Tour de Cure 2010... Or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bike!

Wow... it's hard to believe that it's been 3+ years since I've ridden my road bike.  I moved down to the gulf in '06, and tried to ride that first summer, but gave it up quickly when I realized how troublesome riding alone is out here in such unfriendly territory.  As a result, all of my previous weight loss, fitness, energy, and confidence faded away over the last 3 years.  Towards the end of last summer, I moved to Mobile AL, which has something resembling an active cycling community.  I've also been associated with RideYellow.org since their first year... in fact, the very first RideYellow was the last metric I rode before I had to give up riding.  Well, this year, I decided that I'm sick of being unhealthy and out of shape, so I've decided to get back on my bike, even if it kills me!

To that end, I started looking for local sponsored bike rides.  A wise man told me that the best way to train for a ride is to register for one, so a little over a month ago, I found and signed up for the Pensacola Tour de Cure.  I'm familiar with this ride, as I rode in the Chattanooga Tour de Cure several years in a row, when I still lived in TN.  The local ride was only a metric, not a 2 day 150 mile adventure, but it's a good start.  However, since it's been 3 years since I've touched my road bike, much less ridden on a regular basis, I decided to play it safe, and I registered for the 42 mile ride.  That sparked the fire to get me training, and I've been hitting my exercise bike and elliptical at home pretty hard over the last month...

Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan... about 3 weeks ago, I got a bad dish at a local sushi joint and came down with the worst case of food poisoning I've ever had.  I was miserable for a solid week, and uncomfortable for a week after that... and during those 2 weeks, I didn't have the will or the energy to continue my workouts.  On top of that, I went in for Lasik surgery during all that, which made me overly cautious about working out.  So, while I started off strong with a good 3 weeks of solid workouts, I only spent about 2-3 hours total working out in the last 3 weeks before the Tour de Cure.  Additionally, none of my training involved getting on my *real* bike and pedaling it around, and anyone who's been on a real bike and an exercise bike knows that the different between the 2 is dramatic.  Not my best start, but I was determined to do this ride!

I've spent most of the last week gearing up for this... replacing missing or broken equipment, cleaning my gear, and making sure everything was in place for the ride.  Of course, through all of this gearing up, I never actually got around to really checking out the most important item in this little endeavor... my Bike!  Despite my best efforts, I was unable to find time over the previous month to actually take my road bike down off the wall and try to ride it.  So really, by the morning of the ride, I was rolling the dice to see if I would even be able to ride or not.

The day of the ride finally came and I managed to drag myself out of bed at 3:30am to get a shower and load up the car for my drive over to Gulf Breeze.  In what has to be a first time EVER in my biking career, I was on time and on schedule all morning long.  I got out of bed, showered, got my breakfast sorted out, car loaded, and hit the road by 4:45, all right on time.  I had my trusty iPhone with turn by turn directions preset to the ride starting location.  I did forget my Red Bull, which annoyed me, but I was in such a good mood I let it slide.  In fact, I was in such a good mood, and having so much fun reliving my old biking days that I began entertaining the idea of doing the entire 62 mile ride.  The weather was set to be perfect (mid 70's, partly cloudy, etc), so by the time I rolled into Gulf Breeze, I had worked myself up to doing the whole thing.  I got there 5 minutes before registration started.

Here's where things began to go pear shaped on me...  I got to registration and found that the folks at the TDC had misplaced my registration packet.  No one could find it and no one could figure out where it went.  Next, I went over to claim my ride t-shirt... note that I was there 5 minutes BEFORE registration started, and they were already out of 2XL shirts.  So far, not a good start and my resolution began to falter.  However, I struck up a conversation with another early bird rider, someone familiar with the area... he informed me that the wind was moving in the right direction.  While we would be riding into a headwind for the first half of the ride, we were going to have an awesome tail wind for the back half, the pretty part of the ride:  the 25 miles along the Navarre beach.  By the time I went back to registration to claim my substitute registration package, I was back on track to do the full ride.

