Today is my 67th birthday. To celebrate, I got up early and rode 67 miles on the F-5. I rode my 50 mile route out to State Highway 19, but added some extra miles by riding on 19 to Athens, then back, and also added enough loops in Purtis Creek State Park to give me 67 miles total.

I ended up with a total of 528 miles total in March, a decent mileage month for me. But I’m still well behind the pace I need to be on to reach my target miles this year, after such poor mileage in January and February. And I’m still eight pounds heavier than I need to be at the end of August, so there’s that.

It was 10 years ago today that I was so sick from chemo that I had to cancel my plans to ride and/or picnic with some friends on my birthday. I did this post about that on this blog. But, I’m still around, and today, I rode 67 miles, and after lunch, I’m thinking I’ll hitch up the boat and go fishing for a few hours this afternoon. Happy Birthday to me.

Today’s route.

I took off late yesterday morning on the F5 and did my 40 mile loop out to Purtis Creek State Park. That, combined with two 30 miles rides during the week, gave me 100 miles total for the week. But my mileage totals for the previous two weeks weren’t good at all, and I ended up with only 290 miles ridden for the month of February.

I spent the last half of the month battling bronchitis. It came about from my sinuses draining down my throat, and treating the bronchitis with guaifenesin for the rest of the month never got ahead of the constant drainage. I never had any signs of an infection, but on Friday, February 26th, I finally went to the doctor. I’ve learned not to ignore bronchitis that lingers for too long. It’s just begging to turn into pneumonia.

Sure enough, I had no infection, and the doctor gave me no antibiotics. Since I already had plenty of guaifenesin, he just gave me a perscription for pseudoephedrine to treat the sinus drainage. It does seem to be working, and I’m finally much better, though not completely free of chest congestion yet. I need to make a note about the pseudoephedrine for future use. It can be obtained without a prescription, though you do have to ask for it at the pharmacy counter.

On Saturday, February 27th, I attended the LUNGevity Hope Summit in Irving. Nothing worse than attending a gathering of lung cancer survivors while you have a horrible hacking cough, but I wanted to go. I didn’t participate and interact as much as I would have otherwise. Staying quiet cuts down on the coughing. I don’t stop riding when I have bronchitis, but missing half a lung, and after numerous bouts with pneumonia, I do ease up quite a bit, hence the low mileage for the last half of the month. I hate it when these blog entries end up being more about my health than about riding. Spring will be here soon, and hopefully, that will change.

Yesterday’s route.

I ended up with 570 miles on the bike in April, not a bad mileage month at all. I managed 140 miles last week, and with 30 miles on Monday, 60 miles yesterday, and 30 miles today, that makes 120 miles total for this week, in spite of the fact that I won’t get any miles this weekend. I’m boarding a plane tomorrow, and joining other lung cancer survivors at the LUNGevity National Hope Summit in DC for the weekend.

I didn’t do anything longer than yesterday’s 60 mile ride this month, but I ended up with 15 rides for the month. That’s averaging a ride every other day, and that will usually translate to a decent mileage month. This still leaves me well behind the pace I need to be on to make my 5,000 mile goal for the year, and my weight is still too high, but this looks like progress. With warmer, and hopefully drier, weather coming, I should be able to have another good mileage month in May.

Yesterday’s 60 mile Martins Mill Metric route.

Ever since I’ve been riding, I ride fewer miles in the winter. Rather than trying to remain in the very peak of fitness year round, it just makes sense to be cyclical, peaking at some point, getting extra rest and recovery at another. With its shorter days and colder temperatures, winter is a natural time for the extra rest and recovery.

Our body’s immune system seems to be more compromised in the winter, too, and during the four year stretch where I was riding 7,000+ miles a year, I seemed to have more than my share of maladies in the winter, not the least of which was shingles in January of 2010, and pneumonia in December, 2012. After that bout with pneumonia, I made a decision and followup effort to cut my winter miles down even more, do mostly shorter rides, especially on the colder days, and not ride at all when the temperature isn’t over 40 degrees.

