After a promising recovery from COVID most of December, I had a serious setback near the end of the month, and the decline of my health continued and intensified in January and February. I did three rides totaling 70 miles that first full week of January, then managed only 40 miles the next week. My breathing worsened to the point I could only do 1500 on the spirometer, and I didn’t ride at all the next week. I had a slight improvement and did a couple of 15 mile rides that last week of January, but after that last ride, it was obvious that I couldn’t continue, so I stopped riding again. I ended up with 160 miles for the month.

My body wasn’t lying when it told me to stop. On February 4th, I had a heart attack. It wasn’t a major heart attack. The blockage was in an obtuse marginal artery, and a single stent fixed it. But the cardiac surgeon discovered, and an echocardiogram the next day confirmed, that I have severe aortic stenosis. The cardiac doctor said I need an aortic valve replacement right away. I had been diagnosed with moderate aortic stenosis three and a half years ago, and had no clue it had become this severe. I was, after all, still averaging 100 miles a week on the bike in October, before I got COVID.

The degree of aortic stenosis is measured by the pressure difference between the two sides of the valve. 25 to 40 is moderate. Anything over 40 is severe. Mine is 65. 80 is critical, so I’m closer to critical than moderate. Severe aortic stenosis can cause fluid buildup in the lungs, so it may be contributing to my lung issues. I won’t know how much until I get that valve replaced. Strenuous exercise is a big NO with severe aortic stenosis, so I’m going to remain limited in what I can do until I get that valve replacement. I didn’t even have a cardiac doctor, so now I’m waiting for a referral from the VA for a cardiac doctor, who will then refer me to to the specialist who will do the valve replacement.

While all this was going on, the VA has put me on some new inhalers, and they seem to be slowly helping. With all the dire weather stuff here, I hadn’t even checked my lungs with the spirometer lately, and was surprised to find yesterday that I can once again do 2500 on it. That’s a big improvement. I still have a lot of wheezing. I’m hoping that may improve soon too. I decided that with my improved lung function, I should try riding again, so today, I did a 10 mile ride on the Xstream. I kept things at a very easy pace, keeping my heart rate under 130. That’s probably as much effort as I should be putting out until I get my valve replacement.

I’m exhausted now. After just a 10 mile ride. It’s a pretty safe bet that I’ll never get back to the state of fitness I was enjoying last October. All I can do is be as active as my present health will allow, then see what I can do after recovering from valve replacement. I’m looking at a long road to recovery ahead.

2020 has mercifully come to an end. I ended up with 4,492 miles ridden for the year. It was the first year since 2004 that I rode less than 5,000 miles (I started riding in September, 2004). Until mid October, I was on a pace to get the usual 5,200 miles that I’ve ridden annually in recent years, but COVID19 had other plans. 1,305 of those miles were trainer virtual miles, with the remainder being actual on the road miles.

My recovery had been going fairly well, and I rode 80 miles the third week of December, but I had a major setback on December 24th. I inhaled a pill. In all my years on earth, I’d never done that before. It was a magnesium supplement tablet. I put it in my mouth and took a drink of water, thinking I’d swallowed it. But I hadn’t. When I took a breath of air, it sucked the tablet into my left lung. That day ended up being the worst day of coughing of my life. The next day, I was sore all over from so much coughing. I hacked up grit the entire day. And, I became short of breath and got a terrible wheeze. When I tried to ride the next day, I gave up after 10 miles, then took four days off the bike.

By this week, I noticed my shortness of breath was getting better. I’m stil wheezing, but it’s not as bad as it was. So I did 20 mile rides on Wednesday, Thursday, and today. I still haven’t gotten back to where I was before I inhaled that pill, but I’m improving. Here’s to hoping for a better 2021.

My last ride of the year.

I did weekly updates on my recovery from COVID19 on Facebook, and I probably should have done them here too, so here they are:

Nov 13
10 miles on the bike this morning. It was my seventh consecutive day of riding. Reviewing the stats from the week’s rides confirmed what I already knew: I got slower each day. Either I’m getting worse, or am doing more than my body can recover from. I have downloaded a home pulmonary rehab exercise video. I’m going to use it, instead of riding, for now. We’ll see how I do.

