Orny's Cycling Journal

With Pæthos in the shop for a tune, this seems like a good time for a post-op update.

On March 7, I had a metal mesh plug implanted in my heart in order to close a hole between my two atria: a possible cause for my past and potential future strokes. It’s been seven weeks since the operation, so let’s review how my return to fitness has gone… And, of course, the prognosis going forward.

So grand... and living!

Phase One of my recovery consisted of 10 days completely off the bike. I had incisions into both of my femoral arteries that needed to fully heal before I could do anything as strenuous as walking, climbing stairs, or having a bowel movement, never mind cycling! I had tenderness and a sizable hematoma in my groin, and heart palpitations that mostly dissipated over time. After a few days I started doing short walks around the neighborhood, working up from 1,500 meters to 3 kilometers, but my athletic Fitness (aka CTL, or Chronic Training Load) dropped from a pre-op 56.6 down to 44.6.

During Phase Two, I got back on the indoor bike trainer. The only constraint my cardiologist had given me was to keep my heart rate below 110 BPM, which was the perfect level for me to keep up with one of Zwift’s “robo pace partners” at 1.5 W/kg: a mild but not sedate pace. I Zwifted for 13 of the next 16 days, steadily increasing duration from 15 minutes to 30, 45, 60, and eventually 90 minutes at a time. Being back on the bike felt great, but I wasn’t riding hard enough or long enough to keep my Fitness from continuing to fall to a low of 33.4. The tenderness ended and my hematoma started to fade, but I still had a few palpitations from time to time.

On April 1, 25 days after my surgery, my cardiologist gave me the green light to gradually resume all normal activities, doing whatever felt right for my body. And just in time, because Austin has been having truly glorious spring weather.

That was my signal to begin eagerly-awaited Phase Three: my return to outdoor riding, while gradually increasing both duration and intensity.

Distance and duration came easily. I started with a couple 90-minute rides, and over two weeks moved up to 2-hour 50 kilometer rides, then 3½-hour 80 kms. So long as I stayed below 90% effort, I could ride all day.

Intensity came more slowly. Between my own innate caution and continuing cardiac palpitations, I wasn’t very eager to push my maximum heart rate. So I avoided hills for a couple weeks before gradually testing myself on those inclines, where I reached ≈150 BPM.

Since I got back on the bike, I’ve ridden 29 of the past 39 days, totaling 770 kilometers, or an average of about 20 km per day. To my delight, my partner has already commented on the return of my “distinctive markings”: her terminology for my stark cyclist’s tan lines.

Aside from the joy of being back outdoors on the bike, seeing my Fitness numbers making upward progress has been really encouraging. Long outdoor rides have been vastly more effective than Zwifting in raising my CTL, which has climbed to a recent (but still tepid) 40.6.

But I’m still a ways from where I need to be for major events or even spirited group rides. And I’ll lose a little Fitness this week, while the bike’s in the shop.

However, all that riding has helped me begin to get clarity about what this summer’s riding might look like. My hope all along was that I could do my third 100 KM Fire Ant Tour in mid-June, and that I’d be able to do a creditable (if shortened) ride for my remote Pan-Mass Challenge in August. At this point, those look reasonably likely.

But if I continue to do well, there’s a chance I might be ready earlier, and could ride the Stampede on the Chisholm Trail, another metric century that takes place in two weeks, or two months post-surgery. That would be extra cool because it’s another local event that I’ve never done before.

It’s delightful being back out on the open road again, and looking forward in anticipation of upcoming rides!

It really wasn’t anything special, just the regular 25-mile “Team Decaf” Tuesday night group ride out of Highland Park.

At the same time, it was a rare and special event, for several reasons.

Beginning with the most mundane of those reasons: it was the first Team Decaf ride of the year. That’s normally a chance to catch up with riding buddies I haven’t seen all winter long, and perhaps test one’s legs to determine one’s current position in the hierarchy of speed. The first group ride always has a bit of a “reunion” feel to it.

First post-Covid Team Decaf group ride

Sunrise on the castle climb in Zwift's new Japan-themed world

But never mind this year, this was their first group ride in more than 1½ years, as they've been on hiatus since October 2019 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. After such a long break, getting back together felt like an extremely special occasion.

For me, this also (hopefully) marks my return to outdoor riding. I actually did a couple outdoor rides back in March, but Zwift’s Tour of Watopia and my mission to reach Level 50 kept me on the indoor trainer through the end of April. With those out of the way and a new all-time record fitness level, I was all set to rediscover the hilly roads of Allegheny County as the calendar ticked over to May...

I started the month with a couple outdoor rides, only to be sidelined with a bad case of achilles tendonitis. Between my injury and additional downtime around my Covid-19 vaccinations, May was a near-complete write-off. The only things that got me on the bike (gingerly!) were the final PMC group rides of the season on Zwift, and Zwift’s release of a new Japan-themed virtual world (which I must admit is pretty cool). Meantime, my fitness absolutely plummeted. That’s what happens when you cut your training down from 200 miles per week to less than 50.

