Today I made a big decision. The Haute Route is not going to happen, at least not this year. It was a difficult decision, but ultimately the right decision.

As most of you know, I’ve been recovering from a stress fracture for the last several weeks, and had trained on it for a few months prior. The sports medicine doctor had told me that the potential recovery timeframe could work with an event of this scale, but at that point, the injury did not seem as bad as it was. The thought was that I would be relatively pain-free, not need crutches, and get to cross-training (swimming) fairly quickly. None of those wishes came true.

Although there has been minor improvement, and the crutches are no longer necessary, the healing has been slow. The crucial moment was just a few days ago when I swam for the first time. Everything went well during the swim, but soreness lingered for a couple days afterward. The doctor advised me that I could continue swimming, but only with a careful amount of rest in between.

With each week, I have been losing valuable training time. Since I’ll have to resume slowly and carefully, it will still be awhile before I can really push the intensity. The reality is, a lot of training is required to succeed at an event like this. It is not the considered the highest and toughest cyclosportive in the world without reason.

I will heal, and if I pushed, I could complete the Haute Route event this year. The only problem is, I would not do nearly as well as I would like. The experience would be more suffering than it would be otherwise, would take more time on the bike, and simply not be as fun. Not to mention, my team has been training this entire off-season, and most likely would be well beyond me come August.

Most everyone I have talked to agreed that this was the right move. As Coach Bobby put it, this injury is most likely a one-time thing that needs to heal. At some point I will bounce back and be strong again.

As of present, I am looking into my options, but most likely I will defer my registration to the 2014 Haute Route. This gives me the comfort zone to focus now on my recovery without worrying too much about the training I’m missing, while not ruling out this amazing event for the future.

As for the rest of 2013, I have no doubt that plenty of adventures are waiting for me. There are lots of cycling playgrounds in the world. We’ll definitely have another big vacation, possibly another sojourn to Colorado, maybe a trip to France, maybe California, or maybe somewhere else entirely. And of course, I will spend a lot of time in the Blue Ridge, hopefully exploring some new areas.

For now, I’m being smart.