Two Stories to Tell: Story Juan

So first the story of the boot! I spent seven weeks in it and was excited to get out of it, perhaps too excited! The last week was the week of Fall Break at Thanksgiving Time. The seventh week! So Monday when we went back to school I was eager to have it off! Monday, and Tuesday I was fine, but then I forgot something at home so I rushed home and when I came down the stairs in a hurry I managed to dislocate it again. I could barely walk back to the car, so I went back inside the house and put the boot back on! I didn't even make it three days! Quelle lastime!

So I'm prepared to go 14 weeks with the dad gum boot, but I am being brazen in my approach because any chance I get I'm not wearing the boot and doing my toe exercises and even going for walks.

By the time Winter Break came I had been in the boot a total of nine weeks. Not a happy camper! I know with the knee trouble I had recently I had to get off the compression stuff and start strengthening the actual knee. I am using that approach now with my dislocated metatarsal. Doctor Hughes did not cover this. I tried to get in to see my doctors, but due to the holidaze my appointments are getting cancelled. ¡Muy interesante! Happy

Something Happened Sooner

I was looking forward to walking around the block! No, I had to go get a glitch in my back! Doing what exactly?! Cleaning out the cat box!

We had awakened early to get a nice breakfast at La Madeleine across from Central Market!
 An aside, breakfast at La Madeleine was not as much fun since I gave up coffee. Stupid heart! Coffee causes a cumulative effect on my heart rate, so by ten or eleven PM my freaking heart is racing and all I'm doing is sitting there watchin' TV! "No caffeine for you!" BTW their French country breakfast is really good! Would have been better with coffee!

So we come home after getting the last of the food for the Thanksgiving meal,
 and of course I have chores to do so I do them and then I'm all sweaty so I go and crank up the AC in the den to cool off and watch some TV. So after sitting there for a while, I can barely get up! I'm still wearing the boot 24/7 so it's not like I can handle something else right now. BTW my wife's Turkey turned out really good! I wasn't much help fixing it up, but I still did a couple of things! Then I washed the dishes while my bride napped! Somebody wanted to see the Cowboys get beat so we ate early as opposed to after the game! Still great fun though!

So what am I doing about it? Well all the over the counter stuff is doing zilch, nada, niente!

I was supposed to go for a leisurely walk around the block, no biggie! But this happened so I'm having to modify my rehab of my foot to accommodate my back! This week is the sixth week of having the boot, or boots! I trashed one and then got another! After this week according to Dr. Hughes in order to salvage the nerve damage I'm supposed to go 7/24 for another week. Well when medication isn't doing anything for my back (BTW long story short, I have an extra vertebrae in my back from a tail bone that did not fuse. An L6. Every once in a while it gives me grief when I have not kept my athletics exercise routine up). For the last two years when I do my periodization for cycling I end up having to pick up my riding early because my back will not allow me to stay stagnant for long.

Today, in an attempt to stave off the pain in my back that is keeping me from getting up easily and preventing me from walking a whole lot, I embarked on a thirty minute bike ride in the absolute fastest gear on my stationary bike downstairs. This is equivalent to having to lift weights with my legs. This motion and exercise seems to reduce the inflammation from the episode two or three days ago. It normally does the trick in about two or three days. Since it is Friday, Black Friday for that matter, the second one this year! I hope that is not an omen of things to come! Wish me luck!

One step forward, two steps back

Often these past two weeks with the boot my foot will feel normal and I'll go 20 or 30 minutes without the boot and meanwhile something happens to my foot that it hurts all over again!

Yesterday, my bride and I went down to Día de Los Muertos downtown at La Villita to see the altares, alebriges, and Katrina/Carolina and the esqueletos. I wore my boot the whole time, was very careful, and today I feel like I ran a marathon! There is a dull pain! Like it is healing, but just taking its sweet time!

I know I am not patient! In college when I broke my ankle, I played tennis with my cast on and managed to break my cast and so then I had to wear the cast for an extra six weeks. I hope that is not the case with this tarso metatarsal dislocation.

Mine doesn't have the blue air bubble or the white dot up towards the top.

Now that I'm wearing the boot, I notice all the people that are also wearing a boot. They are everywhere! My wife, Doctor Gayle, says the boots are used for everything from Diabetes to relieve the pressure to broken ankles! Figures!