So, I finished gearing up for the ride... got my bike aired up and rolled over to the start line.  I saw another rider (in much better shape than me) sporting the exact same Trek 5000 that I ride... kinda cool, actually.  It's nice to know that my bike isn't obsolete!  The MC of the event kicked things off, and after a quick 5 minute talk, we all hit the road.  The ride started at 7:00AM.  The 62 mile route went back across the Gulf Breeze bridge back to Pensacola, around downtown Pensacola, then back across the bridge to meet up with the 42 mile route.  I had hoped that the split between the 40/60 mile route would be half way through the ride, so I could make the choice to do the 62 mile route after I had 20-30 miles under me, but due to the way the course was laid out, I had to make the call right off the bat, which means that as soon as I hit the asphalt at 7:00, I was committed to the full ride.  It's a point of pride with me that I've never had to walk my bike through a part of a ride and I've never failed to do a ride that I started, so there was nothing left for me to do but just do it.

The ride started off at a weaving through the nearby subdivision at a gentle 15mph pace.  After a mile or two of that, we hopped back on the main drag, and we headed for the bridge back to Pensacola.  I was already beginning to slow down, partly due to the headwind we were riding into but also because I knew I had to pace myself carefully or I would burn myself out and not be able to finish the ride.  So, I dropped back and took my time over the bridge, then cruised into historic Pensacola.  We road around the historic district for a bit, making our way to the pier where we hit a round-about and began the return trip to Gulf Breeze. Taking the bridge on the way back was *nice*, because the head wind I was fighting against on my way over the bridge was now a favorable tail wind... so, aside from climbing the short hill in the middle of the bridge, I made damn fine time getting back across the bay.

By this point, I had ridden about 14-15 miles, and was ready for a SAG stop.  Fortunately, even though I forgot my Red Bull or 5-Hour Energy, I did remember to snag my Shot Bloks.  If you aren't familiar with these things, they are the new Crack of the fitness world.  Imagine if you will, a pack of giant gummy blocks that contained caffeine, sugars, carbs, and electrolytes, all designed to give you a quick shot of energy and some extra fuel to keep you moving...  Now imagine they taste like candy... and came in packs of 6.  You might picture something like this in your head...



You can pick these up at most bike shops, or online... and now that I know they come in fruit punch, I'll be ordering a box of them before my next ride...  If you're interested, you can see more for yourself...  Anyway, I cracked open a bag and thew a couple back when I got to the first rest stop, and by the time I got back to the start line to pick up the other 42 miles, I was feeling better about life.

By the time I made it back past the finish line, the 42 mile pack (which started a half hour after the 62 mile pack did) had long since left the pavilion.  That didn't bother me so much, I know I was out of shape for this, so I wasn't expecting to be a speed demon.  However, that didn't stop me from feeling good about myself to run into some of the 42 mile folks at the next rest stop, and what was about 21 miles in for me.  After getting a sip of Gatorade and a quick snack, I hopped back on my bike and took off.  This was the part of the ride where I learned several things...

1. Always check your cue sheet... turns out the next rest stop wasn't for another 20 miles!
2. I hate head winds... and the next 20 miles was pretty much all head wind.
3. Never ride alone if you can avoid it.
4. Never pass up a bathroom when you're drinking fluids at about 3 times your normal rate...

I have to say... by mile 25-26, I was suffering... greatly.   I had been pulling into a head wind by myself for 5+ miles.  I had long since lost anyone I had ridden with earlier in the day, and I was having serious pacing and endurance problems.  This was largely due to not having anyone to keep pace with, so I didn't notice how drastically I was letting my speed fluctuate.  I would go from 16mph down to 10mph the back up to 14mph and so on, depending on what I was paying attention too.  Consistency is the key to an endurance ride like this, so those kinds of fluctuations are murder half way through a long ride.

Fortunately, my luck was about to change.  Just as I was cursing myself for getting out of bed that morning, I ran across a pair of hapless young ladies who had obviously gotten themselves in over their heads.  They were both riding borrowed mountain bikes (which hadn't been adjusted for them), they had 1 water bottle between the 2 of them (which was almost empty), neither one of them knew how to gear properly, they had only gone about 10 miles, got lost once already, and they were already out of steam... and the next rest stop was 12 miles away!  They were barely able to keep an 8mph average, and I was getting desperate just to have someone to ride with to keep myself moving, so I dropped back and kept them company for a bit...

