Last weekend, I was registered for, and I thought trained for the Ride to Conquer Cancer.  I had only been firmly registered for a week and I’d been more afraid of raising the money required to enter than I was of the ride itself.  It’s interesting how sometimes I get it completely wrong.

There is a mandatory minimum fundraising amount required from each participant who wishes to ride.  Twenty-five hundred dollars.  To me it seemed impossible.  Added to that, my upbringing of never asking anyone for money ever, I was reluctant to get started.  I know better than this. I know people want to help and they love to know they are contributing to some good in the world.   And yet I still couldn’t contain my complete astonishment when six days after signing up, and asking for donations on Facebook, I had fifty-three hundred dollars.  I’m still not sure I believe it.

The training was a different story.  Even though I hadn’t known I would be in this ride, I had been training for my upcoming race in Whistler in September so when the invitation came to join a team on the ride, the physical part of it just seemed like it was very doable -and that it would be great training for Whistler.  To be clear, the Ride to Conquer Cancer is hard.  The website described a two-day event.  One hundred kilometers each way, just east of the beautiful Rocky Mountains.  The course was described as hilly, with a lot of climbing in the first twenty kilometres and then nice gently rolling hills.  I knew I was trained.  And I felt nervous but ready.

You can image my surprise on race morning when I arrived at the start to hear someone announce, ‘We’re almost ready to get started on this epic 120km each way ride!’  The crowd cheered!  My training partner and friend, Rhonda and I looked at each other with that wide-eyed look of the shocked emoji.  In fairness, when you’re standing among 1800 riders, some of whom have yellow flags on the back of their bikes signalling they have or have had cancer, it’s pretty hard to think that an extra twenty kilometres each day is a hardship.  We knew we had nothing to complain about.

The unexpected factor was the smoke in the air from the forest fires burning in British Columbia.  For the past two weeks, Alberta had been the recipient of some of this smoke which blew in on the jet stream.  Day after day Jim and I had locked our windows tightly and avoided outdoor exercise.  Every few days we would get a few hours of easy breathing air and then it was back to choking smoke.  And yet the forecast had predicted that the smoke would let up overnight on Friday and that Saturday the risk factor would be low.  Sunday was forecast for showers; this always helps with smoke.

When I woke up early Saturday morning to go pick up Rhonda and be at the start by 6:30, the smoke was awful.  It was far worse than it had been the past few days, and those days had not been good.  I wondered if the race would proceed. 

The start of the race was overwhelming.  I was overwhelmed seeing the yellow flags, indicating the wide-reaching impact of cancer. I was overwhelmed seeing the wife of the man who headed our team, in tears, knowing he was going to try to ride but that he would not make it far. I was overwhelmed to see his daughter and his grandchildren and his brother and sister-in-law out in the early morning light supporting him.  I was overwhelmed to feel the energy.  I was overwhelmed to have been asked to join.  I was overwhelmed at the smoke.

As we biked along on Saturday morning, the mountains completely invisible because of smoke, riders disappearing into the smoke in front of us and finding it harder and harder to breathe, we said more than once, “If only we could get a breath of fresh air”.  The construction masks we donned helped but by kilometre 75, when we were told that the road had been closed, while our hearts were disappointed, our lungs were relieved.

The next day the smoke continued and I mentioned more than once that if only we’d been able to get a breath of fresh air, we would have been ok. 

On Monday morning I sent a letter to our team leader, thanking him for including me, thanking him for his grit in dealing with his unwelcome visitor called cancer, and letting him know I was disappointed we couldn’t finish the ride.  His reply, thanking me for my ride, let me know that we, those other four members of his team, were his breath of fresh air that smoky Saturday morning.

