When I climbed aboard an upright bike in the gym yesterday to resume my hourlong 600-calorie-burn workouts and warmed up to “Shoot to Thrill,” the very essence of what I’d been robbed of à la COVID became all too evident: The euphoria in riding fast and hard and long to the rush of music that interacts with my nervous system in the same way a junkie’s does when sticking heroine into their arm.

It’s that epic.

The Option to Ride Outdoors, of Course

Oh, sure, I ride outdoors, too (without headphones), in the suburbs of Boston. I navigate a 25-mile loop designed with all left hand turns to make it challenging (and fun), requiring my person to practice hyper-vigilance and gumption. I got my first ride of the season under my belt on April 15, and rode over the next couple of weekends, but the virus would throw another roadblock into my world again: I lost my full time job on May 1.

Enter Stage Left: The Insidious Downward Spiral

On May 3, I took a nasty fall whereby my left knee hit the ground, taking the full brunt of my body weight, at the onset of our favorite 5-mile hike. A fallen limb laid unseen in the mud and as I stepped on it, it rolled under my foot. The dog retreated to my side. My husband Dennis entwined his arm in mine, helped me up and started wiping mud off my face. I remember thinking in a trance, leave the mud on my face, I like it, as my knee blew up with fluid. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. We managed the first mile’s steep incline and finished the hike an hour and some change later.

My mother saw the ace bandage around my knee the next day. She was parked at the end of our driveway and I stood talking to her by the garage. When I told her we finished the hike after I fell, she said I must not have hurt it too badly.

I had hurt it badly—seriously, Mom, you know me better than that—and went on meds to reduce the inflammation. The injury put a temporary end to my cycling outdoors and keeping up with lower body resistance work (plus HIIT, jogging and riding horses) and I had to resort to something simply god-awful for exercise: Pilates.

Yeah, the Second Fall

As Dennis cleaned the exterior windows of our porch I was endeavoring upon Boho Beautiful’s Pilates 21-Day Challenge, a full body 25-minute workout, inside the porch. For his benefit and my own commiseration I had repeated “this is so hard” throughout the various exercises.

Having completed the last series of glut-bleeders—heel beats, airplane and grasshopper pulses—I got up off the floor and retrieved a 30-gallon bucket of bird seed to top off our feeders and in a compromised attempt to keep the cat from escaping out the door, I fell off the top step of our porch stairs. Dumbfounded to a galaxy beyond the Milky Way, I laid there, my cheek mashed to the ground with Dennis crouching beside me, thinking did I just fall, again?

I sat up. The skin of my left shin, just below the injury site of the first fall, was abraded and began to swell. Dennis was waiting for some kind of communication from me. I told him I was okay. He helped me up. The cat was inside and at the door, meowing. We piled what we could of the bird seed back into the bucket. Numb (traumatized), I topped off the feeders; and for the remainder of the afternoon sat in my chair in the porch with a heap of ice piled on my elevated leg, watching the birds feed, and three chipmunks duke it out over the spilled seed. There were libations in the evening.

Leave No Carb Behind

The following morning. I woke up, feeling blue and teary-eyed. Dennis was “occupied” in the bathroom and I sunk into one of the kitchen chairs and began to sulk. The dog nudged my elbow, hey, what’s wrong.

I stayed in that chair for a week and bathed in self-pity. And ate. A lot. I mourned for that once “feel good feeling” in my body when I woke up in the morning. That residual fit-feeling that carried me from bike workout to bike workout and lent to my getting on the scale, reading the number, and saying, You go, girl.

The Impact of COVID Was Kicking My Ass

COVID weakened my defenses and I hadn’t even contracted the virus. It got me down and thinking negatively and those bad vibes influenced my world. But I hadn’t realized all this until I could climb back on that bike in the gym—when it was 90 degrees and hovering at 120% humidity outside, ruling out a ride in the extended hood—that I had lost all my power. The sense of power and feeling invincible that I get from doing “my sport.”

Cheryl Strayed, the author of “Wild,” says:

The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the mother***king sh*t of it.

This is what I do on the bike. I tackle the mother***king sh*t out of it. And I’m damn good at it.

Putting It into Gear

Is it disheartening that I could only keep my former pace for ten minutes on that first ride back at the gym? That I’ve put on more than ten pounds, am busting out of my bibs, and have lost that much stamina?

No, it’s not disheartening. Because now I see how my opponent wormed its way into taking me down; making me powerless and vulnerable.

So get lost, COVID, you stupid virus. I see what you are, but you watch me. Because I’m taking my power back. Right now.