Am I still a cyclist?

Christmas is so long ago. It's almost Easter. It must be! They are selling chocolate eggs in the supermarkets.

I haven't been on my bike for three weeks now and it seems such a long time. It will still continue for ... I don't know how long!

The truth about Glandular Fever is: You need a lot more patience than you think.

I got Glandular Fever just before Christmas. I didn't know it then. It felt like something wasn't quite right but couldn't put my finger on it. I thought the lack of energy was the hay fever that had flared up, do you remember? It was also fairly strange that I lost all this weight over Christmas but I didn't think too much of it. I just assumed I was overtrained and run down from training for Bright and that I needed a rest. I was right about the later. It makes all perfectly sense now.

All January I struggled with tiredness and lack of energy. I was annoyed with myself as I believed I just wasn't disciplined enough. I kept pushing myself but dropped out of races and couldn't get back into intensive workouts.

Symptoms like sore throat and swollen glands and a general feeling of "coming down with something" started around my birthday, about six weeks later.

This hasn't changed since. My sore throat? No improvement whatsoever! I missed a couple of days at work but can function normally as long as long as I get enough sleep.

More adjustments to my racing calendar have taken place. I am aiming to start training again at the end of May now - if all goes well. A friend, who experienced Glandular Fever, gave me this advice: "Once you think you are ready to start training again, add another three weeks."

Even though I am 'technically' allowed to do easy rides, I haven't been on my bike lately. It's less frustrating this way. I can't get up at 4.30 AM just to 'roll around easily'. What's the point? Plus ... I need all the sleep I can get.

Even with being sick and knowing that I have to take it easy in order to get better, I feel guilty sometimes, like, I should do more. It's crazy!

What have I been doing with all the spare time?

Well, Alberto and I figured that it was perfect timing to move house, since we both can't train right now. The last four years, every time our lease came up for renewal, we thought: 'Oh no, we don't have time to move house because we have to train for this race or that tour.'

My excess energy, this time around, went into house hunting. I knew I had found the right place when I started picturing myself sitting on the private deck, reading a book, or waking up to birds singing, rather than the traffic noise of the four lane road on the door step of our current home. In front of my inner eye, I saw us entertaining friends in this cute little court yard, that is ideal for summer BBQs, and I knew, it was time to move.

The new house will have a workshop, a dedicated place for bike storage, bike cleaning and bike repairs. We are moving next weekend and I am very excited.

Apart from packing and cleaning and sleeping and working, I have also been reading a lot. We even managed to get to the movies after work one night and watched "The reader", a movie based on a book that I had read maybe 20 years ago and completely forgotten. We also saw "Grand Torino". Alberto and I played Scrabble last night. I lost by 20 points. Damn!

So life is actually pretty good, if there wasn't this one thing that really bothers me:

Am I still a cyclist?

Inside my throat lives a monster

Inside my throat lives a slow simmering volcano, ready to erupt, annoying me while I’m trying to get on with things. Hot and sore and swollen. It's like this for weeks now or even longer. Some days it is better, some days it is worse but it is there - constantly. It's not exactly painful but, hell, it's irritating.

Inside my brain lives a monster, nagging about riding while I'm trying to enjoy "life". Eager and anxious and impatient. It is like this for weeks now or even longer. Some days it is better, some days it is worse but today it wasn't just nagging. Today it was screaming "I miss racing."

All was good until I realised that it was 'Sizzling Summer' time, a criterium series I raced last year and loved. I was really looking forward to doing better this year.

No point thinking about it.

Patience ...

... is, according to the dictionary, the capacity to endure hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience without complaint. Patience emphasizes calmness, self-control, and the willingness or ability to tolerate delay.

Patience has never been my forte. Quite the opposite in fact, I am mostly impulsive, hate waiting (but more often than not I am the one late?) and I’m intolerant of any hold-up, postponement, oh, and I can’t stand suspense.

If you wish to torture me then just tell me that you’ve got a surprise but can’t tell me. Aw!

You might have noticed that I have removed all races from the side bar up until late April. I’m still hoping that I will be able to compete in the Tour de Tablelands in early May but the truth is that February is almost over and right now I’m completely wasted just riding 20 minutes on the rollers, easy spinning, and heart rate below 130 bpm. I’m not training. I’m trying to use the downtime to work on skills (rollers) and gain some strength (gym work).

Can one actually train patience? Now would be a good opportunity to make some progress in this handy skill. I have no willingness to endure delay. I have no choice. I’ll apply the same diligence and discipline to getting better as I would normally apply to my training.

