In case you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t blogged much in the past week, due to even higher-than-normal levels of chaos in my house.  My son (Toby) was on fall break, and Mr. Helpful had planned to take him out of town for most of the week, but their trip fell apart at the last minute, so instead they both rattled around the house all week.  I like them both very much, and was happy to have them, but it was quite impossible to get back into my normal routine.  And poor Delaney had school all week, so while the boys were goofing off, she was trying to do homework and cope with the general difficulty of 4th grade.  And I was caught between the routine and the not-routine.

I did manage to get in one long ride; I decided to just plow forward with the CNC miles already in my legs, and I went 80 miles on Tuesday.  Probably a mistake.  I felt fine, and rode strong, and then got home and realized I was totally wasted.  I think I went to bed at 9.  I never go to bed at 9.  I felt like I had done a really major event, not just a random training ride.  I guess all those CNC miles required a bit more recovery time, or perhaps that whole aging process I keep ignoring is beginning to catch up with me . . .  Nah.  Must’ve been the headwind.

Anway, there’s one more thing I need to say about CNC, and then I’ll move on to my next insane idea (and it’s definitely a doozy).  Here’s my soapbox:  those of us who love this sport, any element of it, need to be sharing our passion with the children in our lives.  If there are no children in your life, find some.

My two school-sharing experiences last week were the high points of my ride.  If just one of those children grows up and decides to commute to work or enter a bike race or just ride to the coffee shop occasionally, it will have been well worth the few minutes longer it took me to get to the finish.  The obesity problem in this country is very real to me–I live every day with my husband’s heart disease, and I worry about the genetic impact it will have on my kids.  Lifestyle is something we can control, and humans were designed for an ACTIVE lifestyle.  I have a real passion for riding my bicycle, and I think I have a moral obligation to share that passion with children who can benefit from it.

Tour rides, like CNC, are the perfect opportunity to inspire kids.  If even half of the 1000 cyclists who rode CNC decided to make an impact on schools along the route, think how many kids we could reach.  It only takes 15 or 20 minutes to show a group how crazy we look with our bikes and gear and wild spandex, and to help them understand what a blast we’re having and just how much the human body is capable of.  I’m not Lance; I don’t look like him or live like him or ride like him.  What I do is not out of reach for the average person; on the contrary, it’s perfectly reasonable.  Children need to know the possibilities.  That whole “it takes a village” thing?  Well, it really does.

Okay.  Enough preaching for one day.  Ride strong.