However, I’m now fully vaccinated, which means this was also my first time riding with any other people in more than 18 months. During the pandemic lockdown, I rode 7,700 miles; only 1,250 of them were outdoor, and all of those were solo.

So with all those milestones, yesterday’s group ride was memorable and even a little emotional. Enough so that I felt inclined to actually smile and photobomb. My ankle felt reasonably good, although there’s enough pain — both on and off the bike — to constantly remind me that I’m not 100 percent, or even 90 percent.

The next question is what will the summer of 2021 riding season look like?

The first order of business is getting my achilles fully healed and ramping my mileage back up. That might take quite a while, both because tendonitis is a long-term injury, and it is aggravated by overuse. So returning to long endurance rides is going to be a slow process.

I don’t know when I’ll be able to return to full century rides, which has implications for my goals for this year. I’d like to hit the Akron Bicycle Club’s century in July, do some kind of “reimagined” Pan-Mass Challenge ride in August, and either the Epic Tour in Toronto or the PMTCC’s three-state century in mid-September. And I’m eager to get my milestone 100th century ride under my belt, whatever that winds up being. But there’s no way to know when — or whether — any of that will happen.

In the short term, it’ll be a bunch of short rides, probably sprinkled amongst lots of recovery days. And putting some time into my PMC fundraising, as well. That’s really all I can do until I’m injury-free and back to full fitness.

It looks like my return to normalcy following the Covid-19 pandemic will be a very slow, gradual one.

Right now my life consists of work, cycling, fundraising, and occasional sleep, so my periodic updates this time of year tend to cover a lot of ground… like this one, which covers the past month.

July was a memorable month, but not for good reasons. Although I usually spend most of the Fourth of July holiday on the bike, with one of those days comprising a century ride, this year a terrible cold hit me Friday afternoon and kept me housebound the entire holiday weekend. Pure suckage!

The next weekend I had to go up to Maine, and convinced myself that I could get some training in by riding the 70 miles from Portland to Augusta. That ride wound up being really difficult, thanks to my lingering illness, a 25-35 mph headwind that hadn’t been forecast, and a mile-long section of muddy dirt road up and over a big hill in Sabbatus. But at least I managed to get some time in the saddle…

Which I needed, because the weekend after that was the CRW’s Climb to the Clouds, a very hilly century that goes up Mt. Wachusett, and is a traditional warmup for the Pan-Mass Challenge.

So CttC was just brutal. Combine my reduced training this year with oppressively humid 96-degree blazing sun and the CRW’s extremely limited idea of what constitutes a supported ride, and you can begin to imagine how difficult it was. Thankfully, I can say that my age wasn’t a factor, as my three buddies (all 17+ years younger) also concluded that they never wanted to do that ride again.

The ironic thing is that I spent half the day hammering, thinking I was chasing them, when actually I was ahead of them. Although I let them go ahead after the first 10 miles, they stopped at a water stop I skipped. I was surprised to see them ride past me in Princeton, where I stopped but they did not. So I got back on the bike and chased, unknowingly passing them *again* when they stopped at a convenience store. So I beat them over the mountain, and they only caught up with me after I’d spent 20 minutes at the next water stop, 53 miles in.

And as I predicted last year, the summit road was closed to us for the third year in a row, which was disappointing.

Toward the end of the ride, I was nauseous and unsafely overheated, and kept pouring water over my head to cool off. I stopped at the little Chinese grocery in West Concord and picked up their last two bottles of water, only to discover on gulping it down that it was seltzer! I sipped what my stomach could tolerate and poured the rest over my head and limped to the finish, where I pretty much just collapsed. But not before getting shit from the ride organizers for asking if I could have some ice. I was too destroyed to muster any argument when the guys decided to go home early rather than take the traditional postride dip in Walden Pond.

Definitely one of my worst days on the bike. There damned well better be some training benefit, after all that suffering!

And to make matters worse, my brand new $700 bike computer / GPS failed to record the quarter of the ride that included Mt. Wachusett and the following descent (GPS data). I had already left its heart rate monitor at home, because it had been malfunctioning. At least Garmin is replacing the HRM strap; hopefully the new one will last longer than the first one.

And then yesterday Boston tied the second hottest temperature ever recorded in the city’s 140 years of keeping records. Thinking I couldn’t get into much trouble in just one hour, I biked home from work in 103°F / 40°C heat. Against a convection oven-like 25 mph headwind, over three sections of stripped/grooved pavement along one of Boston’s biggest and fastest 6-lane arterials, and then stupidly up and over Dorchester Heights, just for fun.

