A Work in Progress

This is a repost from Katie’s Substack, read the origonal post, and other’s here.

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2006: Apple Valley, MN.

I stood in the livingroom, holding… something, in my hands, my eyelids having a total mind of their own. I fought to keep them open. It was somewhere around 2am. My mom sat on the floor, surrounded by camping gear, checking items off a list. “Mom, I can just wake up early and finish this.” I pleaded, imagining the sweet relief of lying down, and feeling bad that she looked the same.

“No.” She was the voice of reason. She knew how terrible I was at waking up to my alarm, especially if it was to finish a project before I had to be at school at 7am.

Somewhere at the back of my mind, hiding behind the overwhelm of all the open tabs – things that needed to be collected and organized, a single logical thought popped up. She’s right. I would never do that, and if I forgot anything important, it might actually become a problem.

This was my senior year of high school, the night before I was to set out for a week into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on the US/Canada border of Minnesota in January.

Winter camping was an amazing way to experience The Boundary Waters in a new way, and I was thankful for my mom’s help, so I didn’t get hypothermia or frostbite. I vowed to never wait until the last minute to prepare again. Enter the narrator from the show Arrested Development: “She did.”

(Me, not freezing, thanks to my mom’s help. School of Environmental Studies Winter BWCAW Field Study, 2006)

May 2026: The Heywood 390 was last weekend. Over a year ago I decided I was going to take that on as my first ultra distance cycling race.

Historically, I have been really good at setting big goals, and not so great on the follow through. Making the goal is fun, making a plan is exciting, executing the plan gets boring. I hired a coach so I would be accountable to someone. We started working through a structured training plan. I learned a lot from him, and he was great to work with. I would recommend him to anyone. The only problem was…. I HATED it.

I discovered that structured training brought me face to face with my flaws. As long as I can remember I have had difficulty with organization, time management, forgetfulness and procrastination. Growing up, I was always surrounded by lists. Lists re-written by category, or task type, or by how long something would take. Willing myself to get started on any of the steps, I just couldn’t, unless there was a looming deadline, during which I would do my best work in a total panic.

I knew last minute panic wouldn’t give me the fitness I needed to bike 390 miles through the driftless region of Minnesota. I attempted to organize my days. I had difficulty prioritizing between my workouts, being present for my kids, work obligations, and being a good partner to my husband. Sometimes I would pick none of the above, instead getting sucked into scrolling my phone in a state of, what I later learned, is referred to as “task paralysis”.

I started getting stressed if I missed training, or had to shorten it or move it to a different day. I started imagining my coach being annoyed and disappointed with me, becoming full of doubts that I could do the event, since I wasn’t training “right”. After the fact it is clear that this was very much in my own head. He is a super nice guy.

If I did the training as prescribed, I didn’t worry about my coach, but then felt guilty about not showing up as a mom and partner the way I wanted to.

Friends would try to make plans to ride and I would turn them down because I needed to stay in specific training zones. I started obsessing and dreading exercise of any kind.

My self esteem took a nose dive. Why could other people I know follow through with what they say they want to do, and I have such a long history of not doing that? What was different? I tried making daily schedules (don’t even call it a routine, that word makes me want to cry because I can’t imagine the boredom of a life filled with ROUTINES), but I couldn’t stick to them.

As much as I hate to admit it, social media helped me here. I started seeing memes and reels about ADHD – Primarily Inattentive (vs. primarily hyperactive or mixed.) At first I kind of giggled. “Sounds like something I would do.” But then…. Oh? OH. Yup.

I made an appointment with a therapist. We discussed symptoms of ADHD. She said “well, I can’t officially diagnose anything, but…. You have that.”

I hadn’t thought I had ADHD for a long time because I was never “hyperactive” as I thought it to be. I later learned from an ADHD coach I met at a party that us primarily inattentive folks are hyperactive, it just shows up in our minds instead of our bodies. That made a lot of sense. I thought back to my Anatomy and Physiology class in college, and could remember whole class periods where I don’t think I heard the teacher talk. I remember in Paramedic school when we learned how to spike IV bags. We all had saline bags and tubing in front of us on the table. My classmates started spiking theirs. I turned to my friend sitting next to me and asked if he could show me because I hadn’t learned yet, totally unaware that the teacher had spent the last 10 minutes teaching us exactly that.