But my miles lately haven’t even been as much as I had in mind for winter. I reached 2014’s mileage goal, but two weeks ago, I only rode 30 miles. Last week, I again just rode 30 miles. And until yesterday, I hadn’t ridden at all this week. That’s just 60 miles on the bike in almost three weeks, a lot less than I had in mind for my winter riding. Between the weather and work, I just haven’t been able to ride. But I got home from work yesterday early enough that I did 30 miles in the afternoon. And late this morning, I took off on the F5 and did my Martin Mills Metric route. So I did get 90 miles on the bike this week.

It’s now been a year and a half since I moved to Gun Barrel City. I like it here. It’s more quiet, and the air quality is better than DFW, a nice benefit for a lung cancer survivor. And Cedar Creek, Palestine, and several other great fishing lakes are nearby. But it isn’t the most bicycle friendly place around. The only way I can find enough time to ride the kind of miles I want is to do most of my rides from home. If I have to load the bike, drive somewhere, unload the bike, ride, load the bike, drive home …….. well, you get the picture. But unless I want to just do laps in my own neighborhood, there are only two roads out of town.

One is Main Street. But it’s heavy traffic, with turns into stores and shopping centers all along the way in town. And leaving town, either east or west, it becomes a two lane high speed highway without even a shoulder. The only other road that leads out of town is County Road 4006. It goes east and north to Mabank. But, Kaufman County and Mabank have been engaged in a disagreement about rebuilding and maintaining the road, and the half mile of it nearest me has fallen into an unbelievable state of disrepair. There are large potholes everywhere, and many of them are, no exaggeration, 12 inches or more deep. It’s become very hard to dodge all these holes on a bike, and hitting any one of them on my bike would instantly ruin a wheel.

So this fall, I started cutting through a gated community, that lets me bypass all but a few feet of the bad part of CR 4006. There are some really nice luxury houses here, and even a polo field. But there haven’t been many homes built yet. I wouldn’t usually resort to this kind of trespassing, but I figured I wouldn’t be hurting anything, just riding through. It goes to show how desperate I had become to keep riding from home. I would just lift my bike over the gate at the rear service entrance, step through the gate, then leave through the front entrance.

I hadn’t been doing this bypass much more than a week when I was stopped by a man in a very nice truck. I have since come to think that he runs the community. On this day, he stopped his truck, rolled down his window, and motioned for me to stop. I complied, thinking my route through this place was going to be very short lived. The man asked me how I got my bike into the community. I told him I lifted it over the gate and stepped through, that I was trying to avoid CR 4006. He thought about it for a moment, then said, “If anyone challenges you, just tell them I said it was OK.” So I’ve been riding through ever since.

I’ve been trying to finish my rides early this winter. There are double gates at the front of this gated community. The outside front gate stays open during the day, but sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon, it closes. It’s a taller gate than the others, so tougher to lift a bike over. And that’s the reason I’ve been mainly riding the F5 this winter, rather than my designated winter bike, the faired Xstream. The Xstream is longer, heavier, and bulkier, so is a tough lift over these gates, especially for someone whose shoulders are as bad as mine.

On today’s ride, I had just pulled up to the service gate, and was about to lift my bike over it, when I saw a white SUV approaching from the other side. I recognized the driver as a man who I think is a maintenance supervisor in the community, so I stopped and waited for him to open the gate, then waved and rode through. Just after I passed his vehicle, he honked and started backing up. I stopped and sat up. He stopped beside me, and said, “Hey.” I replied, “Hey.” He reached his arm out of the window, and handed me a remote control. I smiled and thanked him, and without saying another word, he drove on.

These people don’t know me at all, other than as a guy who rides a funny looking bike through their private area, yet here I am, now in possession of a remote that opens all the gates. Sometimes, people do random kind acts that surprise you. I think I was smiling for most of today’s ride, thinking about that.

County Road 4006, in all its splendor.

I only ended up with 80 miles on the bike last week. I worked in Odessa most of the week, then came home to rain Friday afternoon, so I didn’t get to ride at all until the weekend. It was chilly both Saturday and Sunday, and I really don’t like doing longer rides when it’s cold, so I settled for a 40 mile ride each day.