That kind of heat will raise your heart rate 10 bpm no matter what you’re doing, and by the time I was done my heart was pounding and I was feeling very lightheaded. Kinda scary! Hopefully this stretch of intense heat will break and the weather will be more forgiving for the upcoming PMC ride!

And that brings me around to the tiny list of positive things that happened this month. First, Garmin did replace my problem HRM strap, and the new one seems to be functioning well; tho I probably will use it sparingly until PMC weekend.

Second, a question I’d sent in to the RoadBikeRider online magazine was published this week. The question was about how to fit a cooldown, stretching, shower, and recovery meal all into the half hour after stopping that is the optimal window for those activities. You can see the full question and RBR’s response here.

And, finally, the news that really matters: PMC fundraising. Once I finally started getting fundraising letters out, the money came in quite readily. I’ve surpassed the minimum and made the Heavy Hitter level for the sixth year in a row, and have settled at $7,200 for the moment, which is quite satisfactory, although there’ll be additional donations coming in over the next month or two.

Naturally, if you haven’t made your donation yet, please do so here.

And PMC weekend is only two weeks away. I’d normally be excited, but after the difficulties of the Maine ride and CttC and this brutal heat, I’m a little gun-shy about looking forward to riding. It hasn’t been a great year for any of my cycling buddies; just ask Lynda, who canceled her plans to do the epic 745-mile PBP ride; or Paul, who bought a pricey new bike only to have Jay destroy it by driving his truck over it on the way to the 150-mile Harpoon B2B ride that was supposed to be the highlight of his season.

The bad juju is in full force this year.

So we’ll see. There’s two more weekends before the PMC, and I don’t have anything special planned for them. Hopefully there’ll be a couple Quad rides and some hill repeats in there, and then a relaxing, rewarding PMC ride once the calendar turns to August.

Hopefully…

I know a lot of cyclists here in New England whose idea of paradise is living in a place where one can ride year-round, where training rides and centuries aren’t stopped cold by winter’s ice and snow¹.

Sure, it would be nice to have the choice of riding anytime one wants, but there are also advantages to having a limited riding season.

The easiest benefit to identify is that it provides one’s body a needed break. Training for endurance events is hard work², and it puts a lot of stress on the body. By the end of the year, I’m physically drained and my muscles and joints need a couple months of rest in order to recuperate. By springtime, I’m refreshed and can attack the new season with renewed strength. Without that enforced time-out, I’d gradually lose strength and possibly cause greater damage to my joints as a result of overtraining.

What’s true of the body is also true for the mind: after months spent highly focused and motivated, one’s interest level wanes and one longs for a break. Mentally, I need that time to rest and recuperate just as much as my body does, so that when spring comes I’m eagerly looking forward to the long hours in the saddle and painful all-out efforts that training requires³. Without any break, my desire and motivation would gradually evaporate, and my performance would follow.

I find the same is true of anything I do. Whether it’s cycling, consulting, writing, travel, my meditation practice, or even relationships, I find it difficult to sustain intensely focused interest in something for years at a time without taking some kind of break.

Besides, taking a break from cycling frees up 10-20 hours a week, which I can devote to all the things I’ve been neglecting all summer (like career, writing, travel, my meditation practice, and relationships)!

But hey, why can’t you just leave the bike in the garage for a few weeks? Who says I’m obliged to ride all year ’round just because the weather’s conducive? Actually, that’s a solution that only a non-cyclist would offer.

A cyclist knows how the dynamic works. Most cyclists are competitive⁴. Whether it’s to put the hurt into one’s buddy on a big hill, or whether it’s simply to avoid having him put that hurt on you, no cyclist wants to lose ground (fitness- and performance-wise) to his buddies. Therefore, as long as the weather’s good, there’ll be someone out there doing hill repeats or interval workouts in an effort to get a leg up on the competition. And so long as that’s true, a cyclist trying to take an unforced break will still feel a strong obligation to ride, knowing that his buddies are out there getting stronger than him because they’re out there training⁵.

So although we might dream of a utopian world where it’s always sunny and warm, I’m very happy to live in a region where nature enforces an off-season. That way I don’t have to feel guilty about hanging it up for the winter, knowing that when spring comes I’ll have renewed desire to ride and my body will be ready⁶ for the challenges I’ll undertake.

¹ Yes, one can ride year-round, even in New England. But I’ve never found true winter riding very useful endurance training. YMMV.

² Yes, one can go into an endurance event with limited training, but one must do so with limited expectations. To thrive requires training.

³ Yes, at a certain point one’s training must focus more on intervals than mindless miles, but that’s only after one has a solid number of aerobic base miles, and distance training still has some benefits even after that.

⁴ Yes, most cyclists are competitive, but there are exceptions. They have wives.

⁵ Yes, more training volume isn’t always better. You need adequate rest, too, which a structured training program will provide.

⁶ Hopefully.