After talking with some friends about their experience with medication, I decided to pursue official diagnosis and treatment. I wasn’t expecting to cry when I got my diagnosis. I felt such a relief. I wasn’t simply lazy, or undisciplined, or ditsy. My brain just works differently than I knew. I don’t feel like it is an excuse, but an explanation. It is data that I can work with to figure out how I can solve some of these problems.

Since being diagnosed, things make so much more sense! I have been fascinated with learning about how my brain works, reading books and listening to podcasts. I have gotten ideas of different ways I can improve the systems in my life. I’ve noticed a big change in how I have conversations with other people. I don’t worry that I spaced out or talked over them a bunch. I can write my patient care reports in about 20 minutes instead of 4 hours, my patient care is more streamlined, and I feel that I answer my students questions without getting too far “into the weeds” unless they are actually interested in nerding out with me. Unfortunately medication doesn’t automatically make me understand how time works, but I have made huge progress with things I don’t excel in, and will continue to do so. It helps to understand why I am like this.

Back to the ride.

I know there have to be other ultra distance athletes who have run into difficulty finding balance, so I started looking at threads on Reddit in case I could find any tips. The most common answer I found was “you just have to be selfish”. I don’t want to be selfish. I definitely don’t want to be selfish for months on end. That isn’t fair to my family.

I ended up telling my coach I didn’t want to work with him anymore, and in my head I was absolutely not going to keep working towards the Heywood this year either. I stopped exercising all together for quite a while. I had no idea what that meant for the Trailblazer project, but I didn’t want to try to figure that out until my mind settled down. I tried to focus on what I wanted out of this goal in the first place.

I wanted to do an ultra distance race, because I have been obsessed with that idea for about 10 years now. I am drawn to the fact that I will have to improve things I suck at to get me there. I wanted to expand my network of active friends and be social more often. I know how much better I feel, physically and mentally, when I get more consistent exercise, and training for something makes me more likely to try to make time for it.

I was hesitant to set a new goal like that right away, because I needed to figure out how to do it without running into the same issues without a solution.

Walking my dog one day I was listening to The Choose Strong Podcast. Sally McRae was talking about her early ultra running career, and how her training had to look different from what she saw athletes around her doing because she had 2 young kids. She had to do what worked for her family, even if it wasn’t “optimal training.” She also talked about how we give ourselves timelines on goals. Many of us tend to think, “I want to do that thing this year, and if it doesn’t work I’ve failed”. She said we haven’t failed, we just haven’t completed it yet and can keep working towards it. As she always says “Something is better than nothing, done is better than perfect.” This perked me up a little.

Not long after that I attended a documentary showing at a bike shop. I ran into a winter ultra endurance athlete that I have a lot of respect for, both as an athlete, and also from what I know of her as a person. I was hesitant to admit to her that I backed out of The Heywood. She gave me a phenomenal on the spot pep talk. She told me that the best training is the training you will do, and adapting when the training isn’t working for you is a great skill for ultras. She said problem solving is a huge part of ultras, and solving problems during training is good practice.

Talking with her reminded me of why I wanted to work with The Cairn Project in the first place, helping other women discover something within themselves that they can bring to the community around them.

So, I have decided on a new goal. Since it was a winter ultramarathon that introduced me to endurance sports, and learning so much from the Wild Winter Women facebook group that made me want to work with The Cairn Project, I have my eyes set on The St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra in Hinkley, MN next January, in the foot division.

I have some stepping stones to continue moving me in the right direction, letting me practice all these skills I’m working on: a bikepacking trip at the end of June, The Day Across MN as a member of a 2 person relay team (Team MOMWATTS!) in August, Fire Tower Trail Race 50k in October, and then St. Croix 40 in January!

My progress hasn’t been entirely unsuccessful. I’ve learned a lot about myself. I most certainly do not have it all figured out, but subscribe if you would like to tag along on my journey and see what else I learn along the way.