Remember how I said I break everything? Well I managed to wear through the sole to where it is falling off so then every-time I take a step it's not a dull thud but a loud whack. So new boot ordered and will take some time to arrive. Meanwhile, I have a piece of mountain bike tire covering the part that is exposed! Ha!

Identity Crisis!

What am I? Am I this ultra endurance dude? A guy that does seven one hundred milers in a single summer, comes home does his chores around the house and still has enough for a night out on the town? Or am I something else entirely? 

 This picture is ingrained in my memory! It is what I don't want to be. It is not me, I don't wear glasses like that! But then I always told myself, I didn't want to be like X and now in my later years I have become that which I didn't want to be. So yeah, there's an identity crisis!

What is an ultra-exerciser that cannot exercise? Are they a couch potato?! Are they a cheeto flinger?! Are they a cheese-ball whacker?! I wrote this after the Summer after the two elbow break (I must have been too devastated to even write about it before then!):

So, this Spring Break (March, 2016), I'm working out how to be inactive! I came to the realization that's it's been thirty plus years that I have been working out: running, climbing, cycling, swimming, and lately walking.
Unbelievably, now that I'm older the walking is ever more productive than all the cycling I do so regularly. Recently, with two catastrophic injuries in two years the mileage on the bike is less than half of what it has been in the past. The breaking of my two elbows this past Summer, caused me to question whether cycling is for ever or just another one of many activities I have done throughout the years.
My wife and I have adopted the slower method of losing poundage with small changes that make a big difference on weight-loss. Both of us have lost about thirty-five pounds and have kept it off.
At school I use the fasting method. A bunch of people at school are getting good results with it. I don't like to eat at school anyway so it works for me. (Please do not see this as an endorsement of the intermittent fasting method. I no longer believe it to be healthy or productive in weight-loss!)
I can feel the consequences of not staying active in my hips and in my knees. My back has never been real happy so that is still there also. My elbows, the one that did not give as much trouble is the one that troubles me more now and it even clicks! Boo! Well, got to go!

I remember the orthopod telling me to get back on the bike immediately and start putting weight back on my arms. I did, at about a minute something at a time on the bike in the basement! Putting weight on two broken arms was no fun!

A lot of times I talk about an experiment of one, meaning we all have to find our own way out of the hole, if a hole is the right metaphor for a cease and desist on the exercise front! As one grows older, is that all that is left with exercise? Use it or lose it! Put up or shut up! One injury after another! Fighting my battle! Take that pill! Subsistence exercise, forget intensity, forget endurance, and just ride to smell the flowers or ride to be an activist! Am I paying the price now for all the intense exercise I have done in my past? The injuries are here because I was too gung-ho (over-enthusiastic) in High-School, College, and Early Adulthood. Add to that all the heart issues that come with it as well: enlarged heart, heart murmur, irregular heart-beat and high-cholesterol, high blood-pressure, and anxiety. What do I say to all you young people on our campus?! "Take it easy, take it slow, but go, go, Go!"; "Use it or lose it!!"; "Carpe Diem!"; "Carpe Viam!"(Loosely translated as Hit the road!); "Noli Consequi!"(No drafting the big guy!) Would I be where I am today, without exercise and fitness? Would I be a lesser version of myself? Would the kids still say, "you look forty, mister!?"

So, after a two-week hiatus from exercising, after a debilitating Lis Franc Injury, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone that has supported me and honored me with Student Jerseys at Krueger MS. Nearly Twenty years at Krueger and two shirts in two weeks! The support is really humbling and something I would never have expected.

This is obviously a tough time, but I have gained a lot of strength from the support over the last two weeks! I'd also like to extend my gratitude to my comrades in arms, the ultra-exercisers I look up to, especially Ms. Rubio and Lupe Rodriguez. Doctor Gayle, my wife, for keeping me on the straight and narrow and everyone at Well-Med and Doctor Horn's Office for assisting me. Thank you for going above and beyond the call of duty, for which I am ever so grateful. I know how lucky I am to be here today and how much I owe to all of you. One of the practitioners said, "there is no medical reason" why I could not come back "stronger than before."

In my dreams I wish I could be like Froome and say, "Whilst this is a setback and a major one at that, I am focusing on looking forward. There is a long road to recovery ahead, but that recovery starts now and I am fully focused on returning back to my best."

Read more at https://www.cyclingweekly.com

Six Months Without Injury was Wishful Thinking

The glow after a good ride!

