A picture is worth a thousand words and so I will let the photos from today, the elevation map in particular, give you a sense of how difficult yet glorious today’s ride was and use my words to emphasize the importance of self care.
Self care is any activity we do deliberately to take care of our mental, emotional and physical health. In an endurance event such as riding across the country, self care is obviously critical. I need to get at least 8 hours of sleep every night, eat well, hydrate constantly and go to extraordinary measures to reduce the inflammation in my body every evening by doing such things as taking an ice bath when I’d rather be getting into a hot shower and ingesting turmeric in a myriad of ways. We all need self care though even, or rather especially, if all we are doing is sitting in front of a computer all day and particularly as we navigate the stresses of coronavirus. We all know how important it is to get enough sleep, eat well and hydrate but really—how many of us actually do it?? How many of us actually take regular stretching breaks after sitting at a desk for hours? If you are like me, you often give yourself credit for doing it just because you thought about doing it. But actually that doesn’t count. Self care is hard, particularly when you have others to care for or are overwhelmed with work and obligations. If you don’t take care of yourself though, you won’t be able to take care of others. I would encourage you to read the following short article entitled Self Care 101: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/skinny-revisited/201805/self-care-101. As the article says, self care means taking time to love yourself and appreciate that there’s only one you and that you have to be the expert in taking care of that you. Please take care of yourselves. With love, Isabella