The two girls were good company.  I can't recall their names (big surprise there), but they were glad for the company, especially when I started giving them advice.  Since I had 3 full packs of shock blocks with me, I took another pack out and handed it to one of them, to split between the 2 of them.  I told them how to switch gears properly, told them why they were having trouble, and made several minor adjustments in their riding style that made their lives a little bit easier.  I tried to offer them my spare water bottle, but they didn't want to take it, insisting they would be OK until the next rest stop with the little bit of water they had left between them.  We rode together like this, at around 8mph, for the next 2-3 miles.  Somewhere around the mile 30 mark, we got passed by a group of folks who were moving at a pace that looked comfortable for me, so I said my goodbyes and wished the girls good luck, then took off to catch up to the pack that had just passed us.

Turns out, this was a brilliant move on my part.  These cats were moving at about a 13-14mph pace, even in the headwinds, and were more than happy to chat with each other the whole time we were riding.  They welcomed me into their happy little pace-line without any trouble, and we stuck together for the rest of the day.  I did leave them very briefly at about mile 40... (see point 4 above), but I waited at the next rest stop and we all clipped in together and rode off from there.

My new companions were a mixed lot... we had Jamie, the 42 year old mother of 3, who I swear to god was in her mid 20s... we had Gelon, a retired CPA who was just out for fun and fitness, and we had the retired couple, Jake and Rachel, who were cruising along happily in their tandem recumbent bike.  We set off from the 41 mile rest stop together and began the climb over the Navare bridge, over to what would be beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best part of the ride... the beach!  Remember that tail wind I was talking about earlier?  Yeah, it was so very very nice...

So, off we went... our speed jumped up to a casual 16mph pace, with none of us really having to work hard to keep it up.  We alternated pulling, sometimes riding side by side to chat, sometimes single file to let traffic pass.  The beach was absolutely gorgeous, especially when we got onto the protected portion, away from all the condos and the tourists!  At one point, we passed some sort of giant kite festival, and that was all kinds of awesome.  I haven't seen kites like that since California!  Later on down the road, we passed a column of motor cycles that had to be 150-200 riders long.  We had to stop to let them pass in fact, as they were cutting us off from the next rest stop!  We actually had to turn around and ride back down a parking lot for a couple hundred feet to get to the stop, and that's when we found out just how heavy the tail wind we were riding really was!  And let me just say... I can't tell you how glad I was that we got the headwind at the beginning of the ride!

The rest of the ride was pretty easy going from there.  We chatted, Rachel took lots of pictures, I talked up RideYellow to them, in the hopes that we could ride together again then, and we all had a good time.  We were feeling so good, in fact, that we decided to cruise past the last rest stop entirely and just truck it on home.  Truth be told, I probably should have stopped, my lower back felt about ready to break, but I wasn't going to be the one to stop our momentum, so I just sucked it up and kept on moving.  More than once that day my friend Cat's mantra of 'Just keep Spinning!  Just keep Spinning!' fluttered through my head.... and keep spinning I did, right up until we rolled in to home base, at just over 63 miles.  Considering that I haven't been on my bike in 3 years, I'll take it!

Rachel was kind enough to get us a group photo of our new team, 'Team Conclusion'!

(Gelon, Jamie, me, Rachel, and Jake)

So yeah... it was great fun.  It took a lot out of me though.... I got home, got cleaned up, and crawled into bed at about 3:30pm Saturday... and did not get out of bed until 7:30am the next morning.  Gotta love 16 hours of sleep!  I also got a nasty sunburn, including raccoon face and my racing stripes (it's NOT a fucking Farmer's Tan!), but it was totally worth it!

I'm continuing my training regiment, working towards Ride Yellow.  I found that the parts of me that really hurt after the ride were my arms and hands (from supporting my upper body weight), and my ass (from sitting in the saddle).  These are things that I can't replicate at home on my exercise bike, so I'll have to start incorporating crunches and push ups, to get some strength in those areas... but even if that's all I do between now and June, I know I'll be ready for Ride Yellow this year!

Anyway, that's all I've got...  I'll post more as I get closer to the next ride!
Crash

Friggin LAZERS!