Nov17
It’s now been two weeks since I was released from the hospital. I’ve had no gain in lung function at all so far. I’m getting used to slow walking. If I stand up and walk at my normal pace, I’m out of breath by the time I get across the room. But after three weeks, my sinuses have almost quit bleeding, so I guess that’s progress. Baby steps….

Nov 22
Tuesday will mark three weeks since I got out of the hospital, and I’m finally seeing the first hint of lung function improvement. For those of you who’ve never used one, an incentive spirometer is for measuring the volume of air you can breathe into your lungs. From the beginning of my hospital stay, I’d only been able to hit 1500 ml on the spirometer. On my bad days, I could only do 1200. The last couple of days, I’ve been hitting 2000. That’s still a pretty pathetic reading for someone my size, but it’s a gain, the start of what I hope will be a lot more gains.

Dec 1
Today marks four weeks since I was released from the hospital. I’m doing 2250 on the spirometer now. Looking at the chart, that’s not much below normal for someone my age and height. But I still have shortness of breath, so it’s obviously not just a volume thing. It’s likely a lung tissue damage thing, too. I’m going to keep on patiently working to get stronger. I’ve started riding again, doing ten miles on the bike yesterday. I just picked a nice flat route on Rouvy. I don’t think I could pedal myself up much of a hill right now, either on a real road or on Rouvy. I had been doing my pulmonary rehab exercises pretty much every day (though I did take off the two days I went fishing last week), but I’ll probably just do them on the days I don’t ride now.
I was semi-retired when I got sick, still working a few hours most weeks. I’d like to get back to work, but I don’t think I’m ready just yet. Maybe in a week or two.

Dec 8
Today makes five weeks since I got out of the hospital. I am now doing 2500 ml on the spirometer. By the chart, that’s normal for someone my age and height, but I can tell I would have been doing more than that before I got sick. I rode the bike 10 miles last Monday, 15 miles on Wednesday, and 16 miles on Friday. Saturday night, I went out and danced my arse off. I even managed to do every line dance without getting too out of breath. So, while I’m nowhere near my peak cycling fitness level, I do seem to at least be functional now. I think I’m going to go back to work next week.

And those were my Facebook updates. It’s now December 19th. I ended up not working this week. The only job I had scheduled postponed until after New Year’s. I’ll turn 70 in April, so I guess if I end up just retiring, that wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen. I have stopped doing the pulmonary rehab exercises and am now just riding and doing my core exercises. It seemed like I was no longer gaining anything from pulmonary rehab.

I’m doing 20 mile rides now. I’ve ramped up my distance and effort slowly. Severe cases of COVID19 have caused heart damage very often, and that was scary to me, especially since the most frequent damage is diastolic dysfunction, and I had already been diagnosed with moderate diastolic dysfuntion. But I haven’t seen any evidence of new heart damage in my case yet. Up until this week, I limited my heart rate to under 140 on my rides, and I’m still limiting it to under 150.

Truth be told, that’s really not any different than my normal winter riding. I always ease up effort and distance in the winter. I treat it like a recovery period, and start ramping up my effort again in the spring. And I ended up with over a 16 mph average on the bike on two of my rides this week. That’s very good for me, even on a flat route, when I’m only putting out an easy to moderate effort, even in past years. That’s very encouraging. It means that, for easy to moderate winter efforts, I’m getting the same results I have for years. Of course, if I really put out a high intensity effort, either on or off the bike, I have really bad shortness of breath in short order, a reminder that I’m not nearly fully recovered. But, I’ll take encouraging news where I find it.

In past years, I’ve tried to hit peak fitness in August, in time for the Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred. But I’ll turn 70 before the next one. If you’re past 70, should you still be on the road mixing it up with 10,000+ other cyclists in a 100 mile event? I’m not sure I’m ready to answer that one. And that’s ignoring the fact that I don’t know if I’ll ever even be fit enough to complete another 100 mile bike ride. But, I’ll worry about all that at a later date. Right now, I’m reasonably pleased with my progress. I rode 80 miles this week. I was pretty tired the last half of today’s 20 miles, but just being able to ride 80 miles in a week shows a real improvement in my endurance, which hasn’t been good at all since I got sick. I’ll keep working on that.

Yesterday’s Rouvy route.