I only got 90 miles last week, too. I got in just one 30 mile ride during the week, then a 60 mile ride out to Martins Mill on Saturday. But, as this last Saturday’s cancerversary reminded me, I’m lucky to be riding at all. I am now a seven year lung cancer survivor, and I’ll end up with around 5,500 miles on the bike this year, so no complaints.

It warmed up nicely today, and I got home from work early enough that I did a 30 mile ride out to Purtis Creek this afternoon. And here I was, on December 22nd, wearing shorts for the ride. You have to love that about Texas. But, a cold front arrived just before I finished the ride, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be wearing shorts again on a ride any time soon.

From the Funny Signs Department: So, does this mean the gravel parking lot right behind the sign is off limits?

For the seventh year in a row, I did the Breathe Deep DFW walk today, put on by LUNGevity, to raise money for lung cancer research. It gets a better turnout these days than it did in the early days, and it was great seeing fellow survivors again.

After I got home from the walk, I took off on the F5 and rode to Purtis Creek State Park, and a bit beyond. I only had 70 miles for the week, and wanted to end up with more than that. Today’s 40 miles gave me 110 miles for the week.

I ended up with 14 rides in October for just over 500 miles. That will work.

At the start of the Breathe Deep DFW walk.

Finishing the walk.

Visiting with friend and fellow survivor, Jerrold Dash.

On September 10th, 2004, 10 years ago today, UPS delivered a box to my front door which contained a China Mascot Tsunami recumbent bicycle. After some assembly (and several wobbly starts), I was pedaling a bicycle for the first time in my adult life. In the 10 years since then, I have ridden 61,506 miles. Here is my mileage by year:

2004 – 930 miles
2005 – 5,013.7 miles
2006 – 5,044.6 miles
2007 – 6,161 miles
2008 – 6,708 miles
2009 – 7,440.9 miles
2010 – 7,555.4 miles
2011 – 7,519 miles
2012 – 7,224.6 miles
2013 – 5,034.4 miles
2014 – 3,804.6 miles

After I started riding, it didn’t take long at all for me to realize that I still loved riding a bicycle just as much as I did when I was nine years old, and I decided I wasn’t going to just get fit, I was going to get very fit. Over the years, my riding style has kept changing. Such is life. I started out very slow and easy. I was 53 years old when I started riding, just one year younger than my father was when he died of a heart attack, already 5 years older than my grandfather was when he died of a heart attack, just a year past quitting a longtime cigar smoking habit, and still 35 pounds or so overweight (down 5 pounds from a year earlier), so I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that I should start slowly. Those first rides were an easy 3 1/2 miles on a bike trail, and I slowly built up from there.

I did lots of rides in 2005, my first full calendar year of riding, but they were all short and easy rides. I was doing more club rides in 2006, but still nothing much over 60 miles. It was 2007 when I did my first 100 mile and first 200k rides. That was also the first year I did the 100 mile route at the Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred. Last month, I did that 100 mile route for the 8th year in a row.

I had met Mark Metcalfe in the fall of 2006. He’s a serious long distance cyclist, and got me to try randonneuring and even an ultra distance race in 2007. I was also doing longer club rides and charity rides by then. It was quickly obvious that I would never be fast enough to be much of a racer, but I did enjoy the randonneuring and other longer distance rides. In the fall of 2009, I started commuting to work by bike, and did that until early 2012. Of all the riding I’ve done, the commuting to work by bike has been my favorite. It wasn’t on my favorite bike, and riding a heavier bike with a heavier load than usual won’t do much for your speed, but there’s just something about doing something that useful on a bicycle that really makes it fun.

In 2012, I was off work for an extended time with a cratered left shoulder (40+ years of heavy machine shop work takes a toll), and when I went back to work, I took a new job that has me driving a company vehicle all over the state, so that was the end of my bike commuting to work. Last year, I moved to Gun Barrel City. The air is better here, but it’s 60 miles from the DFW metroplex, and there are no organized rides anywhere near, so my riding since then has been mostly just shorter solo rides close to home. The Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred has been my only organized ride of the year, this year. With fewer hours to ride, my mileage has also decreased. It seems unlikely that I’ll ever get back to the 7,000+ miles a year I was doing for four years, but I’d still like to keep riding 5,000 miles a year or more.