This past week, in our neighbouring province of Saskatchewan, a farmer, Brian Williams died the day before our race with his crops still in the field.  On Sunday, neighbours arrived in droves to harvest his 258-acre field of durum wheat.  Twenty combines drove in a V-formation and over one-hundred volunteers were on hand to help.  The job was complete in just a few hours.  I am guessing there was a lot of dust kicked up by those combines.  And I’ll be they were such a breath of fresh air for Brian William’s family.

My inquiry for you this week, ‘How can I be a breath of fresh air?’

Elizabeth is a life and leadership coach in Calgary, AB.  She provides leadership coaching for individuals and groups and she creates and facilitates custom workshops for corporate, public and private groups.  Contact Elizabeth to help you or your organization to figure out how to bring a breath of fresh air to your life or to your life’s work.

With the city too smoky to venture out into most days this week, I’ve taken the time to find some ‘indoor’ activities to amuse myself.  The pantry and my closet could have used my company, as could a couple of upcoming work projects, and eventually I’ll get there but my first choice has been to pick up my knitting.

I learned to knit when I was a little girl. I learned to crochet at about the same time.  I’ve only recently learned that it’s rare for a person to know how to do both.  Apparently, most people find that the one they learn first becomes their favourite and they either never learn the other or simply quit pursuing it.  I enjoyed both, I continued to do both and I taught my kids both.  A ball of wool and a hook or pair of needles is pretty cheap amusement.

Not long ago I was talking with one of my clients about the term unravelling.  She mentioned that she used to watch in awe as her grandmother would be crocheting an item, notice a mistake and then simply remove the hook and unravel the project until she reached the mistake.  At that point the hook was easily reinserted and she could start anew.   She loved the idea that mistakes did not have to be permanent; that they could be corrected with very little effort and with no waste of wool.

I was wishing that was the case with my knitting this year.

I’ve committed, to myself only, that I’ll complete one item for each of our kids, kids-in-law and little Benjamin before Christmas. This didn’t sound like a tough proposition in January when I had the whole year spread before me.  But now the pages of the proverbial calendar are turning quickly and I have some rapid needle clicking to take on. 

Since this project is a secret, I won’t divulge the details of each item.  Suffice it to say item number one has been the toughest so far.  The pattern is very intricate and involves some ‘cabling’.  This means that at certain points a few stitches need to be transferred to a stitch holder to be kept while doing some other work in the background.  Then the stiches are then reinserted into the body of the work.   This happens in this pattern many times in each row, making progress slower than it might be if it were simply straight knitting or purling.  

The detail of the work appeals to me. I like the finicky-ness of it all.  And I especially love to see the beautiful pattern emerge. 

You can imagine my horror when I went to lay my knitting down for the evening and noticed that one place where my held stitches were meant to go in front, they instead found themselves behind.  If my horror wasn’t apparent to you in the last line, perhaps this will bring it to life.  The mistake was not in the most recent row.  In fact, I had made the mistake about one week earlier.  Since I was knitting about three hours each day, that was about twenty or so hours ago. 

I tried to pretend this one little mis-stitch would not matter.  I took a picture of it and sent it to my sister Mary.  ‘What do you think?’ I asked.  ‘Yup.  I can see it.  You’ll know it’s there.’  Still not willing to admit what I would have to do to make this right, the next morning I found myself waiting at the door of the wonderful shop where I had bought the wool, Gina Browns.

‘Oh.  This is beautiful work’, they said.  And then added, ‘Yup.  We can see it.  You won’t be happy knowing all the work you put in and knowing it’s there.’

Still not willing to face all the work ahead of me, I queried if there was a way to correct it without taking the whole thing apart stitch by stitch.  Their disappointed faces matched my own.

Knitting is not like crocheting.  When knitting needs to be undone, it must be done so stitch by stitch, reversing the pattern.  It takes almost as long to undo a pattern like the one I was making as it does to knit it in the first place.   The only way to avoid this laborious process is to remove the entire project from the needles and then to start again. In the case of project number one for me, the mistake was not quite half-way back, so one-by-one was the way to go.  About 15 hours to get it off.  Then another twenty to get back to where I had been.

