Last night I watched the finale of Great British Bake Off and I must admit I found my eyes getting a tad watery when the winner, Nadiya Hussain said:

“I am never going to put boundaries on myself ever again. I’m never going to say I can’t do it. I’m never going to say maybe.I can, and I will.”

Something to remember the next time you’re not sure, you hesitate or you hold back.

You know when you have a sore knee and there are days when it hurts less and days it hurts more. Regardless of the hurt, you try your best to do the things you enjoy and not let the hurt worry you too much. You wait for it to get better, hoping and believing that it will. Delaying that call to your physiotherapist and try some new stretches or some extra ice in the evening.

While I don’t have a sore knee – I do have a very angry colon and it’s kind of like that sore knee. Right now my colon is determining what I can and can’t do. While I try my best to maintain control, it’s a real challenge to assert this. Instead my colon is holding me captive and has got me in a holding pattern.

A holding pattern of generally not feeling very good at all. I have days when I feel better than the day before but honestly these better days really aren’t that great. After being sick for so long, my perspective on what “feeling good” and “feeling bad” really means are quite different from most people.

I’ve been in this flare since June 20. This is the longest flare I’ve been in since my diagnosis in 2009. Admittedly, this flare is starting to wear me down. I have days when I just can’t understand why this is happening to me. I shout out loud when I’m riding my bike and when I’m alone in the car. I shout at the sky, tears streaming down my face, demanding answers. But there are no answers. There are just the facts. The fact is I’m sick. I have to wait and maybe the new medication will work. We’ll know in eight weeks if the new medication is going to work.

Yes, eight more weeks of waiting. Eight more weeks of wondering. Eight more weeks of shouting at the sky. Eight more weeks of my answering the question “how are you feeling?” with “ah, pretty good”. Very few of you get an honest answer from me… You do the same thing. You could have an extremely sore knee but when I ask you how you’re feeling, you’ll shrug your shoulders, smirk and say “oh pretty good”.

I wish I could wake up tomorrow and be better. And in fact I did have a two week run where I tricked myself into believing that I was “cured”. Yep, a desperate person will believe anything… My symptoms went away. I felt like I did in early June. But this two-week reprieve is long gone. I’m back to where I was before (but a bit worse). I don’t know why my colon cut me some slack for two weeks – likely part of some big cruel joke on its part to get my hopes up. I’m starting to wonder if I’m actually the one in charge here.

So for now, life rolls along like normal. I work. I ride my bike. I race my cyclocross bike. I eat food that I enjoy. I wait.

With September’s arrival comes cyclocross season.

There is something so special about cyclocross. (I know I write this every year….) It’s hard to pinpoint but I think tonight’s experience explains it well.

Imagine a small park with a bunch of flags organized in a 4 x 4 grid pattern on a hill and one lonely barrier in the flat at the bottom. Add into this picture nine women ranging in age from their mid-20’s to late-60’s. These women are riding all types of bikes from disc-brake enabled bikes to bikes with flat pedals. There is a set start time for the session but people arrive when they can make it based on their schedule. Everyone is relaxed and smiling.

The ladies ride around, practicing slow dismounts and mounts. Sometimes they stop and simply practice lifting their right leg over the saddle. Then they practice lifting their bikes and putting them down. They do seemingly simple and basic tasks over and over again. No one complains. They listen. Sometimes it looks like they’re just riding in a circle, but really they’re practicing always looking ahead. Looking ahead to the next barrier, the next corner, the next patch of gravel, the next obstacle.

Eventually the ladies move on to the flag grid on the hill. Working on their uphill cornering, momentum and forward focus, these women keep riding and pedaling. They are getting better. Soon it’s time to move on to a new drill. Riding the grid down the hill, no front brakes allowed and always pedaling. We discuss and dissect the best way to do this. Everyone moves forward.

At the end of the session, we talk about what to work on next week. We discuss some things to think about during the pre-ride. We talk about the different races in our local schedule. We talk about the great success that some of our junior riders are having – two of them off to the World Road Racing Championships and one a member of the Senior National Whitewater Paddling team.

Everyone is so happy to be out again riding bikes together. On Sundays, these women are all competitors and racers but once the race is over so is the competition. On Mondays we’re back together, working with one another to improve and keep moving forward.

This is what cyclocross is for me. These sessions have me feeling like myself again – the enthusiasm from this small group of women is contagious and motivates me to look forward. Who would of thought a barrier, some flags, a bike and a small park could do this?

Earlier in the week I said to Marc, “why don’t I just get it cut out?”.

On Thursday I asked my gastro doctor’s resident the same thing “why can’t you just cut it out?”.

It being my colon.

