One step on the road to a century

Out Hopkins Way

 Today I went on my first serious bike ride since endocarditis ended my cycling back in June. I remember that ride well because it felt so bad. I didn’t know at the time I had a serious infection, I only knew that I kept getting fevers and feeling terrible…often right after riding my bike. On that ride, I couldn’t even make it 30 miles. I cut the ride short and came home really struggling. It was one of those rides where you feel so bad coming home that when you get home you don’t want to see your bike or think about riding again for a long time. I did manage one more ride after that one—a short 12 miler—but that was really the end of cycling for me for 2011.

I’ve rattled on endlessly about suffering through 3 weeks of constant fevers, a week in the hospital and then eventually heart valve repair surgery. So I won’t get too far into that again. Today I am 6 weeks out of surgery. I’m still working on building stamina and I’ve got this respiratory thing that keeps me coughing and won’t go away. Otherwise, I am getting better.

Today both my kids went to play at a friend’s house for the afternoon and evening leaving me with the first free several hours I’ve had in a couple of weeks. I asked my daughter what I should do with my time and she said, “Oh, go on a bike ride, work on a paper, watch some football.” She knows me only too well. As soon as I got home from dropping them off, I got my gear out, pumped up my tires and loaded everything in our van. I figured if I was going to go on a ride (likely a short one), it might as well be a good one. I had decided to leave the mean streets of Shandon for another day and head out to the area where I usually ride. It is out of town and rural enough that there isn’t a lot of traffic and I can see deer and fields and trees with leaves falling off. I usually ride from my house out to this area, but I knew I couldn’t do that today. It was a little wasteful, but I drove 15 minutes to Congaree National Park where I started my ride.

I got there and got kitted up. Since it was 60 degrees, I had the luxury of riding in my just shorts (one good reason to live in South Carolina). I was hoping to go somewhere between 5 and 10 miles, but really just wanted to stay on my bike for a good 40 minutes no matter how far or fast I went. Not surprisingly, even little hills were hard and riding into the wind and uphill was even tougher. I’ll tell you, though; when I got the wind behind me it really felt great to fly down the road with the sun shining and the leaves falling. I figured my legs would be my limiting factor and they were. My breathing wasn’t a problem despite the respiratory thing and my new heart valve pounded away madly. As often happens to me, my legs really don’t start feeling good until I get 8 or so miles in them. That happened today, but the problem was they felt warmed up at that point but were completely out of gas to go.

I rode a respectable 10 miles on m 40 minute ride. I didn’t flop over on the side of the road, didn’t ride off into the ditch, and didn’t have to stop. Without really trying to ride a pace I ended up riding what is my default pace—about 15 mph. I was surprised by that because I figured my legs would be so out of shape that I would have to go pretty slowly. Of course, speed is not what I need right now. I need to build conditioning in my legs and the rest of my body. I made a good start today and what I need to keep doing is logging time on the bike. I’d really like to do that century I meant to do last May this coming May. I’ve got a long hill to climb, but as Clem told me…just ride through it.

In other exciting me-centric news, my sense of taste is returning to normal. You know how I can tell? That cheap-ass coffee I’ve been buying at the grocery store is becoming undrinkable. Since my surgery, everything has tasted bad—mostly salty. I’d sort of given up on anything tasting right. In celebration, I grilled a steak and made a baked potato for dinner tonight…and it tasted the way it should…greasy, buttery, fatty manfood goodness!

One last bit of good news, McRib is back! Sadly only for a limited time. You'd think there'd be enough pig snouts and butt holes for an endless supply of McRibs, but then again people need their scrapple, too.