Today I was out with friends and they asked about our summer trip.

The one where Marc and I will be riding L’Etape du Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift—120 km from Vaison-la-Romaine to the summit of Mount Ventoux.

This is a 120 km ride with 3000 meters of elevation gain.

It’s a lot.

The enormity of it all really sank in today as I was talking about the distance and overall difficulty of this route.

For perspective, a 100 km ride here on the roads around Osgoode takes me a little under 4 hours. These are flat roads with a few bumps—not really hills and definitely not mountains.

The first 100 km of the August 6 L’Etape ride will be on a mix of short punchy climbs, rolling hills, big hills, and some flat roads. According to the Internet the route along the roads of the Baronnies, the vineyards of the Rhône Valley and the Dentelles de Montmirail to Mount Venotoux is considered beautiful but deceptively hard.

This is when I want to tell myself “don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.” But in this case, it’s true.

I realized today that this will be a long day on the bike. A very long and challenging day. Not only the distance and elevation but also the heat. August in France is hot.

I started thinking about where my fitness is and how much work I have to do to get ready for this ride.
I started thinking about my on bike nutrition and hydration.
I started thinking about how managing my ileostomy will make things extra complicated.
I started thinking about all the things.

And then I thought about what I did 16 years ago on this very weekend.

On January 31, 2010 I raced in the World Cyclocross Championships.

This was a very hard thing. The racing seasons and training leading up to this day were like nothing I’d ever done before.
The race day conditions were intense—hovering around 0 celsius on a course covered in snow and black ice.

I did it. And I had one of the best races of my cyclo-cross career.

So I’m leaning hard on those years and lessons from racing cyclo-cross to help build my self-confidence and remind me that I can do hard things.

The key is consistency. Putting in the effort and the work. Not every ride and strength workout will be fun. But when they are stacked on top of each other, the end result will be huge gains in fitness, self-confidence and ultimately kicking imposter syndrome to the curb.

Yes—I have massive imposter syndrome when it comes to riding my bike. I know. It makes no sense.

I think it’s because of what I dealt with the entire time I was racing cyclo-cross—a lot of whispering and talking behind my back (that I knew about) about how I wasn’t good enough, shouldn’t be doing it, blah blah.

This talk really dragged me down.

It made it hard some days to get out and ride, but in the end I used those people as little devils on my shoulder—they were with me for every interval effort, ride in the rain, slog through the mud, crash, and race—I used their words as fuel to push harder and dig deeper.

It’s funny how 16 years later I still carry these emotions with me.

Sigh.

So what does this all mean for the weeks and months leading up to August 6?

I just have keep doing what I know I can do really well: do the work and just keep doing it.

I (you) are meant to do hard things.

A few hard things:

There’s a trend out there on the World Wide Web to share your photos from 2016. I don’t know where this trend came from or how it started and I managed to ignore it for a little while—until I couldn’t.

I fell for it. And frankly, I’m glad I did.

If it wasn’t for 2016, I likely would not be here today. Strong statement—yes. But it’s not an overstatement.

It’s rare we take photos in our lowest moments. And now with the selfie-craze, not many people are interested in turning the camera on themselves when they don’t feel fabulous. I’m no different.

What I do differently though is refuse to paint life with a rainbows and unicorn lens. This is not fair to me, you, or the people who know me. I’m pretty confident that your life is not all sunshine and pots of gold—so why would mine be?

This is one of the problems with social media and blogging—the pressure to always make life look awesome 24/7/365.

With this caveat in mind, here’s look back to my 2016—it’s brimming with full technicolor goodness all captured with the modern miracle of an iPhone:

I wrote this on Instagram and I’ll repeat it here:

What a year it was. How lucky am I to have been gifted 2016?!

This year really set me up for the rest of my life. Thanks to a brilliant surgeon and his team, I was given a second chance.

Something I try to never take for granted. On the days when it’s grey clouds and racoons in the garbage, I need to remind myself of what a gift it is to be here and to have the day—even when it isn’t picture perfect.

Really, it’s these days that help us appreciate the good and the amazing days.

I’m glad I got sucked into this looking back trend.

It’s funny I’ve just realized I kind of do this looking back thing on a nightly basis. I have a five-year one line a day journal that I’ve been keeping for three years. Every night before bed, I sit down and right one line about my day. I always read the previous years entries and some nights I skip ahead to read a random day.

This little journal is snapshot of my life—what was important enough for me to capture it in that one precious line?

Some days there are just a few words and other days the writing is cramped and small because I had so much to say.

This little journal is a more accurate account of my day than any photo or social media post.

According to Training Peaks, August 6 and the L’Etape Du Tour De France Femmes Avec Zwift is only 30 weeks away…

Kind of seems like a long time, but I know how quickly the weeks tick over when I’m working at building fitness and balancing all the things that come with life.

The very good news is that I had an epiphany about three weeks ago. I was trying to manage my own training program and true to form, I over scheduled myself, piled on too many double days, and neglected to recognize that I’m 53 and not 33.

To put it simply: I blew up.

This is a good thing. Because now I’m in the proven and expert hands (and brain) of coach Steve Weller of Bell Lap Coaching. For long time readers of this website, you’ll likely recognize Steve’s name.