So, yeah... Lasik.  I'm a fan.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let me start at the beginning.  I'm 31 years old.  My vision has been bad as long as I can remember.  In fact, I don't think 'Bad' is a strong enough word to describe my vision.... my vision has been a TRAVI-SHA-MOCKERY* for all this time.  In the layman's terms, I've had 20/110 vision or worse in either eye, and Astigmatism** in both eyes.  I probably should have gotten glasses by the time I got into Kindergarten, but what do you expect... it was the 80's, and it went unnoticed.  I was finally diagnosed and put in glasses in the 6th grade, which would have put me at about 11, if I recall properly.  That means I've been wearing glasses for 20 years, and been almost helpless without them.

Without my glasses, I could not read the text on my monitor a mere 2 feet in front of my face.  I had to get within 6-12" before the fonts became legible.  With vision that bad, I quickly learned the importance of my glasses.  They were my life-line to something resembling a normal life.  In 20 years, I've never broken or lost a pair of specs, I've only worn out frames and grown out of prescriptions.  I treated my glasses better than most people I know, because most people I know didn't have the power to prevent me from living a normal life.  My glasses held that power over me.  I resented and loved my glasses all at the same time.  They were life saving shackles that let me live a normal life, but only if the things I wanted to do could be done with glasses on, or if I didn't need to see what I was I doing.

In my mid 20's, I began to tire of my predicament, so I started looking into laser corrective surgery.  The price redefined 'sticker shock' to me.  I was still in college at the time, making around 20-25k/year, so the idea of a procedure that would cost upwards of $4000 blew my mind.  I had to pass on Lasik back then, and I opted for the lesser alternative, contacts.  For a time, this gave me the appearance of freedom.  I could finally go SCUBA diving and see what I was swimming with.  I could ride my road bike without worrying about my $400 prescription ray-bans flying off and shattering to dust on the hot Tennessee asphalt.  I could see the world with a clear field of vision, not just the parts offered by my portholes of vision.

However, the Contact solution was not perfect either.  Getting my lenses in and out was a mess, and took sometimes as long as 10-15 minutes in the morning and again in the evening.  Some days I couldn't get them in at all.  Cleaning or replacing the lenses was costly, and at the end of the day, I was still always reduced to wearing my glasses again when I took my contacts out for the night.  The fact that I opted for the doc-in-a-box optometrist meant that I had a bad fit on my lenses, so they were uncomfortable to wear for more than 4 hours at a time.  After a summer of fighting a losing battle with the contacts, I finally put them away and resumed wearing my polycarbonate prison.

Fast forward a few years... I'm older... wiser... I make a lot more money, and I have a much better line of credit available to me.  My glasses are over 4 years old at this point.  My Ray-Bans are on their last legs, and all 4 lenses (regular glasses and sun glasses) are scratched up and showing their age.  I was presented with the choice of shelling out for new glasses (for which my paltry vision insurance would pay only $140, give or take), or take another, serious look into Lasik.  Fortunately, one of my co workers is married to a well connected doctor here in Mobile, and the 2 of them were able to point me to 'THE GUY' in Mobile for Lasik, Dr. Richard Duffey (I like him already!)

Dr. Duffey holds an information seminar and pre-screening session once a week at his office.  So, I headed over there after work one day to get the info.  I'm glad I did.  It turns out that they have made dramatic strides in the field of Lasik since the last time I looked into it.  The 2 big enhancements they've made are 'Custom Lasik' treatments, and Tracking Lasers.  Custom lasik uses several 3D scans of your own eyes to make a completely tailored treatment for you.  This method, unlike conventional lasik, can also fix astigmatisms.  Tracking lasers can monitory your eyes and follow the involuntary movements your eyes make during the procedure, at a much faster rate than your eyes can actually move.  The combination of these 2 technologies means that you get a nearly perfect treatment with custom Lasik.

So, after the seminar, I was given my prescreening exam.  The Dr. said I was a good candidate for custom lasik, and I  should schedule a detailed exam to get the 3D maps made and make sure I was a good fit.  I was given a price and the number of a good medical finance firm.  I told the Dr. that if I could get the financing lined up, he would see me again inside the week.  I called, got just enough to cover about 2/3 of the cost, and pulled the other 1/3 from my savings.  When I established that I could actually afford the procedure, I called him back and set up the appointment.