I learned on Thursday from my gastro doctor that if I really do want “it cut out”, I can have this done. He then went on to tell me that I have one other drug option left – a drug that was only recently approved by Health Canada.

So there are two treatment options left: have my colon removed or try the new drug.

It’s was a tough decision to make sitting in a small consulting room with a resident, second-year medical student and my gastro doctor siting there. My eyes were bleary and I felt like my heart was pounding so loudly that everyone could hear it.

I asked a lot of questions. I asked my gastro doctor what he would do.

And here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to try the new drug. We’ll know within three months if it’s going to work. If it works, there are no guarantees on how long it will work. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have the surgery.

The last few days have been a bit scattered and confusing. It’s one thing for me to say angrily to Marc and others “just cut it out” but quite another to hear this from my doctor.

So this is where I am.

Despite everything that is going on with my health these days, most days really still do revolve around bikes. Riding bikes. Deciding where to ride bikes. Determining which bike to ride. Planning rides. Recovering from bike rides. Getting ready for the next bike ride.

Up until mid-June I was training rather seriously for the upcoming cyclocross season. I had set a goal of winning the Canadian National Masters (40 – 49) title. A big stretch goal considering where my fitness was when I started training in January with Coach Steve Weller, but I knew that so long as I did the training, I had a good chance at achieving my goal.

Once I started training again with Steve I realized how much I missed structured focussed training. It gave purpose to my rides and better yet, I could feel and see myself getting stronger and faster. My confidence was really quite high and I was starting to feel like a bike racer again. Capping this off with a super two weeks of riding in France, and well – I was crushing on the bike again.

So now I’m no longer training with Steve. This was a mutual decision. Steve has been through this ulcerative colitis roller coaster as long as I have – he was my coach when I was first diagnosed, when I raced at the World Cyclocross Championships, when I was hospitalized in Belgium, when I fractured my L3 vertebrae and when I got very sick again. He and I have worked together for so long that it was hard to pick up the phone and tell him the bad news about this ulcerative colitis flare. I know he was hoping as much as I was that somehow this would be a short flare and I’d be able to get back to training again.

But, it was not to be. We’ve trained through flares before – sometimes it’s worked out okay and other times it hasn’t been so great. This time, just like the last time, we both knew that training had to take a back seat.

Admittedly, I was super disappointed and floundered for a bit. I couldn’t see the point really in riding without a training plan and focus on my goals. Those initial rides after I realized that this wouldn’t be a “short” flare were not fun – “what’s the point?”, “I’m just going to lose my fitness anyway”, “why bother?”. But here’s the funny thing – I feel so much better when I’m riding a bike.

Sure there are days when I’m tired and I drag myself around. But more times than not, I feel great on my bike. It’s like I’m not sick at all. I don’t know if this the endorphins or if it has something to do with the brain/gut connection (more research about this all the time). But when I’m riding, my cranky colon settles down and I can ride without thinking about my disease (sure there are some crazy cramps, issues with heat management, extra concerns over dehydration, and lots of bonking happening) – but really I feel normal.

So, this is why you’ll see me lining up at the Eastern Ontario Cyclocross Series this year. I’m a bit nervous about it. When I’m healthy it can be a struggle to get to the start line with my nervous “race” stomach… So I’m not sure what will happen now that I’m in a flare. But, I won’t know if I don’t try. I really don’t know how I’ll feel out there on the race course. Up until I got sick I was doing lots of tempo intervals, long base rides and had started to get into the pointy-end of things with some threshold work – but I know that I don’t have a top end or the ability to recover from hard efforts repeatedly. So, I’ll just go out and race. I’ll try to race with my head and my technical skills – and hopefully my fitness can hang on for 50 minutes. It’s a risk of course to race – managing getting to the start line with this kind of disease is not easy – but I know if I don’t try, I’ll feel worse.

It’s not the racing that makes me want to get out there – it’s the people. There is something special about the cyclocross scene and there is something extra special about the Ottawa cyclocross scene. In the moment the racing is serious, but as soon as the race is over, it’s completely different. It’s hard to put into words, but everyone is so encouraging, supportive, helpful and really is happy to see someone improve. It’s hard to pass up this experience and sit on the sidelines watching.

So, with this being said, I should put some wheels on my trusty cyclocross bike and get out for some barrier practice… The other day I realized that if I hadn’t gotten sick, I would have been working on my technical skills for a month now. Now instead I ride where the roads and legs take me. Some days I do a long road ride. Other days all I do is bike the 22 km to work and back. Weekends see me out on my mountain bike exploring and testing my nerves. It’s different but the same. At the end of the day whether it’s V02Max intervals or a steady ride to the coffee shop – it’s still bicycle riding.