I DID IT

Well yesterday I did something that actually had me guessing whether or not I could and that was ride my route twice. Sure I had make some modifications to it because the bridge I normally cross at was closed so I had to double back to get to my route. I also extended my route by approximately 12 km in the middle. I was exhausted when I was finished and did my butt ever hurt. There was some great gratification when I was finished even if my butt hurt.

test for my legs today

Today I am testing out my leg endurance by riding my route twice in a row. Failure is not an option with this one today I may have to really push myself to finish it...ok, ok I will have to push myself to finish that much I already know but failure is still not an option. Today I have something to prove to myself that yes I can do it despite what others are telling me. Those people will remain nameless in as I would like to keep their identities private. Some people are even actually questioning my drive whether or I have enough drive to actually complete this trek which is making me actually question myself too. In my heart I know I can do it, that is not what is in question they are actually questioning my competitive drive. Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I hate to fail and well with this because it does hit as close to home as it does I refuse to fail.

Day off

Well today was a planned day off. I have managed to stay off of my bike but I have only just now stopped doing stuff to keep my mind off of not riding. Not being allowed to ride my bike today has really been driving me nuts because I am the type of person that has to be doing something all the time unless I am sleeping. Speaking of sleeping a nap sounds real good right about now been raining all day.

EXCITED

Well I got home from my training run. I was surprised when I got home and there was a message on the phone, so like any curious person would do I checked to see who it was and it was a reporter from CHCH who had read the story on me in The St. Catharines Standard. I am not quite sure how to take this publicity because I was brought to have a strong attitude and also modesty, so right now I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with emotions that I have never felt before.

It's MondayI

Well today is Monday and that means we do weights today at the gym. We will be doing a half an hour on the stationary bike and then moving onto the weight room if you can't tell I am excited about this because I enjoy working with the weight machines. Well it's 1pm and I am back from the gym and I am feeling great physically I seem rejuvenated after a good workout it seems to get the blood flowing and the stamina up to do daily activities. There are daily activities outdoors that should get done but I also don't want to fry the lawn so cutting the grass this afternoon is out of the question till at least this evening.

Well I have gone and done it again

By done it again I mean made the newspaper, this one is probably the biggest paper I have made to date okay it is the biggest paper I have made to date. I always find it humbling when I make the papers for just being who I am. Everyone says I am an inspiration but to I am just being the person I was raised to be. Sure I have a bit of an attitude at times but hey it's that attitude that has gotten me where I am today. Sure that attitude remains hidden most of the time but when it is needed it does come out usually when someone wants me to slow down and I know full well that I can do it. This is a link to the article that I am attaching to this. http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2610292

rested finally

Well this morning I am feeling rested enough to go and do my Niagara-on-the-Lake run on my bike it looks surprising like an awesome biking day. Although I haven't been outside yet or even looked at the thermostat outside the window to see what the temperature is like. Got to go and eat our last banana and maybe pick up some during my travels. Now the next question is do I take my backpack or not if I take my backpack then I can buy me some more bananas when I ride by the harvest barn. Think I will take it. Well I am back from my ride never got the bananas because well I took a wrong turn and it ended up cutting off 4km from my ride. My ride today was 28.6km completed in 1:40:22hrs if I can keep up this pace then by the end of next week I will be doing this route twice one right after another.

Day off

Well today I am taking a day off. Once again common sense is prevailing got some bad news about one of our nieces and well I didn't sleep all that well after hearing it and right now it's only 9:20am and the bed is calling my name very loudly. I don't like to take unscheduled days but with as tired as I am I don't want to hurt myself either.

Day off

Today I am taking a well deserved day off of training. It's not really going to be a day but I will not be putting on the mileage that I normal do because I have to take my bike in and have it looked at and well I have a prescription filled for Trevor. I am just hoping that it doesn't cost too much to get the gears fixed on my bike. I haven't even started my ride across Canada and already it's been expensive.

Always Trying Something New

Well today I am trying something new, I am going to attempt to ride out to Niagara-on-the-Lake and back. It about 50km there and back, I know I can do it just a matter of whether or not my legs will let me do it. Will update upon my return. Well I went 38.6km today the last 8.6km were well my cool down, the cool down was so long because well someone locked the door knob lock on me. I usually just take the garage door opener with me and come in through the door in the garage but well someone last night locked that door on me. That is the one lock I never ever lock because there is not a key that actually open that particular lock. This is the route that I took today I map every route I use on this site: http://beta.mapmyride.com/route/detail/17822392/

Super Excited

Well I rode my bike into exercise class this morning for 10am. It was a very small class only the dedicated ones were there. We warmed up on the bike as usual, we all graduated this morning from the therapy bands to the actual weight machines. I am very excited about that because the therapy bands were not even challenging me anymore also the weight machines make it easier to target specific muscle groups and only those groups. I was feeling the burn but in a good way.