With no Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred to get ready for this summer, I just rode shorter routes, and my mileage wasn’t all that great. I managed 440 miles in August and 491 miles in September. Little did I know what was waiting for me in October.

The first half of the month saw me ride 200 miles. My last ride was on the 16th, a Friday morning where I took off intending to ride 30 miles, but a howling wind, combined with the fact that I didn’t feel very well, made me cut the route off and just do 20 miles. That night, I got sick, and the next day was diagnosed with COVID.

If you are a lung cancer survivor, getting by on 1.5 damaged lungs, there’s a greater than zero chance that COVID will hit you very hard, and it did me. I fought it at home for a week, then admitted myself to the Dallas VA Medical Center. Just two days into my stay there, my oxygen levels crashed, and I spent the next eight days in ICU. I got out of the hospital the day before yesterday, and it’s obvious I have a long road to recovery in front of me. I weigh 170 pounds. I haven’t been that light in almost 50 years. There seems to be skin hanging off of bone everywhere I look.

And just standing up gets me out of breath. Just walking across the house was almost more than I could accomplish that first day home. I did a short walk yesterday, and a quarter mile walk or so today. I’m thinking I’ll try getting on the bike tomorrow. It’s a safe bet that any rides I do right now are going to have to be pretty short and slow. I can’t think of a better lung function rehab though, so we’ll see how I do.

With no Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred to train for this year, my summer riding has been different. I’m not doing the long rides I would normally do to get ready for HHH. I have still upped my mileage for the summer like usual, but I’m just doing more short rides, rather than mixing in long Saturday rides, to get that mileage.

I ended up with 500 miles in June. That’s about what I would expect for June, and was enough miles to finally get me back on pace to make my mileage goal for the year, 5200 miles. July was a very different story. I got a serious summer cold early in the month and went 10 days without riding. This was the first summer cold I can recall since I had one in 2007, and in these paranoid times, it was enough to make me go get tested for COVID-19. Thankfully, the test was negative, and by the 20th, I was riding again. I ended up with 450 miles for the month. That’s a lot less than I would expect in July, but was enough to keep me on pace for my mileage goal for the year. All of my rides in June and July were outdoor rides on the F-5.

Yesterday’s last ride of the month route.

I ended up with 14 rides in May for 480 miles. All but one of those rides, a 15 mile ride on a rainy Saturday, were done on the road on the F-5. Purtis Creek State Park has re-opened, but I have still been riding my routes that bypass it. The park is full of visitors from the city, and having to have interactions at the park gate just seem a little too risky with the pandemic still going on. So I’ve still just been riding FM1861 out to Big Rock Road, then turning around. We’ll see when I feel comfortable with returning to the state park. I don’t much like the traffic past it on FM316 and FM1861, but I’ll deal with that for now.

May 29th route.

I managed 12 rides in April, for 459 miles. That’s about what I should be riding in April. For a change, I got in some outside riding. 10 of those 12 rides were on the F-5, on the road. I had to modify my routes, with the closing of Purtis Creek State Park, which is where I usually turn around on my shorter routes, and stop in on my longer routes. It has likely reopened now, but not wanting the human interaction at the gate, I’ve continued to ride my closed park routes.

I ride past the state park, then on to FM1861. I usually turn around at mile 15, and on 40 mile rides, I’ll turn onto FM316, and ride some miles out it before turning around. On my longer routes, I still ride out FM1861 to State Highway 19, then back. I just don’t stop at the state park like I usually did before.

My last ride of the month on the 27th.

Every year on my birthday, I ride my age in miles. My birthday this year isn’t actually until Sunday, but with rain forecast for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, today looked like the day for my birthday ride. So I took off on the F-5 shortly after 8:00 am, and rode to Purtis Creek, then on Farm to Market 1861, then on State Highway 19, then back, for 69 miles total. It was cool and breezy at the start, but after a few miles, I wasn’t cold at all. The wind kept blowing, but was a quartering tailwind on most of the return ride. I only do short rides all winter, so this ride is always more than I’m used to, and always wears me out. But there it is, done for another year.

I ended up with 284 total miles ridden in the month of January, and every bit of that was on the Xstream on the trainer. January was actually pretty mild this year, but I worked quite a bit, and just never managed to be able to ride on one of those mild and dry days. I had a serious cold the second week of the month, and only rode 25 miles. That’s why I ended up with less than 300 miles for the month. Still, compared to past Januarys where I did nothing but outside rides, this year’s mileage wasn’t bad.

