My Story and Why I Ride
Training is the act of practicing resilience. I’ve spent the better part of the last year in physical therapy, recovering from injuries and surgery, and in daily pain. This spring, after I was cleared to ride again, I started to notice that the more I rode, the better I felt. My brain told me movement would hurt, but the fixie I built to take to college showed me something different. Walking still hurt, sitting for too long still hurt, but biking didn’t. I might be sore from working out, but my joints and my soul felt better.
At times it has been hard to keep the faith and believe today could be a day with less suffering; today could be the day I don’t hurt all day; today I will continue healing, even if I don’t feel it yet; today can be different. This is the journey of resilience, of finding our inner buoyancy as we learn how to thrive.
This is also the journey of the patients at Boston Health Care for the Homeless, and as I grumble many afternoons about getting on the bike, I think about the patients I met as an EMT or playing bingo at Barbara McInnis House. I ride for myself, but I also ride for them.
I am mostly pain free now, and after a month of low-impact base training and weeks of gradually increasing workouts, am on track enough to announce I am registered to ride in the Seacoast Century on September 24th with a goal of raising $1,500 for BHCHP.
While at this point in my training it seems silly, some days I still worry about not making it to the ride. My wife and I welcomed our first child this spring, and sleep is not always a given. However, in some ways, making it to the ride is irrelevant. The point is that I keep getting on the bike and continue believing that it will get better. The same thing BHCHP’s patients are doing. Every day waking up and taking the chance that today can be different, that today we can heal, one day at a time, one pedal stroke at a time.
Boston Health Care for the Homeless
Since its founding in 1985, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) has been driven by a simple, yet powerful mission - to ensure unconditionally equitable and dignified access to the highest quality health care for all individuals and families experiencing homelessness in our community.