My Override Button

Can we talk about this moment? 

This was the moment - oh, about 4 hours and thirty minutes into a massive training ride - in which I knew I fucked up. Like, I was going to be okay. But I was not "okay." I was following the 2021 Wabash on the Rocks 200k route. It had been a bit of a slog into the south wind, but I was getting to the point in the route where I'd start making my way back north and would be looking forward to the tailwind. 

Only, that didn't happen straight away. As expected and unsurprisingly, the spring deluge from earlier in the week had called out the river from its banks and the tributaries were swollen along a minimally maintained road cutting through the fields near the Wabash River. I had just descended the sandy, gravel access road and was faced with what appeared to be a lake. 

Oh, I'm no dummy. I knew this would be likely. Not only do I have a decade or two of life as a midwestern river rat, but I also have two eyes with a discerning brain. I went prepared to have thick, sucking clay at the very least. At the most, I knew that I would need to re-route, and I looked at the map with the event director and old friend, Lydia, several days in advance. 

Did that stop me from pushing forward? No. I stood at the edge of the water as it flowed across the road. I stared at it long enough to waste precious time. I denied it - hell, I went so far as to take a Snapchat and send it to Lydia of me saying, "Nope, No ma'am." And then I stared past the water at the ground and decided it was rocky enough I could bike through what I could see. 

So I made the decision to get through it. Which then got me to a patch of earth that was sticky mud, so I carried my bike through that section until I got to a huge swatch of water. What went through my mind? So much negotiation. Do I do it, do I not do it?

Caulk the wagon and float? Ford the river? Turn around and go back to the start?

Ultimately, I didn't want to turn around and climb up out of the road. I didn't want to potentially add more miles, because I was tired. Part of me thought I would be almost done with this shit. Part of me, maybe, wanted to prove to myself that I could do it?

So I hoisted my bike up onto my back and started across the water. I left my shoes on because I didn't want to step on any junk that humanity always lets slip away in floodwaters. I watched my path, because the raised hump in the middle kept my knees out of the water. I kept talking myself to keep moving forward. 

"Just a couple more steps, see what you have."

"You can turn around if the water goes above your knees."

"This water is not flowing. If this water were flowing, it would be dangerous. It is not dangerous, because it is not flowing."

At one point, I heard a huge splash in front of me, and I froze solid. My heartbeat was in my ears. I stared at the ripples, convinced that the Creature from the Black Lagoon or Nessie would emerge from the muddy waters. I heard more splashing to my left and I caught the fins of a huge bass surfacing. I told myself:

"There is no Creature of the Black Lagoon, there is not Loch Ness Monster, hell, there aren't even alligators in Indiana. It's just fish feasting or fucking or both. Keep moving." 

I got to the next patch of mucky land and had to consult the map. It appeared that the road hung a right, but it continued under more water. So, do I go back, or do I press onward? Well, now I was really stuck, and the only thing that made sense was to sling my bike across my back and forge ahead. I'd be damned if I had to encounter the school of feeding bass again, only have my adrenaline up so high that I couldn't think straight. Nearly two hours later... I was scraping the mud from my bike with a paint stick and cursing myself. I said in the video, "I'm not mad at Lydia... I'm pissed at myself. I don't need to prove to anyone that I can walk through mud with my bike on my back." 

There are cyclists who train for ultra events and will go through the same process that I just detailed above. They will say, "Well, it is a good thing that I proved to myself that I can do that," just in case they find themselves in similar situations at the time of their A-Race. I mean, that's what I told myself in my angry barrage against myself as I began the soggy pedal northwards. But I kept getting stuck on that thought: I don't have to prove to anyone that I can hike through mud.

Had my mom been there to see that mess, she'd have just shaken her head and had flashbacks to my youthful days of growing up next to the North Fork of the Wildcat Creek. There were days of years of my childhood where I would find myself slogging through knee high, slick clay mud along that creek. I'd lose shoes, destroy clothes, catch my death in the spring thaw. I remember those moments like they were yesterday. So hoisting up my bike for a two mile trek along a flooded creek was absolutely nothing new to me. 

Neither was having a miniature panic about some dread creature snatching me under the water, or an aggressive current sweeping me away, never to be seen again. Those were very real worries in my teenage brain. Some were more valid - the Wildcat Creek is notoriously dangerous during spring floods. 

On that day, and the next as my cycling friends asked me about how my ride went, I was critical of my decision to "ford the river" instead of re-routing. Because I didn't need to train for those conditions, in the same way that I don't need to train for riding with sleep deprivation. Those are well-lived, well-earned life experiences. 

But there was something else that was frustrating me, too. I didn't really know how to word it, until later.

That following Monday, my therapist wanted to know how things had been going at work. "Well, I made it to solid land, again." The words struck me as familiar, so I started patching things together; she listened with a questioning face. I told her that one of the surgeons seems to be chummy with me again, which I found to be precarious footing considering the recent interactions I've had with an unreasonable temper. Injured co-workers would be coming off of injury leave soon, which I would find to be a huge relief to my workload. My intern had been hired on full-time and that was one of the biggest obstacles that my team was facing as case loads sky-rocketed. 

A thought started to descend through my brain fog. My therapist coaxed it out of me: it's always one more thing. 

Just hang on a little while longer, survive one more trial; hold tight, help is coming. You will get through this. Just one more thing.

It's the things I tell myself to survive the most insane situations. A decade-plus long career in equine veterinary nursing. A five-year dedication to ultra-cycling. Pushing through a catastrophic injury and burying symptoms of PTSD. Never having the healthy boundaries with people in my community to keep from feeling like I am being taken advantage of.  Friendships failing and failing and failing. Always flirting on the edge of disaster, sometimes with consequences that could and have rattled my very foundation.

As it all clicked together, I just burst into tears. "Part of me is very proud of me. Proud that I can always get through. But I just hit this point on Saturday where I saw myself hurtling towards this terrifyingly huge, massive goal. And doing everything and anything to reach it. I sacrifice my time, my relationships, my comfort. And then I get hit by a fucking car, and none of it was worth it."

History has a horrifying way of repeating itself, even in the most miniscule and irrelevant ways. 

"Molly," my therapist said, "Your override button is too good. You are consistently able to override any circumstance that could put you in physical danger or mental harm. It's something that we need to look at closer." 

She's not wrong. 2020 was an opportunity to set healthy boundaries - not just of society and of other people, but also of myself. But with the world beginning to re-open, I am starting to feel a low-key desperation, and that desperation has some wild hare ideas. And for whatever reason, my boundaries (specifically my boundaries for myself) are starting to weaken. Old habits, old desires. 

It scares me more than any flooded river.

Alternatively, I worry that if I install this override button, if I lean into the idea of comfort over crazy, I'll turn off the adventurous side of me that loves the challenge and the chase. And when I turn it off, I'm going to hit a certain mileage at Gravel Worlds, and just convince myself to DNF. 

How do I balance it? And moreover, how do I earn a paycheck at a job that constantly, consistently, for over 10 years, has asked me to turn it off? And if I leave this job, who is to say that the next equine practice won't be just as toxic? 

I am legitimately curious if there are other ultra racers who have done this. Or, equine vet techs, for that matter. Look, I know that there are. What I want to know is how to balance it. To mitigate it. To walk the narrow line between complacent and crazy.