All posts by Mike

That was so much harder than it should have been

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

It feels like Kevin came back from France with a brand new motor, more powerful than ever before. While mine, well, it feels like it should be back in the shop for repair.

We’ve been back from France for… 9 days? About midnight Friday, with my first ride back last Sunday, heading over to LaHonda and back via West Alpine. Alone, because Kevin needed to catch up with his GF after being gone two weeks. And somehow, skipping a ride, Kevin’s riding much stronger than he has in ages, while I’m struggling. It can’t have anything to do with me being 66 and him 29. Thursday morning he flew up Kings, getting his best time ever for the climb through the park. Today he posted a solid 20 minutes up Old LaHonda, while I dragged myself up there 6 minutes later. I was getting worried I’d be able to hang onto his wheel heading out to Pescadero, but it’s pretty hard to shake me on a descent or flat terrain.

No cookies today!
The Pescadero Bakery was fairly crowded but the sandwich line moved fast. But… no cookies!!! Had to settle for a triangular cherry-filled pastry.

No nasty headwinds going north today, just the three nasty climbs on Stage. I almost always have the upper hand on them, but not today; Kevin was feeling good. Good enough that we were already discussing plans for Tunitas, how he wasn’t going to let me slow him down, it was time to see what he could do. Would he really go for it? A definite yes on that; he hit the bottom (flatter) part of Tunitas HARD; I lost his wheel maybe half a mile before the forest starts. Even so, my own time to the start of the forest was pretty darned good, but I was in no condition to keep it up and didn’t do well on the steeper middle section. Unfortunately, I did catch up to Kevin about a mile after Tunitas flattens out; he was recovering from a seizure. Well, there will be other days.

Is this information you really want to know?
I did notice my new Garmin’s “How much do you have left in the tank” feature was warning me that I had nothing left, showing <1 mile as Tunitas progressed. Fortunately it wasn't entirely accurate, or I wouldn't have made it home. I thought it would show me recovering as we descended Kings into Woodside, but no, it was still showing <1 mile as we approached Jefferson, the last hill. Good ride for Kevin, good for me that I rode. There is a difference between the two.

New exercise stress test rules out heart as source of breathing issues

Personal stuff

Wednesday morning it was time to face the rudest torture apparatus of all- the dreaded treadmill. In a bid to prove it wasn’t my lungs actually causing my breathing issues, my pulmonologist set me up with an exercise stress test for my heart. Basically you get the usual EKG treadmill test, but with a twist- at the end, you come to a quick start, flop over onto a table, contort yourself a bit and have ultrasounds done that show various heart functions as affected by exercise.

As much as I hate treadmills (why can’t they give me an exercise bike to ride?), I can work with it to achieve a goal. In this case, they want you to get to 80% of your estimated age-adjusted max heart rate and hold it for two minutes, prior to the “flop onto the table.” Since the heart rate reading was in plain site, and since I understood the point of the test, I gave them 98% of max estimated heart rate, for 6 minutes. Which is bad enough on a treadmill, but even worse when having to breathe through a mask.

The “flop” part was a bit humiliating; I’m gasping severely for air, trying to recover from the hefty oxygen deficit. I don’t think they’re used to people trying to max out the test, but I figured I ought to try and duplicate what happens when I ride, because aside from the breathing issue, there’s also that nagging thing in your mind that questions, on a hard ride, if I keep this up, will my heart explode? Visions of Kill Bill and the exploding heart technique can really do a number on you! And let’s face it, starting sometime around your 50s, you notice that people your age do sometimes just suddenly drop dead from heart issues. Heart issues they didn’t know about.

The results appear to be really good. Much better than expected really. Aside from mild-to-moderate mitral valve regurgitation (what they used to call a “heart murmur”), everything looks very good. The METS prognostic score was 12; the scale tops out at >11 for the 60-69 age bracket. So basically my heart is HC (beyond category, if it were a climb), and there were no abnormalities associated with tachycardia or any other irregularity.

So, everything goes back to the pulmonologist.