Exercise = Control; Control = Sanity

I got back on my bike this morning.

It's been three months since I've gone for a ride. Which, on the one hand, isn't that shocking considering I have no one up here to ride with, and motivating yourself to go on a long bike ride by yourself is a lot harder than motivating yourself to sleep in and snuggle with your husband. On the other hand, it is shocking. Five months ago a 30-mile bike ride was my "recovery ride." Five months ago I would spend three to four to five hours out on Saturday with my team, riding until I was shaking, with just enough strength left at the end to feel just a little bit like a bad-ass.

At the end of my training, training that had consumed my free time and my mind space, training that had dominated six months of my life, training that was ultimately one step crazier than I actually am, I had completed a half-ironman. I had reached the pinnacle of my athletic career. I had closed the first major chapter of my life--young and athletic and driven--with a grand finale worthy of the years that had led up to it. I was ready to turn the page and start the next chapter: motherhood. Not that I suddenly wasn't young or athletic or driven any more...I just knew that as a mother, you can't devote yourself to your own selfish pursuits the same way you could when you had only yourself to worry about. And I was ready for that. I faced my workout-free future with glee.

I didn't really worry about not working out all summer. I felt like I deserved my break from training, and we were going to try to get pregnant in July, so why continue to bust my ass when I was just going to get blissfully plump? Because of a change in credit cards and the woefully inept bookkeeping department at my gym, my membership lapsed. I let it go. Because of the plantar's fasciitis in both of my feet, I stopped running and walking, trying to give my body a chance to fully recover from the beating I had put it through.

Only here we are, October, with no baby belly and a closet becoming more and more full clothes that don't really fit. Uh oh.

But there was more to this morning's bike ride than a need to be physically fit. All my life I've been in athletics. All my life, I've been involved in a pursuit where your own input directly relates to the output. In other words, the more you put in, the more results you see--you get faster or leaner or better. It is a world of control. If you exert a little more concentration or effort, you can lift the heavier weight, you can get up the hill a little faster, you can get to the finish line a little quicker.

But now I find myself involved in a pursuit where effort has nothing to do with outcome. NOTHING. It doesn't matter how knowledgeable you are about your body and your cycles, how relaxed you are, how much fun you have with it, what vitamins you take, if you chart, if you know when you ovulate, if you time sex correctly, if you moderate you diet, nothing. None of it matters. Or, at least, none of it has mattered so far. I feel like I've devoted my full effort to getting pregnant, and I have nothing to show for it. I have come to the realization that there's NOTHING I can do to actually affect any kind of success in this department.

And it is driving. me. crazy.

I am a 100%-er. Whatever my current goal is, I go for it with everything I have. Five months ago, I was going for the half-ironman with everything I had. I couldn't think about babies when doing hill repeats--if I had, I would have worried about the stress I was putting on my body, how my extreme efforts would adversely affect the baby-friendly environment I needed to turn my body into. Then I switched completely to baby making. I couldn't worry about working out when trying to make a baby. What if I bounce the little fertilized egg around so much it can't implant?

I haven't yet figured out how to devote 50% to each. But that's my new goal. Figure out how to temper fitness goals with baby goals. Because I have to have something in my life I can control.

So I got back on my bike this morning because I owe it to my body, but also because I owe it to my mind.

And it was a beautiful ride.