It’s pretty amazing what so many riding miles does to your body. My legs don’t look like those of a 63 year old man, and doctors smile when they look at my blood work. Riding can’t protect you from everything, though. There aren’t many words you can hear from a doctor that are worse than those I heard in November of 2007: “You have lung cancer.” I’d likely had it for years before I started riding, and though riding didn’t cure it for me, I think it certainly helped me recover strong from surgery removing the upper half of my left lung in December of 2007. And I give it a lot of credit for helping me remain cancer free for the almost 7 years since then.

Your body can’t regenerate lost lung tissue. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. But, you can definitely train the lung tissue you have left after surgery. On the only pulmonary function test I’ve had since surgery, I tested in the upper end of the normal range, and my primary care doctor was plainly very surprised. And I seem to be less out of breath after bounding up stairs, or doing a couple of consecutive line dances, than most of those around me, so I give great credit to what riding has done for me. Besides, even after 10 years and all those miles, I still love riding as much as I did when I was nine years old. Some things don’t change. Here’s hoping I can still say that after another 10 years, and that I’m still riding lots of miles.

I thought about doing a club ride this morning, but as chilly as it was early, I just decided to get a late morning start and ride by myself. I took off from home on the Xstream just before noon, and rode to Cleburne. It had warmed up decently, but the wind had picked up quite a bit. I ended up with 53.9 miles.

This ride didn’t seem worthy of a blog entry, but checking the blog, I realized I hadn’t even made an entry in it in over two months. It’s been that kind of winter. I didn’t make a ride of at least 50 miles during that entire two months plus. I wrote about my pneumonia in December. That was followed by some pretty chilly weather. I don’t like riding in really cold weather anyway, and it didn’t especially seem like a good idea just after pneumonia.

Then, as soon as the weather warmed up, I got terrible bronchitis. It took over three weeks to get rid of that. I did some rides, but just short ones, and not on the coldest days. I hadn’t even recovered from that when I ruptured the bicep on my right arm. That was my good arm, since I had surgery on my left shoulder last August.

If all this seems like whining, it really isn’t. One thing a lung cancer diagnosis does is give you a different perspective on things. Pneumonia? That’s a great diagnosis to a lung cancer survivor. As bad as it is, and as dangerous as it can be, it’s a much better diagnosis than lung cancer. Bronchitis? Once again, very good stuff, compared to lung cancer. And shoulder surgery or a torn bicep seem like pretty minor stuff, compared to lung surgery.

But all of this did affect my riding. I needed lots of miles ridden in December to make my 2012 goal of 7,500 miles, and that didn’t happen. I ended up with 7,200 miles for the year. I barely rode over 200 miles in January, my worst mileage month in years. February is better, but still a subpar mileage month for me. With a full time job again, and not commuting to work by bike any more, I’ve adjusted my 2013 mileage goal down to 6,000 miles. Hopefully I can make that.

The long way from Crowley to Cleburne and back.

The week started off well enough on Saturday, December 8th, with me feeling fine when I joined the FWBA River View club ride out of Rio Vista. I’ve done this ride before. It’s a scenic route that goes from Rio Vista down into the river valley at Hamm Creek Park, then follows the Brazos River for a ways, then crosses it at Brazos Point, goes on to Glen Rose, then comes back by the Cleburne State Park. Saturday’s route was a 76 mile route that had some variation from previous rides because of some road construction, but was mostly the same route.

I felt a little sluggish at the start, having to make myself work hard enough to stay with the longer group, but felt better as the morning went. The group I fell in with rode a fairly brisk pace, but stopped to regroup often, and took its time at rest stops. We were running late enough that when two other riders took off at mile 65, I joined them and rode hard the rest of the ride. I ended up with 76.1 miles.

My wife and I joined friends that evening and went to the Gaylord Texan ICE event. It was entertaining and interesting, but in my mind, not worth the bad traffic, parking wars, and long walk it took to get us there. On Sunday, I stayed home and rested, and felt fine all day. But in the middle of the night that night, I developed a fever, with the telltale chills and body aches. The fever broke before morning, leaving the classic soaked bed from my sweating.