This is the “training” plan for the next couple of weeks:

- Lots of sleep
- Ashtanga Yoga and regular stretching
- Gym work
- Not more than 15-20 minutes on rollers at a time
- Red wine with dinner (got to make the most of it while I can)

Tuesday’s gym session and 20 minutes on rollers on Wednesday night and the glands were swollen straight away this morning. This showed me that I have to take it even slower. Have I mentioned that I’m not a very patient person?

Glandular fever can teach me a lot.

Leap of faith

I thought I was never going to do it.

After another 15 minutes on the rollers today, psyching myself up, lifting the hand off the railing a bit, putting it back, looking straight ahead as Judi had told me to do, concentrating hard, taking the hand off again, wobbling, putting it back, I was wondering: When did I loose it?

Was it when I was climbing that old knobbly tree in front of my parent’s apartment at the age of six and slipt off the branch and landed on my back so hard that I couldn't breathe for a few seconds and was so frightened that I was going to die because those seconds felt like minutes?

Or was it during that family holiday at the Baltic Sea a couple of years later, when I got swamped by a wave and all of the sudden had no ground and swallowed unfamiliar salty water and despite the fact that I could swim, was really scared because I had no orientation and in my panic could not work out, which way to swim to get back to the shore?

Or was it years later as a teenager when a drunk ran into my bike and I came down hard and was lucky that the car managed to stop inches from my head?

I have been fairly lucky with bad injuries and never broke a bone in my life (touch wood) despite having been a very clumsy child and the subject of loving mockery from my mom. “Gelenkig wie ‘ne Brechstange”* is what she used to say referring to my lankiness and inflexibility.

I can count on one hand the few incidents that harmed my confidence. So when did I loose it, the unwavering believe that I can do anything I want, the childlike innocent faith that nothing can harm me and the steadfast trust in my own ability?

I don’t know.

And then I had enough of my hesitation and fearfulness. What was going to happen? What was I so afraid of? So I did it. The leap of faith! I put both hands on to the handlebar and kept them there, no matter what! The world did not come crushing down, the bike stayed upright and so did I!

Yes, I did it! Clipped in and everything. It’s the same feeling as riding with hands off the handlebars or balancing on that dam Swiss ball in the gym. I could hear my Personal Trainer Bec’s voice: "Tummy tight, shoulders back, head up and off you go" and had to smile.

I don't know when or how I lost it but maybe I can find it again, the daring fearlessness and confidence I had when I was six years old and jumped on that little bike for the first time and urged my Dad to let go?

*Limber like an iron rod

Learning to let go!

Tomorrow I will try and put both hands on the handlebar. This is hard work. I'm getting the hang of it slowly. All up I spent about 15 mintes on the rollers so far and below are the two minute highlights of my progress.



I can't bring myself to clip in, yet, so I use runners. The rollers are awesome fun (until novelty wears off I guess) and I wish I had more energy for this. Right now the EBV is knocking me around a little but I think I made my peace. For now anyway, since it has been raining non stop for the past two days. Makes me feel less itchy knowing that nobody else is out training.

The good and the bad news

Actually, I have several news, some of them are good, some of them bad and some of them are indifferent. Which do you want to hear first?

I'll start with the exciting news, how is that?

On Sunday afternoon I got the second hand rollers I mentioned in my last post. They are Tacx Ecotrack ones and the rubber was deteriorated so they didn't actually work. The front wheel roller didn't roll. Alberto got the replacement belt from the Velo for me today and fixed the rollers. By the time I got home from work they were working perfectly and I had my first clumsy attempts. I can't take my hand off the railing, yet. Judi - I know what you mean when you say 'white knuckles'. So this is going to be a nice challenge that will keep me occupied in the next few weeks.

Which brings me to the next news, impartial ones: The admin lady I spoke to at the medical centre confirmed that I do have the Epstein-Barr-Virus. She said that nothing can be done about Glandular Fever and that there is no therapy. Since the doctor wasn't available to talk to me I did my own research on the Internet. In short, I will be sidelined for a while but am allowed to ride socially as long as I take it easy and don't push myself. I feel relieved, sort of. After all, it wasn't my lack of motivation, discipline or plain laziness that made it hard for me to get out of bed and there is an explanation for the tiredness.

And then Shayne from Velo sent me an email this morning and threw another Singlespeed/Fixie option into the ring: The KHS Flite 100 in pearl white! Now that's one good looking bike and what I like about it is that it is a good entry level track bike but has the brake holes to make it suitable for road use, too, and it is well within my price range. What do you think?

So, all in all, it's actually all good news!

Feel my frustration?

Thursday night straight after work I went to the new Velo shop to have a look at rollers and also have a chat about a single speed bike options. I urgently needed some cheering up. My object of desire: A Soma Fabrication Single speed/Fixed gear bike.