Yeah it's Monday

I know most people hate Monday's but I honestly look forward to Monday's. I like Monday's because is when I meet with a trainer for two hours and he puts me through the paces. It's also when I get to meet up with my fellow MS'ers as well and we workout together. After this workout I have to get some roundup and go to the bank and get some money to pay the bills, wait a minute I don't have bills this month which is very unusual for me not to owe someone money. Smoothie time.

Rejection's not easy to get used to

Well I got another rejection letter today. It's not the first rejection letter I have gotten. But they are getting harder to accept mainly I think because it's for a cause that I am so passionate about because it doesn't hit any closer to home when it's yourself suffering from the disease. I have learnt to live through others for the majority of my life because if I couldn't do something when I was younger, I was foolish enough to try and do sometimes. I have been content to sit back and watch as my friends and family did some stuff that I was unable to do. I was always encouraged to try stuff no matter how far out of my range of abilities it was because the only way to find out whether or not I could do something unless I tried and failed.

Pizza

I can't believe I let myself get talked into going all the way to Hamilton for pizza. When I asked what was happening afterwards I found out the real motive was so they could go to the hobby shop. Looks like he's gone way over on the budget this week. Hey what can I do I don't want to nag because I know he hates that and ends up resenting me for it that is why he stopped working out. I just wanted him to workout again because he was feeling better when he was realizing he could do stuff he hadn't been able to do in quite a while. It made both of us feel good.

Well I had a great long weekend, now it's time to get back into my training routine. This morning I got up and had my usual training breakfast of a smoothie and a nice banana. I have a few errands to run so I think I will run them on my bike I will be heading out to the bank and the farmers market. It's really not a training run but hey at least I am doing it all on my bike. Well I also think we bypassed spring and went right into summer because man it all of a sudden got hot and sunny out there. We got the air conditioner on but we have it set a tolerable temperature.

Common sense has finally taken over

Well finally I have started listening to common sense instead of what my mind would leave me to believe. It's only taken 34 years for me to realize that I am not the six million dollar woMAN as cool as that would be I am not her and I do have limitations. I try to ignore the some of the limitations but the one's that I know will leave me crippled in the end well I just can't ignore those ones because I don't feel like fighting back out of a wheelchair again. It's not that I couldn't it's just that it takes so freaking long to retrain everything to work the way I want it to again. Heck they said I would never walk again once already so four years later I ran a 5km for fun shocked the socks off of my mom. After doing that I decided to go and check out my mountain bike that was sitting in my dads shed gave a tune-up and did something else I wasn't supposed to just by get on a doing something that you just can't forget how to do ride a bike. I remember I would just ride around the neighborhood where I was living and my brother and his friend who also rode a bike would always pop around after they finished riding around their sand hills. I have always looked up to my brothers but each one in a different way.

This particular brother I looked up to for his stubbornness he never let the fact that he was never the biggest player on a team or the youngest player on a team stop him from doing anything. I admire his drive to proof people that his size didn't matter and he could run like the wind blows, sports seemed to come naturally to him and myself. All of our other three siblings had to work and work hard to become as good as they are. My one brother was always the shortest and the tiniest in stature but once again he never let that stop him from trying something he believed he could do. The youngest of my three brothers is one that I really looked up to a small child because he was born with Bilateral Erp's Polsy which left him with little to no use of his arms. At age 8 he wanted to go camping with his cub pack in scouting so it was then that my mom took him to see a specialist, who eventually corrected his arms. He would undergo some extremely painful surgeries that would surgical break the humerus bone in each arm have it rotated out 60 degrees and then plated and screwed back together. They did each arm separately to ensure that it would work (I think), I do know that when they did the second arm they also removed the plates and screws from the first arm. Now my sister who I lived my teen years vicariously through probably because we are twins and shared the same dreams. We had decided at an early age that we both wanted to play for team Canada in the Olympics, we also both wanted to go to University on soccer scholarships. Neither one of us made it to the Olympics but she was invited to a tryout for team Canada for the first ever woman's World Cup of soccer. She had unfortunately been involved in a hit and run accident before the tryout and her tibia was shattered and she had to have a rod inserted into her left tibia with two screws at the ankle to hold it in place. When all of this happened to her she was going to University in the states on a soccer scholarship. She didn't lose her scholarship though so she was lucky in that respect she was however red-shirted for a year which just means she had her scholarship but due to injury was unable to play. That meant that she got an extra year playing eligibility out of it all. She trained so hard to get back into playing form I remember she spent the entire next summer doing a bunch of sprint practising to try and increase her speed. She was never the fastest player on a team but probably one of the most competitive players.

Now the common sense that has taken over my mind and that is to change up my daily riding from 150km down to 125km a day and take 2 rest days for every five days of riding. I sort of knew in my heart that what I was expecting my body to do was sort of outlandish, so it really didn't take too much convincing for me to change my mind on my goal. So now I will be riding for 84 days rest days included and expecting my body to be able to go for 125km a day which gives me a grand total of 8272km to bike in total.

