Cycling mummy

I know I'm not the only mummy in the Valkyries at the moment, and I'm sure there are a few other cycling mummies / potential cycling mummies, so thought I'd share a few thoughts about the fun / challenges of being a cycling mummy.

I first got on a road bike 3 months before I got pregnant with my daughter, who is nearly 4. I loved it. I loved the early mornings, the freedom, the exhilaration, the friendships, the fitness and yes, even the cold mornings. And then I was pregnant. I felt rotten, and despite a few friends encouraging me to keep riding in the early stages as there are very few risks to the baby, I couldn't stop throwing up so there was no riding. I then entered an 18 month "period of confinement" from my bike, which, given I only had a 3 month base was, to say the least, a very long time.

To be honest, I found it really hard getting back on the bike after having my daughter. I wasn't fit anymore and I didn't know who I could ride with as I didn't expect I'd be able to keep up with anyone. And I could no longer spend all weekend out riding as, not only did I miss my baby, but my husband also had commitments and we were working together / around each other as best we could. But I love riding my bike, and my husband realised what a difference this made to how I was feeling about adapting to the new mummy version of me, so encouraged me to keep getting back out there. I started riding more regularly with the Bilbys from then, and even ended up doing their novice program that year (which is surprising given that, at the time, I couldn't swim 50m and my run was more of a hobble!). I had a ball with the Bilbys, but quickly realised that I'm really not a triathlete and my heart really is on the bike.

Enter a few crits and road races and I was hooked. Well, that is until I was pregnant with my now 19 months old son. I didn't get sick at all with my son, so kept riding in the early stages of pregnancy. That is until I came down in a bunch crash and I decided that, for me, it just wasn't worth the risk to continue to ride while pregnant. And then came my next "period of cycling confinement" - this time for only 9 months or so. I was very fortunate to have some good girlfriends who were also into triathlon / cycling have babies at much the same time I had my son. It made such a difference to have friends going through the same thing to encourage us all to get back out there again. And they all understood the 2-hour cycling limit that I had in the early days thanks to my little boy who really did not want to be bottle fed.

Somehow we managed to get into a regular training cycle, and then started to think about training goals, something I can pretty much guarantee I would not have thought about had it not been for the encouragement of these friends. We'd have great "mummy" rides on Saturday mornings and the dads would bring the kids down to post-ride coffee, where the older kids could run around in a way that only a toddler / preschooler can, and the babies would sleep peacefully (or not, depending on how they were feeling on the day). Time away from the kids on our rides was priceless, even if we only talked about what the kids were up to and other mummy-related topics. I'm sure we alienated non-mummy cycling friends during this period, which I'm sorry for, but I loved, and to some extent needed, my mums-group-on-wheels.

One of my mum-friends and I decided we were going to train up for the Tour of Bright 2010. We hit the training hard. I found it really challenging with two kids to get up and do morning bunches, as inevitably, I'd be home late and it put too much pressure on us getting out the door for daycare / preschool / work. So I improvised a proportion of my training during this time, by spending a fair part of it on the windtrainer. I found this to be so convenient, as I could hop on / off as needed (and I didn't need to kit up for a Canberra Winter!), but also a fantastic workout (thanks to Coach Troy and the Spinervals DVDs!). Coach Troy would have been proud of the puddles of sweat that collected under my bike during each of these sessions. ;-)

Despite the windtrainer being great for fitness and working around my busy mummy schedule, it wasn't great for on-the-road skill and the social side of cycling. I was trying to get some more on-the-road skill in a fortnight or so before the Tour of Bright when I unfortunately came a cropper with a car. Nothing too serious, but it was enough to rule me out of the ToB and to put months of training to waste. I felt pretty awful for a period after that, mostly because of the extra pressure that the whole episode put on my family and the constant thought that it could have been so much worse and what that would have done to my kids (and husband!). But that's probably a topic for a separate blog post...

But I'm back on the bike, albeit currently sporadically (but that's more because of my currently ridiculous workload than anything else). So what are my current challenges of being a cycling mummy:
(a) my 3-year-old always needs an extra kiss before I ride off, which means I am NEVER on time to start a ride (although this means I get great ITT practice in!);
(b) when my husband and kids come to post-ride coffee, instead of sitting down I hang up my Sidis and run around with a sheep on my head while my husband has a break from a hectic morning looking after two kids under 4 (on the plus side, this means that I generally don't get too much lactic accumulating while sitting at the cafe, which makes a difference in terms of soreness / stiffness!);
(c) my 3-year-old borrows my kit and pretends to be me while she rides up and down the street on her bike, and then when I ask her whether she has seen my [helmet / knicks / jersey / raincoat] she swears that she never had / has never seen it / has no idea how it ended up under her bed;
(d) on a related note, my 3-year-old takes pride in telling everyone that "she fell off like mummy" if she bins it on her bike. I'm concerned on this note, as coordination is not my strong point...;
(e) I do feel guilty when my rides take longer than I expect and my husband is being Mr Mum at home while I'm swanning about on my bike. But as Sir Callahan said to me on the way back from the Wagga Handicap, guilt is stupid and it's healthy for kids to see two parents with happy lives that don't necessarily revolve around them. At least, that's what I think he said in my post-race high / been up since 4:45am exhaustion...
(f) my son was a really refluxy baby, which meant that for the first 12 months of his life, I was completely incapable of getting out for a ride without getting baby spew on me. Baby spew and sweat does not make for a match made in heaven. In fact, I'm now wondering if that's why everyone started to give me a wide berth in the bunch. That, or, see reference to my coordination noted at para (d) above;
(g) it's really awesome when you race to hear "go mummy" from the sidelines during a race, and then when you're watching cycling on TV and your kids are convinced that that's you in the peloton (yep, in case you're wondering, I've now ridden twice in the Tour de France); and
(h) my sanity NEEDS me to get out on the bike. Cycling is my "me" time, where I'm not being pulled in a million different directions.

I often talk with other mums who say that they wish they could get into cycling, but they can't because of the kids. Yes, cycling with kids is more challenging than cycling without them. But with a bit of extra organisation / willingness to be flexible / improvise some training (not to mention a very supportive partner), it's infinitely achievable. Not all mums want to get out there and train and race, and that's fine too - cycling isn't all about training hard and racing, there's a lot of quality friendships to be made, money to be spent on bikes and associated paraphernalia and coffee to be drunk as well. ;-)