I RODE THROUGH PAIN. YOU SHOULDN'T. HERE'S WHY.

AND WHILE "PAIN" AND "SUFFERING" ARE OFTEN THROWN AROUND IN THE SAME BREATH, WHEN IT COMES TO THE BODY THEY'RE NOT, IN FACT, THE SAME.

- NATASCHA GRIEF

I VISCERALLY REMEMBER MY LAST RIDE. It was a Saturday morning in April two years ago, and a buddy and I were riding to a breakfast spot a few towns over. Twenty miles tops, all of them flat. I thought I would be okay.

By the time this ride happened, I could no longer remember what it felt like to ride a bike without pain. It would start within the first five, maybe ten minutes of a ride, spreading like a hot liquid from a specific spot in my low back, close to the spine. This was happening on every ride, even the easiest spin to the coffee shop.

Sometimes I would tell the people I was riding with that it was happening. Sometimes I would try to hide that anything was wrong because I didn't want to hold up the ride. Interrupt anyone else's good time. Be a "burden." Or maybe it was because I was trying to wish it out of existence, and if I just pretended hard enough that everything was fine, then it actually would be.

But everything was not fine, although, at the time of this ride, my last ride, I didn't yet know that. Or at least I didn't want to know.

I opted for "pretending everything was fine" for as long as I could-it was such a nice day, after all-until we were getting close to home. That's when I shared with the person I was riding with that it felt like someone was jamming a screwdriver into the right side of my lower back, right above my hips and next to my lumbar spine. That it was excruciating and that I was getting scared that something was seriously wrong.

He shrugged. "Yeah, but did you die?" Thankfully, shortly after that, the ride was over.