That project is finished now and I am well into project number three.  All this time knitting has given me time to ponder; this pondering of course may well be what got me in the above pickle to begin with.  Nonetheless, ponder I have.  I’ve been thinking about how I approach certain things in my life.  I think I can create two categories.  I have my crocheting bits of life; these are the parts that I don’t panic about making a mistake in.  Mistakes here can be easily remedied. While my focus does need to be on these projects, it does not require the same intense scrutiny needed in other places.  When I think about it, a lot of my daily living can fit in this category; taking care of daily chores, having friends and family over for dinner, going on adventures, exercising, networking, dancing and even parts of my teaching and coaching.

The knitting pieces of my life are different.  These are the bits I have built stitch by stitch.  I am noticing that all of these knit pieces involve relationships.  These are much harder and slower to build.  Sometimes the stitches are put on a holder and move to the background for a while.  A mistake made in one of them can easily be missed and when it is noticed, can take some time and care to repair.  Knitted projects are also much harder to unravel.  This gives me great peace realizing that unless I remove the entire project from the needles, with care, it can be mended.   What I also know is that if I choose not to go back and put in the work to fix it, I will always know I have not given my best. 

I prefer knitting to crocheting and relationships to things. I’m going to renew my effort to focus on each stitch of my relationships, to go back and see what projects I may have laid down for a while that need my attention, and in what projects I may have missed a stitch.

It’s a long cold winter without a nice knitted garment.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Am I knitting or crocheting?’
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Elizabeth is a life and leadership coach in Calgary, AB.  She provides leadership coaching for individuals and groups and she creates and facilitates custom workshops for corporate, public and private groups.  Contact Elizabeth to help you or your organization to figure out how to knit the relationships needed for success.

This week I’ve had the word ‘Grace’ running through my head.  Usually when this happens, I notice a reason.  But when I first noticed the presence of this word I couldn’t imagine why I was thinking about it and I assumed it too, like so many of my thoughts, would fly right out of my mind.

Not so.

Grace has been persistent.  After being cooped up in the house for more than a week with a nasty virus, I dared to hop on my bike earlier this week, before the forest fire smoke filled the Calgary skies.  As I biked along, loving being on the pathways, loving the movement of my body, aware that my lungs were not where I wanted them, there she was again; Grace.

I could not get the word out of my head.  Sometimes when I can’t stop thinking about something, my solution is to decide to really think about it; that’s where I’ve found myself this week.  Thinking about and looking for examples of Grace.

I always thought I wanted to grow old with Grace.  In my younger years, what I really think I thought that meant was that I would somehow defy aging, thus being graceful in my continuous youth.  Alas, as many of us have come to realize, try as we might to stop them, if we are very lucky, the years keep coming.  I always hoped Grace would just come along for the ride.   And yet so often I have found myself confronting some of the new limits in my life with Grace nowhere to be found.
Such has been the case over these past couple of weeks.  Not feeling well, not being able to do my regular things, not being able to train for my upcoming events, found me not only feeling physically worn out, but I was downright fed up.  Grace took herself to a less miserable home I’m sure.  She certainly was not here.

Grace, like her meaning is not easy to pin down.  When I looked for Grace in the dictionary she seemed to have two main meanings.  One is the Christian definition which refers to receiving the favour of God for no apparent reason.  When we say, ‘There but for the Grace of God, there go I’ we mean that we recognize that whatever misfortune has befallen another, could just as easily have happened to us.  In other words, there is no logic for why we were spared other than we were the benefactor of Grace.

The non-religious definition refers to many things.  Grace was defined as moving with effortless elegance, a charming or attractive trait, and the quality of being kind considerate and thoughtful.  Oh my, I really missed the mark this past week.  Not only was I not moving with effortless elegance, I could not have been described as charming; cranky perhaps, not charming.