Another day another interview

Well today I did an interview with the St. Catharines Standard. The interviewer was excited to met me. The interview in itself took about 2.5hrs and then they wanted pictures to go with the story and well I don't really like to have my picture taken especially when they are posed pictures. I guess it's just something I will have to get used to as much as I hate it. I am still trying to get used to being called an inspiration, when all I am doing is living my life to the fullest. It was my strong upbringing that made me who I am today, I will forever be indebted to all of my siblings and especially my parents for never losing faith in me.

The torture starts today

Well today begins the three days of torture. By torture I mean a very strenuous training schedule I will by 8:30 be dressed and on my bike for my first 50km and then in for an hour and a half during which time I will be letting my muscle recover and of course stuffing my face because I have been told that I eat like a horse and that was by someone who loves me. Well I didn't quite get the 50 km done that I wanted to, instead I got half way there and did 25km done in 1:27:15hrs. I'll have to slowly work my way up to the 50km at a time. Muscle endurance is something that I will have to work up to, no one in their right frame of mind would try and go out there and just ride 50km.

I'm just being me

Well I got a very flattering message from an old friend on Facebook yesterday. She has been telling her church group about me and was wondering if I would come and speak to them about myself. Now I think it's just me, but I have been trying to understand why people are so fascinated with my story I guess it just like the falls aren't as impressive to someone who grew up in Niagara Falls. My family members don't really understand it either because that is the only Toosje that they have known too. I guess it you really can inspire others and know it.

Must start looking ahead

Well today when I went out to my weekly exercise class I went there thinking it was going to be the last one. I was surprised to find out that they have extended it again right up till the 21st of June but of course there will be no class on Monday because of it being a holiday. We were also informed that our trainer and his boss are receiving an award on June 2, for helping people with a disability exercise. This is apparently a prestigious award to receive. I have also been issued a challenge and that is to bike 75km and then take a three hour rest and then get back on to bike another 75km and to do it for three consecutive days. I have been told to do this on my flywheel on the hardest setting should at the very least be challenging but I think I am up for it. I am going to start this test on Thursday as I have appointments and commitments leading up and until Thursday.

Looking ahead

Well Friday I was given a challenge and that was to bike 75km take a three hour rest and then do another 75km

Just thinking back on my life

Lately I have been thinking back mainly about how lucky I am. I really had a great childhood all of my memories from my childhood have helped mold me into the person I am today. I have very loving parents, probably the best siblings anyone could ask for. I still consider myself to be lucky because I wouldn't change a thing about my life even if they said that they could make it so I never got sick or put this gorilla I call MS on my back. This first memory I have was when my sister and I went away for a week of camping. We were both very excited about going, after our week at camp our grandparents who had been out visiting with the rest of the family came with our parents to pick us up. I remember running right by them and into my mom's arms because I had been having some really bad headaches almost the entire time we were there. My sister had begged them to let her call my parents because I was sick and they kept telling her, "no." We were told the one day that we had to write a letter home to our parents and that we should mention what a great time we were having. To be quite honest my sister and I were not having a great time like they wanted us to say. My mom kept those letters until the day she died in 2005. I am the type of person who will eventually relent to pressure to do things that I don't particularly want to do just to shut someone up that is bugging me. I wrote a very short letter home to my parents saying how much I missed and loved them, whereas my sister sent home a blank sheet of paper. My mom would later tell me that was when she knew there was something wrong because that was out of character for my sister to do. I remember it was at this camp that I first started experiencing migraine headaches. Now I don't know if this next part is true or not but my mom always said my sister kept asking if she could call our parents to come and get us because I was sick. That was the same summer we celebrated our seventh birthday in the caboose behind the McDonald's in Welland. I remember that birthday probably because I was sicker than a dog I was having headaches and vomiting like crazy so my mom and I were seated near the door of the caboose so that I could dash out the door and into the bathroom if I needed to use it and I used it a lot that day because just the smell of the food was making me sick. While everyone else had their happy meals my mom decided that it would be okay if I had a chocolate milkshake. I remember I was in the bathroom when my dad was wrapping up the party and shuffling everyone into vehicles. I remember asking my mom for my milkshake and it was at that point we found out that my dad never even thought to pick it up and bring it with him. I was in and out of the hospital almost every weekend because I was getting so dehydrated. It was that fall when they sent me to have my first EEG done. I was scared at first but the technician took away all those fears once she started explaining to me how everything worked and what it all did. She actually made me a short print out to take in for show and tell the next day. I finished that school year with flying colours and then that summer I would go back to playing soccer. I have had a passion for soccer since I was four years of age it also helped me that whether or not my friends were home I always had someone that would kick the ball around with me. Those days would shape my competitive nature for anything and everything. I remember the one weekend when I was in the hospital that summer, they had let my dad sneak my sister onto the children's ward at the local hospital because we were twins. I remember this because my mom was watching out the window as they left and she was laughing when I asked her what was so funny she said come here and have a look and there was my sister walking beside my dad imitating him step for step. That was a laugh long overdue that summer.