writer’s life.

In this first section he tells us that he looks at his students and “can’t help but think that something deliberate and stubborn lies behind their decision to make artists of themselves.” (11) Stubborn-ness, a quality I have.

He says, “Writing is the cure for the disease of living.”

This book reminds me that writers have a story to tell and sometimes these stories assign blame and some attempt to explain things the writer can’t really explain. I like this idea and it makes me think of my novel-in-progress and how I write my character’s feelings and there is an element of assigning blame in their thoughts and actions. The characters attempt to explain things that I never really understood. I can’t wait to see what happens next, in this novel I am writing.

The final chapter of Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing is my favorite: Parting Shots. Rosenblatt writes about his friend Lewis Thomas and how he says at the end of his life he wants to be useful. He would “die content” if he knew he had been useful in his life. The author writes in response:

“for your writing to be great …. It must be useful to the world. And for that to happen you must form an opinion of the world. …And for that to happen you have to live in the world and not pretend it’s not someone else’s world you are writing about…nothing you write will matter unless it moves the human heart, said the poet A.D Hope. And the heart that you must move is corrupt, depraved, and desperate for your love.”(151)

The final words of the book [I just love them and will follow them]: “Both you and the human heart are full of sorrow. But only one of you can speak for that sorrow and ease its burdens and make it sing – word after word after word.”

These are the words that the woman in the elevator must have heard when she was crying.