I was always the sick, weird kid.

I have asthma. And if you google asthma, you’ll see there are many different types. I basically have them all. As I kid I remember being sick…a lot. I recall lots of sleepless night struggling to breathe. I have never, ever in my whole life, run a mile. Each year in school when we had to run the mile, I always had a doctors note and my inhaler. And while most kids dreaded the mile, I always wanted to do it. I’ve always been on the more athletic side. But due to my asthma, I couldn’t do a lot of sports. I played softball, volleyball, I was pretty into figure skating. But overall, every sport I played, I always was on the side lines while the others were doing conditioning. The only thing that made me feel normal…riding my bike.

For some reason (and I’m sure there’s a highly scientific medical reason for while I’m unsure of) I was always able to ride my bike, for long distances, without my asthma flaring up. For someone who has been constrained for so long, the bike was freedom. I would always have my inhaler in my bike bag – but I rarely needed it. And throughout high school, I would ride and ride and ride. I would ride 50+ miles on the regular, escaping down bike paths, exploring new neighborhoods, or riding out to the shores of Lake Michigan. My bike was my escape. And a way to feel normal.

In college, I started riding less as demands and life changed. I moved to Florida, a place that hasn’t always been as bike friendly as it is today, and stopped riding all together. And then a friend of mine suggested taking a spin class. I honestly to God thought she was talking about a class where you spun in circles. No thanks. Once I realized that it was a bike-based class I was hooked. This was my outlet for the last 15+ years or so. But kids and work and life just made getting to the scheduled class a no-go. There is something about sitting in a dark room, pedaling it all out, and controlling the pressure. You are competing with no one, except yourself. I love that if I’m pushing too hard and my asthma kicks in, I can take some pressure off and get my breathing under control, without anyone else knowing. As someone who has always wanted to blend in, the spin bike got me there.

And then I saw a commercial for some Tour de France bike. Dear lord did I want one for my house. And then I started hearing about a Peloton. I talked it over with the mister, and we looked at the price and laughed. Ahhh. To be rich.

Instead, we decided to take tennis lessons. We both used to play and it seemed like a great thing we could do together. And it was, until it wasn’t. One day, while playing in a doubles game, I twisted and hit the ball, and for some reason my body kept twisting and before I knew it I was on the ground and blacked out. I wasn’t sure what happened, but when I looked up, there were a bunch of people standing over me and I realized I could not get up. I had torn my ACL. During an appointment with my surgeon, he suggested I take a leave from tennis. I joked that perhaps this was my excuse for a Peloton, and he basically applauded the idea.

That bike arrived just a few days after my surgery while I was still on large amounts of pain medicines and had a full on brace. I remember the delivery people looking at me like I was a mad woman. Oh…I am.

A few days later, with doctors blessings, I got on that bike and rode for 10 minutes, with no resistance. It was an incredible effort to just get my leg around in a full circle. My physical therapy went so smoothly, and they were so impressed that I was riding at home, which they credit to a quicker recovery.

Now, it’s been over two years since that surgery, and I don’t know if I’ve fully recovered. It’s a weird thing, the ACL. I feel like I can tell you when it’s going to rain based on how my knee is feeling. I’m still a little too scared to play tennis again. I want to go skiing, a sport that I’m decent at, yet, I’m scared. I don’t even know if I’m fully comfortable riding outside at times. I think about the knee a lot and worry about re-tearing it. It’s just a mind game. But when I do ride outside, I love to take pictures of my beautiful bike in my beautiful surroundings.

But on my Peloton, it’s like I’m a normal, fully functioning human being. This weekend, I hit a big Peloton ride milestone, 1,000 rides. Now, I know numbers are just numbers. In the bigger picture, it means nothing. But it means a lot to me. It means I have gotten on this bike more then 1,000 times for me. It means that there are thousands of miles I have done with this knee and my cadaver graph (thank you to my donor!). It means that I haven’t let my asthma hold me back, even on days that I haven’t felt great.

This bike has introduced me to an amazing community. It has reminded me of music that I love that I’ve forgotten about. It has made connected me with real life friends in a new way. It has saved my mental health during a pandemic. It has made my doctors marvel at my blood test results. I may not look like an athlete, but I am one.

I have put together some of my favorite Peloton moments and milestone shoutouts from previous rides. I am so very grateful to Christine D’Ercole for sharing her authentic self with the Peloton community. Her words, her wisdom, her coaching and her playlists are what drive me to be better and do better. She is a badass instructor, who shares her experiences and makes you realize, we all have our battle scars. We all have things we hide from the world, or wish we could change. But…what if…those are the things that make us stronger?

See y’all on the leaderboard! Follow me at #TheJenShow.