This is how satisfied I was this Saturday after a seventeen miler in which my foot gave me a bit of grief every time I started or stopped and in traffic that was pretty often. As the day progressed it was more and more evident that I was not in Kansas anymore and I hadn't survived six months without injury.

In early May, last year I fought to maintain fitness with Plantar Fasciitis. Those of you who know about PF you know what a pain it is to do anything with it! During that time, I suffered something that now I presume was a Lisfranc Injury while putting my pants on in the morning of all things. When it happened I immediately knew that I needed to take time off! Dr. Gayle, my wife, insisted I stay off the bike. She was right, after six weeks I was back to riding at first cautiously, but then full bore! Until this past Wednesday, again Dr. Gayle suggested I must have pushed off of the stool I was sitting on while we were writing our schedules in Spanish, ten sentence paragraphs. Me counting sentences, never! We were just doing our list-making in a fancy way.  So then this was 8th period,

What an honor to be chosen to represent at the 7th Grade B Game!

Nevermind that earlier before lunch I could barely walk down the hall to the rest-room! After the game I still ended up directing two choirs at my church! Long day!

So that night and the next day, no discoloration! Good sign because I'm trying to avoid an MRI because they cost an arm and a leg. Last time I did a couple was with my broken elbows. The cost of the MRI hurt more than the breaks themselves!

This morning I was a little puffy. But then I'm always puffy. Gabriel the comedian says fluffy, I say puffy! But it hurt, so today I went to church with my stick! According to some friends in the congregation, it didn't affect my singing! BTW if you want to hear the old man sing, come to the Falcon Choir Concert this Tuesday Night. Je vais chanter en Français de La Mer!

So here I am at the end of the season, will need to take at least six weeks off of the bike and from walking for exercise. Hoping for a boot without surgery and then we'll go on from there. Stats this year are: 1,626 miles, the Caloi TT Rig has 3,641 total miles on it, the KHS tandem has 182 total miles on it, the Litespeed Classic Crit Bike has 6,265 total miles on it, and the Gary Fisher Marlin Mountain Bike has 568 total miles on it. Gotta enjoy the ride! Live to ride again tomorrow!

No Elasticity

Elasticity: The ability to bounce back in less than 24 hours from a seemingly hard bout of exercise to continue on your journey of attaining training effect! A lot of times it seems like it's an experiment of one. (But at the same time figuring something out for yourself is what counts so it is warranted). Yes, Dr. Mirkin (a cyclist, blogger, e-zine writer doctor {retired} in his 80s) has been saying for years that the older you get the longer it takes to recover from a bout of exercise. This hit me hard this weekend!

On Saturday, I awoke fine, no issues! Went for my ride on my Caloi Time Trial Rig. (TT) The seat that is in the picture is not the seat I used. I actually was testing out a new to me Bianchi RoyaleGel seat that had some suspension. Everything worked fine, no issues with the seat. Once I adjusted the height a little bit once again, I was fine.

I had planned to get out at six AM, but no the dog had other ideas! Her new thing is she won't get up at all for me. She finally came to get me around nine AM. So that means I got out at a little bit passed 10. Which, with the heat, it is cutting it pretty close. 90 degrees in the day normally hits right around one or two PM. I had all my sun protection garb on that gives me an SPF of 50. Not bad! So I was trying for about three hours, but ended up going for about four hours. No problem, I thought I had been doing four hour rides for over two months now.

The ride itself felt really easy! Even the last bit that is normally a struggle was just as easy as the beginning! So, I thought I had dodged a bullet until later that afternoon.

Gayle and I went to WD Deli, our favorite sandwich shop, the first indication that all was not fine was when sitting down I almost topped the little table over. Getting up to get refills was a real struggle. Later we went to Hot Wells on the South Side to see what the hoopla was all about and when getting out of the car hurt. I knew I had overdone it!

Sunday's 6 AM ride was delayed because of issues with my lights. I don't normally run lights on the TT rig, I put some on, but they wouldn't stay on. So I was much later than normal to catch up with the guys and gals from @ction Bikes I would have to burn some rubber (impossible to do on a bike unless you're stopping, but you catch my drift!) Early on I got to a couple of good numbers 18 mph, 19 mph! But it was short lived, I could feel the anvils that my legs had become.

I gave up the chase, but still completed the route so it became a recovery ride instead of a short bout of speed work.

Siclovía is Always Fun Even If You Go Alone!

Who is alone with 200k of your closest friends on bikes, running, walking, and skateboarding! I knew I was going to do Siclovía today no matter what! 