I was told that the detailed exam would be the 'longest eye exam of my life'.  I figured he was exaggerating a bit, but I was expecting more than a standard doc in a box eye exam.  I was not disappointed.  It was a 3 hour exam, in which many pictures, scans, and readings were taken.  My eyes were dilated and numbed.  I was probed, prodded, and poked.  Two hours and 45 minutes into the 3 hour eye exam, I finally got to see Dr. Duffey again (everything up to this point was done by nurses).  He spent about 5 minutes looking over my charts, and told me that I was, in fact, a good candidate for Lasik.  We scheduled the procedure for the next week so I could make arrangements for transport and work, and I went home feeling mildly excited about the whole thing.

The following week was interesting, but for entirely different reasons...  I got the worst case of food poisoning I've ever had the night after the eye exam.  Over a week later and I'm still feeling the effects.  That is one Sushi joint I will NEVER eat at again!  But I digress...

After a particularly excruciating week, the appointed day and time finally came.  I didn't have anyone to drive me to or from the operation center, so my friend Laura from work graciously offered to take care of me.  I got there just in time, popped my prescribed Xanex (for the nerves and to help get to sleep later), and waited my turn.  They put me in one of those silly gowns (over my normal clothes, thankfully) and a silly hair net, then there was nothing left to do but wait for Dr. Duffey.

Dr. Duffey showed up shortly thereafter to go over the procedure with me.  We agreed that he was doing both eyes, but he would do the right eye first and not touch the left until the right was perfect.  He ushered me into the Laser room, put me in the chair, and swung me into place.  I was feeling a little nervous at this point, not because of the laser, but because of the what had to come before the laser... the microkeratome!  That is the device that has to be clamped DIRECTLY onto your EYEBALL, so it can slide a knife across the surface of your eye to cut back a flap in the outer layer and expose the inner cornea.  As gruesome as this sounds, this procedure shaves several weeks off the recovery time, over the original procedures that did not include the cornea flap.  Knowing all that, however, did not make it any easier to get through.

So, Dr. Duffey pops this thing on my right eye and asks his nurse to begin suction.  In what I can only describe as the gift of a merciful god, the process of applying the suction to clamp the device to my eye had the side effect of making my entire vision go black... so I couldn't see what was about to happen.  When I informed Dr. Duffey that my vision was gone (which was expected, as it turns out), he turned on the device.  This caught me by surprise... I *thought* that this device was simply a very sharp blade that was pushed across the eye in 1 smooth movement.  I was wrong.  He turned it on and I shit you not, it felt like he turned a fucking chain saw on over my eye!  Words can not describe how utterly and completely *fucked up* that felt.  The fact that it only took about 3 seconds to make the flap meant I was in shock the entire time, and I didn't have to focus on it.

Once the flap was made, Dr. Duffey took the torture ring off my eye and my vision returned, though it was obviously so blurry I couldn't see anything but the blinking light directly over head.  That's good though, because that's all I needed to focus on.  Before I had even gotten over the shock of the whole microkeratome ordeal, Dr. Duffey had turned on the laser.  The entire process took less than 30 seconds to burn out the custom lasik pattern that was mapped for my eye.  When it was done, Dr. Duffey slid the skin flap back in place and smoothed it all out, and I'll be damned if I couldn't already see better out of that eye!

Once the right eye was one, it was time to move to the left eye.  This was where the fun started.  For those of you who know me, I favor my right eye, and that leads to my left eye being slightly squinty most of the time.  Well, that condition manifested itself when Dr. Duffey tried to attach the microkeratome to my left eye.  He got it on once, but wasn't happy with the positioning of it.  So, he took it off and repositioned it.  It felt like he needed a crowbar to get it in place.  Then he called for suction, and once again my vision went black... only this time, I knew what was coming...  Allow me, for your benefit, to provide a reenactment of what was going on in my head when he kicked that thing on...

OH GOD NOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!

