September of 2018 was my first ever gravel ride. I was instantly hooked. I was 47 years old.
By the Summer of 2019 (48 years old) I had a new love in my life ~ my gravel bike, and we were going places I never imagined I would on a bicycle; The gravel roads of the Black Hills National Forest in Wyoming, The Driftless in Minnesota, and up to the Chequamegon National Forest in Wisconsin.
In 2020 and 2021 (49 & 50 years old), the travels continued to many of the same places, plus we added the gravel roads around ROAM Adventure Basecamp in Wisconsin, The Flat Tops Wilderness of Colorado, and The Gunflint in Minnesota. Those two years were pinnacle years for me as a gravel cyclist. I felt that I was at a cycling, and physical, peak. I felt great, and I was having a hell of a good time riding my gravel bike.
By November of 2021 I had fallen so deeply in love with riding gravel that I turned to Kurt on our last ride of the Season on November 7th near ROAM and said “I want to ride as much gravel as I can for as long as I can”. [I’ve mentioned that in our Cabin Stories, it is in part why we now have The Crash Pad.] I knew in that statement that time was moving fast, I was feeling good, and it likely would not last at that level forever. I just didn’t know that ‘not forever’ was actually happening at that time.
At the age of 51, in early 2022 I decided to call myself an athlete. This felt like a big step. For a woman who never participated in sports in school, who never was on a bicycle team, who never went on group bicycle rides, and who considers herself more of a soigneur than a cyclist ~ this was a big mental shift for me. I was starting to understand that what defines a female athlete isn’t being an elite athlete, it is being a woman who exercises. In fact, exercise had been my lifestyle for a long time.
Concurrently with my increase in gravel cycling, I had started virtual cycling classes with The Fix Studio in October 2020, and shortly thereafter I also started doing Core + Strength Classes with The Fix (more on that in a separate story). Additionally, in May of 2020 Kurt and I began doing Yoga with Adrienne. I was exercising almost every day of the week, and I was beginning to understand I was what my friend Sophie would call “an everyday athlete”.
What I didn’t foresee in any of this, especially not in November of 2021 when I said that quote and we decided to build a cabin so we could spend more of our time gravel cycling, was that by Spring of 2022 the wheels would fall off.
We were already well underway with our cabin by the Spring of 2022, with many trips up to the property over the Summer, and sneaking in gravel rides when we could while we were there. But by July both Kurt and I were realizing that something was not quite right with me.
Things started to happen to me that weren’t ‘me’. I was having extreme fatigue at odd times (for me) during the day. Only a napper on weekends, it was starting to feel like I could barely function and like I could/should crawl into bed during weekdays. I fought the urge, but was thankful I was mostly working from home so I could fight through it. On many a bicycle ride with Kurt in the city, I was dogging it. It felt like I could barely do the rides I had done hundreds of times and on many occasions, it was starting to feel like I wasn’t sure if I would make it home. It was a bit like biking in slow motion and I had zero energy. I also remember trying to do my virtual classes at least once a week that Summer and struggling significantly; I stopped going.
Kurt knows me well, and as my main (only) riding partner, he also knew I wasn’t riding like myself. Neither of us understood why I wasn’t riding like me. It was becoming a real bummer of a Summer because one of the most important parts of my life, riding bicycle, was becoming one of the hardest things I had ever done. All my dreams of Summer cycling seemed like they were imploding.
On July 5th 2022 I got together in person for a kombucha with my coaches, and friends, Sophie and Otte. When I mentioned my cycling struggles, it was Sophie who said I might want to talk to her friend Rasa who is a nutritionist.
At some point in there, Kurt and I decided to grill a steak for dinner. Being ‘flexitarians’, eating meat was more like a biannual event for us. The next day I had a FANTASTIC bicycle ride, it was like I was an entirely new person. Kurt noticed and said, “I think you have an iron deficiency” ~ and I started thinking he was right.
So I called the nutritionist Sophie had recommended. Before even having me meet her, the nutritionist gave me advice on getting bloodwork and what tests to ask for from my doctor. She also thought I might have an iron deficiency. Spoiler alert ~ I did have an iron deficiency. But that wasn’t all.
What I learned many months later in retrospect was that both the fatigue and the iron changes I was noticing in my body were both what I would call ‘quiet’ symptoms of the menopause transition. So quiet it is easy to not notice them. So quiet as an athlete it is easy to think they are happening for reasons other than what now seems so obvious to me ~ the MPT (the menopause transition).
I had always thought menopause was something that happened one day; you essentially no longer had your period, and you maybe had hot flashes. So little I knew.
What I wish I had known, and that I do know now, is that during late perimenopause (which I was in) and the MPT (which I was in) is that your hormones are far from an even line, instead they are constantly fluctuating and changing. Those extreme hormonal fluctuations have all kinds of side effects. One of which for many women is fatigue. Another of which can be an iron deficiency.
In the meantime, what I want you to know if you are an athlete of any type, and you are a woman - you too will go through the MPT and you should be aware that there are many, many, many symptoms during this time of transition. And many of them are what I call ‘quiet’ symptoms.
As an athlete it is so easy to attribute symptoms to something other than the reality of what it is (MPT). And because so few people have been educated ~ it’s quite easy for well meaning people, even professionals, to corroborate with you, or to not have the best information for you.
And it is SO easy to think you have one problem (for me an iron deficiency), when in reality a whole subset of changes are at work on your body and solving the one problem, may not actually solve the bigger problem.
Once again I urge you to find the right doctor. Once again I can not overstate the importance of ‘your team’ to help guide you through the transition, because one professional may not have all the answers. Once again I can not stress enough how important it is for you to educate yourself so that you can advocate for yourself.
In upcoming stories I will share my experience with my iron deficiency, my journey working with a nutritionist, and what has happened to my workouts in the last two years.
Bonus content: After I wrote this story, and right before I published it, I heard a podcast the mirrored a lot of my experience above. I wondered, ‘would it have clicked if I had heard this then?!’. Perhaps it will for you.