Ever since I got back from Sea Otter I have been on the verge of getting sick. Well, that finally happened about 4 days ago. My chest felt like it was about to cave it it felt so heavy, my head felt like it was going to detonate, and my nose was running like crazy! 

This week really kicked my butt. I had to miss therapy on Monday, but I was still able to go Tuesday and Thursday this week. Wednesday I gave a presentation at a local college where I just talked about my accident, the things I've had to go through, and the things I've had to deal with on a daily basis. There are so many issues that a lot of people don't know so this was  a great opportunity to hopefully open people's eyes. Right when I got there it was pretty rough. I was feeling horrible and I almost cancelled. My stomach was killing me, which in turn was making my back hurt and on top of that my head was killing me. Not exactly the kind of state you want to be in before you get up on stage. I slowly started to feel better though and it went really well. I met a lot of really great people that said a lot of encouraging things.

There were even a couple guys there that were younger and were into both mountain biking and motocross and they came up to me and let me know that they were fans from when I was racing and that to me was awesome.

I'll be going back to the same college on the 8th to talk to more students so I hope even more will show up!

In other news...the auction is going great. I have put out press releases all over the place. The U.S, UK, Spain, France, etc. I still want to get a few out to the websites in Australia and Japan. There are a lot of amazing fans over there that would love some of these items.

Also, there is something that I need to put up on the auction site. As of right now I believe ALL of the George Hincapie jerseys, Levi Leiphiemer, and David Zabriskie jersey were stolen. I really can't believe it. I am still looking for them, but if I cannot find them I sincerely apologize for the people that have bid on them. I only just found out today otherwise I would have never put them online. They were sent to me about a week ago by 2-day air, but I still have yet to receive them. I have been on the phone constantly and again I am sorry. 

Tomorrow I am going to meet up with the Life Rolls On Foundation (liferollson.org) to talk about me becoming an ambassador for them. The foundation helps raise money for spinal cord research and works closely with the Christopher Reeve Center. They are going out in the morning to do some deep sea fishing, but that's just not for me so I'll just wait for the lunch part of things. :)

Oh and in other therapy related news I did something really cool last week. My therapist walks over and says, "so, do you want to do squats?" I was like, "is George Bush an idiot? Of course I want to do squats!!" Okay, now they were stand out squats they were the ones where you lie down and then just push your body weight. We weren't exactly sure what was going to happen. My therapist just held my feet at the bottom so they wouldn't fall and then I pushed up as hard as I could and hot damn I did it!! I could pull myself back down and then push back up again. I must have done them like 50 times. I didn't want to stop! It felt great. I've done so many squats training for racing that you'd think I'd be sick of them, but no way. I'll do them for the rest of my life if I can. Heck, how do you think I got my booty! ;) So hopefully I've got more to tell you again next week about therapy. 

K, well I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll write more soon.

tara

Never Give Up!