Pedals & Patience – Day 1

You don’t rebuild from power. You rebuild from presence.

I’m starting over.

After months of inflammation, fatigue, and one too many skipped rides, my VO₂ max has dropped to 19.2 ml/kg/min. Okay, my Apple Watch said that, and I’m taking it with a pinch of salt… but it’s not far off from reality. The truth is, I can feel it: I’m huffing and puffing just from a jog to the bus stop.

Well, there’s also the pollen allergy, but that’s… clinically terrible. Not even a dramatic way to say it.

My body, once conditioned and resilient, is currently operating below the average for sedentary adults.

And I’m not even sedentary.

But I live with an autoimmune disease. And lately, the stress has piled up, professionally, emotionally, physically. Some of it hit hard. Some of it just chipped away quietly, day by day. Either way, it pushed me away from movement, away from my breath, and eventually, away from the version of myself I’d worked so hard to build.

Today I got back on.

It wasn’t pretty. 150 bpm just minutes in. My legs spun easily, but my heart felt like it was sprinting through wet sand. I had Netflix on in front of me (Discovery of Witches, literally swooning), MyWhoosh running on my iPad, and a towel flung over my handlebars like a white flag.

Still, I kept going.

Not to crush a workout, just to show up for one.

Not glamorous. But everything starts here.

I finished 40 minutes in total.

The goal wasn’t performance, it was presence. And it mattered. Because this is what de-training looks like. This is what chronic illness and prolonged stress can do. It’s not failure, it’s fluctuation. And now, I get to document what it means to come back. Slowly. Kindly. Consistently. One thing’s for sure, I can’t wait to get back into my jersey and out on the road again. The sun is out.

This is the first post in a series I’m calling Pedals & Patience, a real-time journal of rebuilding my aerobic base, increasing my VO₂ max, and managing my health while doing it. If you’ve ever felt like your body let you down, or you let it down, you’re not alone.

You can follow along. You can ride with me.

And if all you can do is breathe today, that’s still movement.