I felt well enough Monday morning that I went to work, but by 6:00 pm that evening, it was obvious that my fever was coming back. This pattern of an evening and night fever, clearing by morning, continued through Tuesday. When the fever started coming back Wednesday evening, I decided I needed to get checked out, and got Rose to take me to the Dallas VA hospital ER. A chest x-ray there found a problem with my surgery damaged left lung, but couldn’t tell if it was pneumonia or TB. Because my night fever patterns so closely matched the symptoms of TB patients, I was admitted to the hospital.

On Thursday, I was given a TB test, and a chest CT scan. A TB test takes two to three days for a definitive answer, but long before that, the CT scan showed it was pneumonia, not TB, and I was released from the hospital on Friday, and sent home with antibiotics. My discharge papers showed the diagnosis as “community acquired pneumonia”, which is the current term for pneumonia that occurrs in an otherwise healthy person. I suppose my surgery damaged left lung will always be prone to this kind of thing, but it’s still hard for me to believe that I had pneumonia without even having a cold first.

So I went from a 76.1 mile bike ride, to pneumonia and a hospital stay, to being released and home on antibiotics, all in the same week. It also became the first time I experienced the odd happening where lung cancer survivors actually celebrate a pneumonia diagnosis. As serious, and even life threatening, as pneumonia can be, as a diagnosis, it’s great news to a lung cancer survivor, when it’s given with no attached cancer finding. Everything is relative, I guess.

The FWBA River View 76 mile route.

I rode 113 miles yesterday, a Lone Star Randonneurs Dart. A Dart is a randonneuring team ride, with 3 to 5 riders. It is a ride of at least 180k in distance, teammates must ride together, and the ride must be completed in exactly 12 hours. At least 3 riders must complete the ride for the riders to receive credit, so it’s a good idea to have at least 4 on a team to start. It was two days after my follow up oncologist appointment following my annual scan, and I was still smiling from the news that I’m still cancer free. It seemed a great day for a long ride.

My teammates were all recumbent riders, and the team was called Dart Vader. Riders were Shellene, Greg, Paul, and I. I had designed the route, a 183k route that starts at Lynn Creek Marina on Joe Pool Lake, goes out to Itasca, then to Italy, then to Midlothian, before making the return to Joe Pool Lake. I named the route Itasca Disasta.

It became a fitting name for Paul, whose ride turned into a disasta pretty quickly. We took off from the start at 6:30 am, and he soon became very sick with what appeared to be food poisoning symptoms, and had to quit the ride at mile 14. He was so sick that we all worried about him getting back safely. He called and left a message to let us know he made it home, and we were happy to hear that.

That left us with the minimum 3 riders, but things went well from there. The route climbs Orphan Hill on the way from Maypearl to Itasca. I had never climbed Orphan Hill from that direction. It’s a longer and taller climb from that direction, but much of it is just a false flat, and even near the top where it becomes steeper, it’s still not a steep grade. I climbed it in my middle chain ring.

The highest point of the ride comes after Itasca, when the ride turns southeast and climbs back up the same ridge that holds Orphan Hill. This climb was also not steep, but the 13 miles from Itasca to the US 77 junction is the roughest chip seal I’ve ever ridden. This stretch also has fewer trees, and really catches a south wind. By the time we rode it yesterday, though, the wind wasn’t blowing nearly as hard as it had earlier in the morning.

Just three miles short of our stop in Italy, Greg had a flat. Everything went smoothly after that. It got pretty hot in the afternoon, but we stopped often. 12 hours is way more than enough time to complete a 183k ride, so there was no reason not to ride an easy pace and stop often.

We were supposed to join the other Dart teams for dinner at the Oasis after the ride, but couldn’t get a table, so we drove over to the Sweet Tomatoes and ate there. It was a great time, and you can’t believe how much food skinny riders can down at a buffet…….LOL. Thanks for joining me, Greg, Shellene, and Paul! I hope you’re feeling better today, Paul.

Itasca Disasta Dart route.