I am 54 – a few months short of 55. That means I’ve been having a monhly period for about 42 or so years. That’s somewhere in the region of 500 periods. This means more than 500 months of at least one week of cramping, bloating, helter-skelter hormones, headaches and poor sleep. Oh yes, and […]
Author: Moniera
Don’t miss the magnolias
I traveled home a week earlier than planned from the desert because I couldn’t miss the magnolias. I was also figuring out how to facilitate another adventure in May so needed some days at my desk in between. But mostly, I came home early for the magnolias. They’re such a short lived delight and a […]
This perfectly imperfect body of mine
I’m heading into the final day of an absolutely mad 3-week adventure. In this moment I am deeply grateful for this wonderful body of mine; this perfectly imperfect body that has been challenged with preparing for a race, executing on the 3-day stage race, followed by multiple days of hiking and riding and never once […]
No, you’re not too old to enter your first mountain bike race
In the week following my race, Matt Miller of Singletracks.com reached out to ask if I’d like to chat about my race experience. “Who wants to hear about a middle aged, overweight woman dabbling in racing, Matt?” I asked. He said he suspected it might more people than one might think. So we chatted – […]
But what if I fail ….
How many of us are afraid to try new things because they’re hard and we’ll be shit at it, or worse, we won’t be able to do them! Whether it’s piano or a complex knitting pattern or learning a new sport. I could tell you a story about skate skiing and I, but there is […]
Success? What IS success?
I have a quote saved that says “Success is making progress in the things that matter to you”. Matter to you are the key words there. What matters to you? What does success look like for you? I used to flip flop between euphoria over my full, abundant life and holding my head in my […]
5 weeks to go!
I’m five weeks out from doing my first race. Moab Rocks is a 3-day mountain bike stage race happening the first week of April. There are moments of regret about making poor choices but lately, there have been far more moments of entertaining the possibility of actually pulling this off. To be clear, I will […]
Big things ahead
And I don’t just mean our butts. Big adventures and big goals as well. Last fall I saw a post about All Bodies on Bikes looking to take a group of non-traditional cyclists to SBT GRVL in August. As a 54 year old woman of colour, who’s also fat – I checked enough boxes to […]
The polisher that didn’t polish
Sifting through my childhood memories, I’m still trying to make sense of things that were just so. I never questioned them .. until now. I grew up in a house with beautiful parquet floors, and every Friday my mother would go down on her hands and knees to scrub the floor. Did they not have […]
New Year’s Eve Memories
I grew up in South Africa – where December is the middle of summer. The school year behind us, my father would be off work for two or three weeks and we’d all be in that blissful state of not knowing what day of the week it was. New Year’s Eve would mean a trip […]