Day 1: Speaking with Dr. Laura Markison

The ride has begun!

Over the last few years, I’ve gotten to know Tim very well. He is gifted, dedicated, and motivated. But he is not a highly experienced cyclist, and he has not trained and raced at the highest levels for years. In fact, he was a recreational cyclist who rode his bike a few miles occasionally. So, how does one go from nearly zero miles to a 3,000+ mile bike ride across America? And the bonus question: How does one safely and properly prepare in only nine months?

When you’re carrying custom racing trikes, you need a custom rack…

My defense to the superhuman perfectionism was to do nothing, quit, put no effort into it, and/or have no emotional investment in the outcome. It was hard not to have an emotional investing in the outcome of things for me, so most of the time I did nothing or quit. Yet, in many areas of my life, I didn’t quit. I wish I knew why, I just didn’t.

Over the years I’ve become much more comfortable discussing the topic of child abuse and doing so with a wide range of people.  Some people seem to have a sixth sense when it comes to discussing child abuse; they know what to say and when to say it.  Maybe more importantly, they know what not to say.  Other people seem to have whatever the opposite of the sixth sense is; and most people are somewhere in between.

The dream kept a spark alive in me. Baseball was my salvation; it gave me a place to escape the rest of my life. While I lived in constant fear, on the baseball field and in my baseball dream, I was not alone, I was not worthless; I mattered and people cared about me.

As a child being sexually and physically abused, I developed survival skills. I became adept at disassociation, internalizing, disappearing, isolating, and taking it if all else failed. These survival skills were my defenses. They allowed me to stay alive and, more importantly, they protected something within me that wanted to be a good person, that wanted to be a good father, and that wanted to be someone that mattered.

As part of my recovery from being sexually abused as a child, I participated in several group therapy sessions. Most of the group sessions were me and a bunch of women. I realized that I had the same emotions as these women and struggled with them in vary similar ways. This was news to me.

At Athalonz, our mission is to help make the world a little bit better place. We do this by making athletic footwear that helps people enjoy athletics a bit more and by our humanitarian efforts. To expand our humanitarian efforts, we’ve created a non-profit organization called Interwoven Circles Foundation, which is the verbal description of Athalonz logo of three interwoven circles that represents connectivity of mind, body, and spirit.

It’s only in the last few years where I’ve overcome my fears and started speaking out. Silence is what abusers want and they often get it with fear and shame. Abusers have a talent for making the abuse seem to be the fault of the abused.

I was living what I thought was the American dream and yet I was depressed, suffered from panic attacks, had no self-confidence, had no self-worth, was extremely self-critical, and struggled with an eating disorder.

Was low energy when I woke up. Felt good once I got into the ride and saw this incredible sunrise.

Depending on the source, estimates of child sexual abuse in the United States range from 1-in-4 to 1-in-8 girls and 1-in-6 to 1-in-25 boys; with some estimates as high as 40% of all children. It’s impossible to get an accurate accounting of how many children (girls and boys) are sexually abused. Abuse victims, as children and later as adults, are reluctant to talk about their abuse due to fear, shame, guilt, doubt, memory loss, and/or a feeling it was their fault.