February was a chillier, wetter month, and I only managed three outdoor rides that month. I ended up with 415 miles for the month, so not bad. March was another wet month, and I only got in five outdoor rides. I ended up with 459 miles for the month. That’s a decent March for me, and I need to keep increasing that mileage as the warmer weather comes. I’ve taken at least a month off work because of the pandemic, so getting my miles in should be easier for at least the next few weeks.

Today’s birthday route.

2020 has arrived, and I’ve added up all my mileage for 2019. Since my last blog post in October, I’ve ridden 410 miles in November, and 435 miles in December. That’s more than I usually do in December, but with my terrible mileage start in 2019, it took that many miles to reach my mileage goal for 2019, which was 5,200 miles. I ended up with 5,214 miles for the year.

In past years, every mile I logged was actual outdoor miles ridden. That changed in 2019. For the first time ever, in March, I set up a bike (my Xstream) on a smart trainer, joined Rouvy, and started doing virtual rides, watching a video. As you climb a hill on the video, pedaling gets harder, and the effort versus miles ridden is very comparable to actual outdoor mileage on my F-5, so I’m going to add those miles to my outdoor riding to calculate my logged mileage, from now on.

In 2019, I ended up with 2,779 miles indoors, and 2,435 outdoor road miles. So, over half of my riding for the year was on the trainer. I don’t know how that will compare to future years, but I’m not missing those outdoor rides on days that were too wet, cold, hot, etc, so I’m going to stay with this riding plan for the foreseeable future. It’s a concession to age, I guess. Only five of my sixteen rides in December were outdoor rides.

My last outdoor ride of 2019, on Christmas Day.

I took off on the F-5 just after 8:00 this morning and rode 40 miles. I rode 30 yesterday afternoon. It was cloudy and 86 degrees when I took off yesterday afternoon, but as soon as I was riding, the sun came out and it got pretty steamy. I’ll be glad when we get some actual fall weather and the afternoon rides are cooler. Yesterday’s ride was a reminder of why I’ve been doing most of my afternoon riding indoors lately. Yesterday’s ride gave me a total of 494 miles for September. That’s probably less than I usually try for in September, but with my trainer set up for the winter, I don’t feel the need to get extra miles right now, since the winter miles will be easier to get this year.

At a time when everyone seems to be moving their mileage logging to online, I find myself doing the opposite. My bike mileage is at three places online right now. Every since shortly after I started riding, since January of 2005, I’ve been logging my mileage at bikejournal.com. A lot of rbent people were doing it there way back when, I had no Garmin to track a lot of data, and so I used bikejournal.com. But now I also have mileage at Garmin Connect, where my Garmin gets uploaded by default, as well as my trainer mileage at rouvy.com. So I’ve been logging all that mileage to bikejournal.com, too.

But bikejournal.com hasn’t been free for many years and also separates trainer mileage from road mileage when showing totals, so since I’ve set up the trainer this year, I’m not liking that. But I’m not in competition with anyone else and have never felt the urge to be trying to claim KOM mileage at somewhere like Strava, so I just decided it’s time to find software to log all my miles on my own computer, and back it up on a cloud. CycliStats has been freeware for a few years now. It’s nice software, so I’ve installed it and started importing all my rides from everywhere else. That’s proving to be quite a chore, but it’s a blast from the past and a reminder of many fun and adventurous past rides as I do the importing.

Importing new rides from Garmin Connect is easy. I’ve never had a power meter on my bikes, so that data is missing. CyliStats estimates it. And older rides had less data, and needed massaging to get missing data, including miles from being slow to pick up satellites at the beginning of rides, especially my work commuting miles, which the return rides started around some tall metal buildings. Elevation is also missing from those older rides. Rouvy exports tcx files that CycliStats won’t import, but I’ve found that TCX Converter makes short work of getting them into a form that CycliStats will import, so I’ve been using it. It’s going to take a while to get everything imported, but once that’s done, the monthly chore of importing from Garmin Connect and Rouvy after that won’t be too much of a hassle, and CyliStats does a pretty nice job of showing everything I want to track, as well as a lot more.

Today’s ride route out to Purtis Creek State Park.