To my credit, all I did was jump a little bit in the chair.  But yeah... despite the fact that he doubled up the numbing drops for my left eye... it fucking hurt.  Almost apologetically, Dr. Duffey explained that the second eye always hurt worse than the first.  Thankfully, that was the only hard part of the entire thing.  Again, the laser work was less than 30 seconds.  When he was done, he moved the skin flap back in place, smoothed it all out, and added several different eye drops to both eyes.  He taped a couple of plastic shields over my eyes and sent me on my way, with instructions to be back at 7:45 the next morning.

Laura drove me home, and I tried to sleep, I really did.  I rolled around for 5 hours.  I must have drifted in and out of sleep in the process, but it was not terribly restful.  My eyes were watering the whole time, felt itchy and sore, like they were bruised (which, oddly enough, because they were... more on that later).  I was not a happy camper.  Even after I woke up 5 hours after I got home, I couldn't open my eyes at first.  Finally, I managed to coax them open, and after about 5-10 minutes of excessive watering of my eyes and blinking, then trying to get my eye drops in each eye, I finally managed to clear my vision enough so I could see...

I was shocked.

For the first time... well, ever... I could see perfectly clear without the assistance of anything.  No glasses, no contacts, no seeing eye dog, no Borg Implants, nothing!  I had nearly perfect vision, and my operation was less than 5 hours ago.  Suddenly the discomfort in my eyes really didn't seem all that bad...  but I was curious as to why my eyes felt so sore... so I looked in the mirror... and Diablo was looking back at me!  The irises in both eyes were just covered in blood!  CREEPY!

Fortunately, I was expecting that, so I didn't start screaming like a little girl.  My friend Lee had the same thing happen to him when he got Lasik done 5ish years ago, so I asked about it during my screening exam.  I was told that the microkeratome usually causes bruising of the iris when it gets clamped on, and because the blood was so close to the surface of the eye, it never ran out of oxygen, which is why it stayed red.  The blood should absorb back into the eyes in 2-3 weeks, no harm no foul.

So, I wandered into the living room, and turned on the TV.  Watching my HDTV with my own eyes last night was like watching it again for the first time.  I was pleased!  I called my mom, let her know how it went.... she didn't even know I was having it done that day, she just knew I was looking into it... I know, I'm a bad son... sue me.  I sent out some text messages, and kept my Facebook friends appraised of the situation.  I was trying not to sound like a giddy little school girl, but it was hard ;)  I went outside at one point to see if I could find an old pair of shades in my car, and I found that my night vision was much improved.  That was unexpected, but welcome.  Walking around in my apartment in the dark showed the same thing:  greatly improved night vision!  I went to bed a very happy man.

The next morning, I got up and went in for my followup exam, and the hits just kept on coming!  They checked my vision using the old familiar E-charts, and even though my eyes were tender, a little swollen and very watery, I rocked a 20/15 score on my vision test, in both eyes!  Better than perfect in both eyes, less than 24 hours after surgery!  Holy shit!  I had to celebrate by indulging in something I've been wanting to do for the past 8 years... I went down to the mall, found the sunglass shop, and bought the best looking pair of Oakley's they had!  And I gotta tell ya, folks... they look GOOOOOOD!

As I right this, it's the evening the day after surgery.  My eyes already feel much better, they've stopped watering and my vision is getting sharper and sharper.  I've also finally gotten the hang of putting my drops in, so that's a non-issue as well.  I have to put my medical drops in 4 times a day for a week, and the watering drops for a month or so, as needed... then I'm free and clear!  I've got another follow up exam in a month to make sure everything healed up smoothly, but it looks like I got though this process without a hitch, and wound up with better than perfect vision for my trouble!  Score!

So, like I said at the beginning... Lasik!  I'm a fan!

Rich


p.s.  One of the things I used to do to people who asked how bad my vision was, was hand them my glasses and tell them to put them on.  The look of intense pain followed by the short term headache that wearing my glasses caused them was always good for a laugh ;)  Well, I figured that since I've got perfect vision now, I should see just what I was inflicting on my friends for all these years... and to everyone I've ever done that too... you have my sincerest apologies!


*I did not coin the phrase 'travi-sha-mockery'... that was courtesy of James VanDyne and Matt Seese at my office.
**I didn't even know what 'Astigmatism' meant until a week ago... it's when light focuses on 2 separate points in the back of your eyes, causing super-extra-ultra-blurry vision.