When I really think about the idea of Grace being effortless elegance, I bristle a bit.  There is something about the word effortless that rubs me the wrong way.  When I think of a dancer, I think of Grace.  Although such an artist may move about on a stage in a way that is incredibly beautiful and gives the illusion of a lack of effort, the truth is there is great effort needed to achieve this effect of Grace.  If it was easy, we would all be on stage.  Interestingly, this idea of great effort is where I find my peace with Grace.  I know how to do big effort; I must be able to achieve Grace.

I recognize that Grace will not simply come along with me for my ride into the rest of my life.  She will not be content to be my pretty sidekick. If I want to be blessed with Grace in my life I will have to work very hard to convince her to take up residence with me.  The effort may equal any effort I have made in other life pursuits I found to be life-giving and rewarding.

I will have to treat this pursuit as I am treating my latest training program for biking. I need to practice, risk falling and accept that the journey will not be linear. It may not even be pretty at times.  And for a person like me who likes to check things off lists, I may never ‘get there’.

As I biked along pondering these deep thoughts early one morning this week, I saw a runner approaching me in the distance.  Jealous of him being able to run, I watched as he approached from afar, waiting to give my cheerful runners’ ‘Hi’.  As I got closer to him, I could see that he was not a fast runner.  Even closer, I noticed he held one arm very close to his body; it seemed to have no motion and it appeared to hang heavily.  It dawned on me that he was lagging on one whole side of his body.  I don’t know for sure, but I assume he had suffered a stroke. I don't know how old he was.  Younger than me.  As I approached him, I slowed slightly, raised my hand in the runners’ ‘Hi’ and smiled as I said a cheerful good morning.  He had no words in response, but he flashed me a huge smile.  Ah, Grace, there you are.

I’m on a search for Grace these days.   I suspect she’s closer than I realize.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Where can you invite Grace into your life?’

PS: I’ve signed up to ride in the Ride to Conquer Cancer next weekend.  It’s a 200km bike ride over two days. If you are able to sponsor me, please click here and you'll be redirected to my Profile Page for the race.  Thanks!


Elizabeth is a life and leadership coach in Calgary, AB.  She provides leadership coaching for individuals and groups and she creates and facilitates custom workshops for corporate, public and private groups.  Contact Elizabeth to help you or your organization to figure out how to incorporate Grace into your team.

Jim and I have been insulted this week by a particularly nasty virus.  Rare for us, we both woke up in the night last Wednesday saying, ‘’My throat is on fire”.  Since we had planned to help Kaitlyn and Matt with their move for the next few days, we assumed that some Vitamin C, lots of water and good sleeps would see us through.

You can imagine our shock when we both found ourselves in the Walk-In Medical clinic on Sunday morning.  Now, on antibiotics and under self-imposed quarantine, we still aren’t sure we’ve turned the proverbial corner.  But we have been able to watch quite a few stages of the Tour de France I had saved on the PVR.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of cycling this summer.  I’m getting ready for several big events.  One is the Sea-To-Sky Gran Fondo in Whistler, BC, in September.  A Gran Fondo is a fancy way of describing a bike race that is at least 120km, is timed, has a marked course and has course control - lanes closed to traffic. Needless to say, I’ve been training hard.  Needless to say, I’ve been less than amused to not be able to be out on my bike this week.  Needless to say, this virus is also what has allowed me the luxury of sitting in my living room watching of the Tour de France this week.  And needless to say, this has brought about my pondering of the term ‘blow-up’.

There is a whole language used by cyclists that would have an outsider to the sport shaking their head.  ‘Blow-up’ is one that caught my attention this week.  Can you use that in a sentence please? 

The commentator might say, ‘He has to be careful not to blow up’. 

Good grief; the visual is not nice. 