Yesterday, in preparation for today I did minimal mileage. Saturday is normally my long ride day because I have all the time I need!

This li'l one could be Peanut!

I awoke Saturday tired and lazy! So I went back to bed and let the dog wake me up when she was ready to go out. We have an understanding about this, I don't wake her up to go out on weekends at six. So she lets me sleep in a little when I want! She woke me up at nine, (Good Girl! Peanut!) After taking her out I had a leisurely breakfast and then got ready to go for a ride. I knew I would be riding the road bike on Sunday because it has all the lights and stuff so I hopped on the Gary Fisher, Marlin Mountain Bike and went and did the trails under HWY 281 in Olmos Park.

Our KSAT Parent Howard!

Sundays, I have a group that I normally ride with that has helped me get healthy on the bike, but still put in some miles. Their ride is a stay together ride with a half-way stop at the Alamodome rain or shine that starts at the bike world shop in Alamo Heights! Action Bikes is the name of the group and is hosted by one of our KSAT parents, Howard! I also know me and if I ride with them I'll go too fast and too hard and then wouldn't be worth spit at Siclovía. So today I followed them! Normally when I'm late I chase them till I catch them and like normal today I was late. But all I did was follow until the end! I rode up a big hill to catch them going by a neighborhood adjacent mine.

Then I go do the church thing, pray for my kids and sing in the choir! Today, wanting to get away really quick, I went straight to La Madeleine and bought some goodies and salads. Everything in moderation, right!

So then Siclovía, yess!

In fact, this time there were a bunch of people with huge plants as in previous years. I have never gone and got one because, where would I put it? And these are baby trees so it's not a little bud!

At Siclovía you see all kinds of bikes:

From Mountain Unicycles

To Low Rider Bikes with all kinds of bling on them!

 To Bucket Cargo Bikes and Recumbents

Ciclovía Started in Bogota, Colombia. One year the government noticed the streets downtown not being used on Sunday so the Ciclovía was born! Now it has spread all over the world!

Almost 50 miles this weekend! Still a bunch of pounds shy! If it works don't change it!

Bike Activist: Never Saw Myself As One, but maybe changes are in the works!

A drone samples some nectar from the corner house when I took the little dog out!
How long will drones like this one be able to do this?!

So today I went to a Die-In, a protest where all the bike riders lie down next to their bikes and mimic being dead to protest the cyclist lives lost this year in San Antonio. We joined a group of environmentalists or ecological group that were having a gathering at Main Plaza to protest our pulling out of the Paris Accord among other things like, The Permian Highway Pipeline. Protests like this one were planned all over the world to coincide with the world climate conference. As much as I thought I would be going as a bystander or concerned citizen that also rides a bike, the Die-In was emotional for me. I have been hit by cars! I have been ignored, and I am blessed and fortunate to still be riding! Imagine a group of 200 to 300 people lying on the ground all dead right in front of San Fernando Cathedral! No pic, remember I was dead!

It was nice to hear the Mayor speak, Mayor Nirenberg, he was trying to motivate the crowd to support protected bike lanes and would like for us to vote on PAC now! There were voices of opposition in the crowd, but mostly he said good things and the crowd was appreciative. Some folks are a little sore because the protected bike lane that was supposed to grace the lower part of Broadway was denied basically for seven parking spaces! :-) Here's a shot of the mayor!

Mayor Nirenberg Speaking to the Crowd this Morning

Obligatory Ride Note: 17.7 miles of fun with some of the same folks I rode with at the Cyclists Lives Matter Parade a couple of weeks ago!

Obligatory Weight Note: I broke the thirty-pound lost mark. So far only one person has noticed. I thank them! 

Obligatory Weight Loss Diet Note: I tried intermittent fasting for two years. It worked for 15 to 17 pounds, but no more and the weight never stayed off for good! What diet am I doing now? Good question, rabbit food, fish food, no breads a lot of the time. I still have pizza once a month or so. I still have white rice and borracho beans and rice and tortillas every once in a while. Mostly salads and tuna fish!

One last note, no I didn't ride 100 miles today, (Shout-Out to the wheelmen and women!), but supporting those young people in their protest opened my eyes a bit! Have a great week!

The San Antonio Wheelmen 100 was run today! I hope everyone had a good time!

@Samantha Flores, the Artist; @MayorNirenmberg #EnvironmentalParade #EcologicalParade #ClimateAction #When #Now