All posts by Mike

Felt like turning back early, kept going, glad I did!

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

San Mateo County’s latest efforts to keep cyclists off West Old LaHonda road.
Finally, a day that’s not insanely hot, just hot. I can deal with hot, right? I sure didn’t feel like I was dealing with hot very well as I started up Old LaHonda! I think the preceding two insanely hot days took something out of me, even though I wasn’t on a bike, so by the time this morning came around, there just wasn’t much feeling of power in my legs. Old LaHonda felt like the toughest, slowest grind it’s been in years, and I was giving serious thought to modifying the original plan, maybe shortening the ride a lot by heading down Kings. Thankfully, I started feeling better as I neared the top, and heading down the other side things started falling into place.

Of course, things came to a temporary stop when I saw the concrete barriers shown in the photo above! Fortunately not so tall you can’t lift a bike over them. I’ve posted a rant on Facebook about them and won’t get into all the details here. Clearly we are not wanted on that road, so if you’re riding it, you need to consider it as, at best, an act of civil disobedience.

As I approached LaHonda I still had some thought of cutting the planned ride (Pescadero Tunitas) short, maybe by heading up West Alpine, but y’know, on a hot day, climbing the upper section of West Alpine just didn’t seem terribly attractive to me! So I dropped into the La Honda market for more water and a Mtn Dew and set off for Pescadero. Amazingly, Haskins Grade seemed not-so-bad! Things just got better and better as I went.

Curiously, very few people in Pescadero today, despite it being a very pleasant 74. I did do something a bit different than normal, heading up the coast instead of Stage Road, thinking it might be just a little bit cooler. Probably was; 72-76 degrees between Pescadero and Tunitas.

Tunitas? I took it fairly easy, stopping twice on the way up (once to take a picture, another to deal with the very large amount of water I’d been drinking, some of which needed to be, er, released?), trying to actually enjoy the climb.

Crazy busy up on top due to the Kings Mountain Art Fair, with quite a bit of traffic on Kings itself. This would not have been a good day to be riding up Kings, that’s for sure!

Temps never got higher than 97. I can deal with that! Really glad I didn’t turn back earlier. –Mike–

I haven’t had a woman claw my back like that in a long time!

Personal stuff, ,

More doc visits, more tests. Man, if I’d been willing to go to this much trouble when I was racing, with the intent to improve performance, who knows what I could have accomplished! I could have been the next Lance Armstrong! Not.

Wednesday morning was my first-ever visit with a Dermatologist. Not for checking out rogue moles, but to figure out a way to get rid of the itchy skin rashes I’ve had the past year or so. There was some concern they were either a symptom of my ET (Essential Thrombocythemia, a very mild bone marrow cancer) or the medication used to manage. But after taking some samples off my back (the “clawing” I referred to) and examining them under a microscope, it looks more like a simple skin fungus. Who knew.

Because the drug used to clear this up (Lamisil) can tax the liver a bit, I had not only my usual vial of blood drawn, but another two used to figure out how well my liver is actually working. Good news; the average 3-4 drinks I have/year haven’t done any damage. AST, ALT & processing tests all came back in normal range. Not unexpected. The better news is that the increased dosage of Hydroxyurea I’m now on has moved the needle some more, in the right direction, on the Platelet number. That’s what’s shown on the top line in the chart above. Unfortunately, there’s also an expected reduction in WBC & RBC counts, reaffirming that Hydroxyurea is not a performance-enhancing drug. But, trust me on this, EPO is something I hope I never have to make use of, as that would be an indication of some real nasty problems.

Oh, right, since my mom’s reading this- the Dermatologist did check out the various moles & skin discolorations while I was there. Nothing scary. I’m really, really boring. Even that large and gradually-getting-larger one adjacent to my right eye? If I really cared about what it looked like, she could burn it off for me, but hey, how many people’s faces have something that looks like a map showing the gradual spread of the British Empire during colonial times?