However, in cycling, when a person ‘blows-up’, it means that they have just completed a particularly extreme effort and they have simply run out of energy.  Just prior to blowing-up, the cyclist will enter the ‘red-zone’.  This means they are on the brink of ‘blowing-up’ and ‘blowing-up’ is now inevitable.  Their body will not allow them to take on nourishment – the one thing that could replenish their energy stores.

Watching the Tour, I’ve discovered relief, realizing that my training partner, Rhonda, who is also competing at Whistler, and I will likely never blow-up!  The tour riders easily double our speeds on climbs and often triple our speeds on the flat.  In addition, they don’t seem to weigh their bikes down with the paniers that allow us to carry plenty of food!

I’ve been thinking about how we use this term ‘blow-up’ in life.  We might use it to say that there was a blow up at work today. This refers to someone getting mad and usually yelling.  It seems an appropriate use of the biking term as I can only assume that just before the blow-up, they reach the red zone where they have simply run out of self-control.

I’ve also heard businesses use the term by saying, ‘Let’s blow this thing up’.  In this case it refers to making something more successful that anyone could have imagined.  Let’s be unstoppable, they might have said. Let’s shatter everyone’s preconceived notion of us.

On social media when something ‘blows-up’ it means that many, many other people suddenly engage with you via ‘likes’ or comments or photos.

In my life, there have been times when I have wanted to ‘blow-up’ the ideas that others hold about me.  I want people to see me differently than they do.  I don’t want them to think that what they think they know about me is all there is to know.  Alas, this is when I’m operating from the place of ‘If the whole world would just change for me, my life would be easier’.  The truth is, perhaps what I really need is for me to blow-up some of my self-beliefs.

What people think about us is often only a reflection of what we think about ourselves.  When we show a pattern of behaviour often enough, people classify us in a certain way.  It is only when we get brave enough to enter the red-zone; to risk laying it on the line; to risk blowing-up, that we are declaring what we want others to know about us.

Many people would not label me as a risk-taker.  I might agree with them.  But I also know I do have the capacity for risk -taking within me and I’m trying to exercise it more and more.  Last week, when Rhonda and I were out on our weekly long ride, a total of 91km including climbing the challenging mountain Highwood Pass, I blew a tire.  I hit a rock and experienced my first blow-up.  I couldn’t believe it.  I had just had brand new tires put on to avoid such an event.  The rock put a hole right through the new tire and the tube.  We were in the mountains, out of cell phone range, 17km from the car in bear country. 

We thought about our options; Rhonda could cycle alone to the car, leaving me to fend off the bears.  We could look helpless and hope for a passing motorist to stop.  Or we could, as Rhonda proposed, pretend we were on the Amazing Race and figure this thing out.

In my panier I had a new tube, and tools, placed thoughtfully there by Jim.  Rhonda had a pump.  Neither of us had one clue about how to change a tire.  If truth were being told, I had never even watched anyone change a bike tire.    I recalled at my last dental appointment, the wonderful Dr. Charanduk, a much better cyclist than I, had told me it’s easier to get a back tire back on the bike if it’s in its smallest gear.  So that became step one.  Rhonda had seen someone using the little plastic tool and she began to work on getting the tire off the rim.  You cannot imagine my joy when I opened the new tube and found some instructions to follow.  Let’s just say this, we won’t be hired to be the maintenance crew for a Tour de France bike team, and we did end up covered in grease, but we DID change that tire.  All by ourselves.

We completely blew up what we had previously thought about our limitations.  I was forced to get into the red zone of no turning back before this could happen.  I think we both came home prouder of the tire change than of the successful ride.  And when I posted a picture on social media?  Why my account blew up (I think 33 reactions qualifies as a blow-up?!)

My inquiry for you this week is, “What needs blowing up?”

Elizabeth is a life and leadership coach in Calgary, AB.  She provides leadership coaching for individuals and groups and she creates and facilitates custom workshops for corporate, public and private groups.  Contact Elizabeth to help you or your organization to figure out how to blow up pre-conceived notions that may be holding you back.