Once I put the jersey on, everything else starts falling into place. The shorts go on my legs. The gloves go on my hands. The socks go on my feet and the shoes go over them. I fill up my water bottle, grab an energy chew, and turn on my laptop. Turn on the A/C and the fan. Connect my watch. Clip in. Time to bike.
Continue reading “Texas 4000 Summer Ride Reflection”Running Report: My First 5K
A lot has changed from middle school to now. My innate lack of talent at running has not.
There’s a lot that I’ve managed to selectively forget about middle school, but one track meet will always stay with me. I joined track in eighth grade because I was tall, and because the basketball and volleyball teams were filled with white girls who went to church camp. It didn’t take me long to realize that “tall” did not equal “fast”. I had tiny lungs and bowlegs. There went my sprinting dreams.
Continue reading “Running Report: My First 5K”Why I Ride
On the topic of why someone with zero athletic background would want to bike 4500+ miles to Anchorage, Alaska. Also featured on my rider page.
1.
I’ve never met my grandfather. Even so, I feel like I intimately know him. When my younger cousins were born, my mother told me about how he adored children. When I complained about our mandatory family dinners, she told me about his emphasis on family bonding time. When we were in China on the Qingming Festival, we laid his favorite foods down in front of his tombstone. Through her descriptions of him, I feel the presence of his warm heart and steady character.
She’s told me a lot about him, but what she doesn’t have to tell me is how rapidly leukemia began to destroy his body, and how devastating the news was. I’ve seen pictures of my mom, barely 30, sitting next to his hospital bed wearing a flimsy surgical mask. I’ve studied her face and wondered what she thought when she heard the diagnosis from halfway around the world, or when she boarded the plane back to China, or when she saw him again for the first time in that tiny hospital room.
Continue reading “Why I Ride”