Steve is the person who took me from a back-of-the-pack master’s category racer to an elite racer. I went from being a person who wished they could race and compete at the biggest cyclocross races to being someone who did it. Thanks to Steve, I had multiple successful years racing ‘cross in the U.S and Europe with the peak being the 2010 World Cyclocross Championships in Tabor, CZ.

And now here we are, back together again. I couldn’t be happier and more confident with how L’Etape Du Tour De France Femmes Avec Zwift day will be.

August 6, 2026 is more than just the date of L’Etape and riding 120 km to the summit of Mount Ventoux—it’s a reminder to me (and Marc) that we can do and get through hard things—it will be a celebration.

A celebration of my newfound (mostly) healthy body.

10 years ago, there was absolutely no way I could have dreamt of doing this ride.

All it took was having my colon removed on August 8, 2016 and rectum removed on April 30, 2018—for a second chance at life.

When I had my first surgery, I nicknamed my stoma (the part of my small intestine that sticks out of my abdomen, just below my belly button)—Reset.

My stoma and ileostomy allowed my to hit the “reset button” on life and get back to living a full and active life again. For too many years, ulcerative colitis robbed me from truly living.

The surgery on August 8, 2016 changed everything for me. It’s because of this surgery that I’m here today—alive.

I can’t wait for August 6, 2026. Just thinking about the day and how awesome I’ll feel at the end of L’Etape makes my eyes very watery and blurry.

The next day, August 7, 2026 is our 22-year wedding anniversary. I’m so excited to celebrate this day by watching a stage of the Tour De France Femmes Avec Zwift—never in my lifetime did I think I’d see the return of the Tour De France for elite women.

And then August 8, 2026—my 10-year anniversary of living an ileostomy life. I am so thankful to the brilliant doctors and surgeons who took care of me and got me here.

The best way for me to thank them is to do their work justice—by living each day as fully and completely as possible.

The countdown is on to Mount Ventoux!

Wowzers, 2026 – really? How lucky are we to be alive to see another year arrive?!

I think sometimes we lose perspective on how much of a gift it is to see another day, month, and year. And I wonder if this is why we force so much expectation and pressure into our days and years?

What if instead of setting huge goals for the year (that most of us do not follow through with) we take a step back and promise ourselves to appreciate each day as it comes.

Yes, some days will feel like crap. But at least it’s a day. And some days you’ll fret and think about how you could of and should of done things differently—well, you didn’t so move on and do what you can today.

Getting the days and they years is the gift. Growing old is a gift. Let’s appreciate and value this.

I hope you have a good day today. Wherever you are and whatever you’re going through, I just hope you can find that silver lining that reminds you of goodness. (Hint: look in the mirror.)

Big title with lots of promise so now I guess I better live up to it.

Life is busy! Good busy! I feel like I’m in a constant juggling mode trying to fit in all the things that fill me up.

A good thing but also very draining. At times it can be a struggle to find the balance between doing all the things and having a chance to be still. I take this as a sign of a lucky life, but some days it does get to be a lot.

I’m learning that I don’t need to do all the things on my lists. Yes, I make lists of everything I want to accomplish in a day. I do this for both work and non-work activities. I usually prioritize my lists so I know what to do next. Yep, I’m that person who writes their grocery list so it follows the layout of the grocery store…

But sometimes like this past weekend, I write the list, I prioritize it, and then I forget about it. And to top it off, I went to the grocery store without a grocery list (never doing that again-I spent a bunch of money but didn’t really buy anything I could eat immediately)…

So, what about the latest and greatest? Well, I’m reading three books right now and I recommend all three:

• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell – I’ve just started this but I can tell it’s a good one.
  
• Book of Lives A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood – I’m 300 pages into this 500+ page book and I’m hooked. What a mind! Fascinating. Now I want to read all of Margaret Atwood’s novels.
  
• Glucose Revolution by Jesse Inchauspé – this is a science-backed book about how our bodies metabolize glucose. I’ve incorporated quite a few of Jesse’s “hacks” and the big payoff so far is I’m eating a lot more vegetables.

Next up on my to read pile are: Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman and Joyride by Susan Orlean.

In between all this reading I’ve been trying to get into a routine of riding my bike in the basement, lifting heavy things and putting them down, and playing hockey. Soon I’ll add fat biking (though the impending rain will dampen this pursuit) and swimming to this list of sweaty movement. Just looking at it I wonder how it will all come together.

But it always does. Somehow I create these long lists of activities and they all end up getting done. Occasionally at the peril of other to do’s like cooking meals, putting laundry away, or cleaning out the fridge.

I’m also still moving along with my A Drawing A Day for 365 Days project. Admittedly, I haven’t been able to draw every single day. See above for reasons why some days I just can’t make it happen. But I am drawing way more than I have ever done.

And if I do say so myself, the more I draw, the better I’m getting. Huh – who knew this axiom actually held true?!

My friend Sheri Jay has been posting a daily LEGO Advent Calendar word/theme for the month of December. I’ve been using these posts as inspiration for some of my drawings.

And if you don’t follow me on Instagram, you’ve been missing out… so here are some of my latest drawings with the associated LEGO Advent Calendar word – you may need to click the photo to see the full drawing:

And really, that’s about it. I am of course fully immersed in watching all the PWHL Ottawa Charge and Montreal Victoire games I can. There really is something so special to me about seeing women playing professional hockey. It’s hard for me to explain but it is just so inspiring and affirming.

So there you have it—the latest and the greatest!

I hope your days are filled with heaps of latest and greatest.