Then John mentioned that a friend of his is selling all her track stuff as she moved to India and won't need it anymore. Amongst the things she is looking to off-load are a set of rollers and a track bike. We are going to see her mother this afternoon and I might be a proud owner of a set of rollers in a couple of hour’s time.

Last night at a friend's birthday party Mick mentioned his crimson red Olmo track bike that he has sitting at home. It is too small for him. I had a quick glance at the bike a couple of weeks ago when I dropped off his bike bag after Adelaide. He asked me if I was interested in buying it if it was the right size for me. Of course, I am!

I’m so keen and motivated to start training again but still no significant riding this week. The tiredness holds it's iron grip and my energy levels are some days so low that I can hardly get up to do the normal day to day stuff, like going to work. My throat is constantly sore and my glands seem swollen. It doesn’t really hurt but it’s bothering me.

I therefore went to my GP last week as this is beyond "normal" fatigue and is going on for far too long, especially since I haven't been riding that much and should be rested and recovered fully by now. He ordered a full blood test to rule out that iron levels are low or the thyroids are not working properly but it has also been suggested that I might have Glandular Fever, which would really suck.

The blood test results were meant to be back last Thursday but they haven't called, yet, and I have been too afraid to call them. I have been playing Ostrich with my head in the sand. I will have to face the inevitable tomorrow and call the doctor practise as I can’t stand the uncertainty any longer. They sure won't give me bad news on my birthday, will they?

What is it that makes me come back for more?

I have been thinking about writing a post about the tough cycling moments in the beginning and since Katherine over at Mellow Velo asked about it in a recent comment and Wade Wallace from Cycling Tips encouraged the notion, I dug deep and came up with some cycling moments I’d rather forget. Then again, it is also good to remember how far I’ve come.

Don’t get me wrong. There are still plenty of tough moments every week but now they are not as likely to derail the whole racing enthusiasm while in the beginning I was close to hanging up the bike and just pretend it was a delusional dream.

In my very first race in March 2004 I came third, an early success I was never able to repeat in Cairns. It was a D-Grade club race and it was a hill climb. There were a couple of other girls in the Cairns Cycling Club at the time but only one other girl, Lisa, raced regularly. She was very determined, always out training and much stronger than me. We didn’t train together very often.

I had bought the Trek 1400 in August 2003 and I mostly rode with Alberto. There was no structure to the training. We just rode. I had no intention to race. The road bike was just a means of getting some sort of fitness back for weekend mountain bike rides in the Atherton Tablelands after a few years of partying and smoking and a very sedate tropical lifestyle.

I bought a simple Polar Heart Rate Monitor and started an excel spreadsheet to keep track of the riding. I loved riding my bike but hated pushing myself. Everybody I rode with was stronger and fitter than me and I resigned to the constant anxious feeling of being the slowest and holding everybody else up. Alberto made me go up hills that appeared far too steep and long and difficult for me, which resulted in a number of roadside T&Ts (tears & tantrums). I always worried about damaging my heart and ending up in hospital (which I did indeed once with dehydration, but that’s another story).

The only reason why I started racing was because I’ve never been good at sitting on the sidelines. Alberto started racing so I started racing. It was that simple. I wasn’t ambitious to win a race or delusional that I had the ability; however, that did not prevent me from feeling the humiliation when finishing yet another race DFL.

Race briefing in Cairns

I made it my rule to at least finish every race, no matter what. This brought me the award of “Most Spirited Rider” in my first Tour de Tablelands 2004. I had no clue what I was doing, I got dropped in every single stage and I broke down in tears after crossing the finishing line in Yungaburra from sheer physical exhaustion and embarrassment of finishing an hour after everybody else. Only much later I could feel pride in the fact that I hadn’t given up.

I’m not sure why I persisted. I guess I always loved riding and racing and it was the choice between sitting at home watching TV or getting a workout in, which kept the frustration at bay. It was also the social aspect as we met a number of really nice people. Often I was the only girl and just resigned to the fact that I would never outsprint the guys. My racing goal was to “hang on” and that's were I got my motivation from when I succeeded to still be there at the end. Only later, after we had moved to Brisbane and when I started racing against other girls I realised how damaging this attitude actually was. It had become so ingrained that I’m still battling the “I’m happy to just hang on” mind-set today.

After moving to Brisbane in 2005 things got worse first before they got better. I lost count of the number of times I got dropped in races in Murrarie, Nundah and my first season of Open Events. It was frustrating. I was at a point of giving up racing as I wasn’t fast and confident enough for the lowest available Women’s grade in Brisbane, Elite Women B.

Three years ago there weren’t as many women or girls racing in Brisbane as today. Therefore they just chucked us in with the Elite or Masters guys, which petrified me. I wasn’t used to racing in bunches of up to 50 or 6o racers, testosterone fuelled guys, who weren’t scared of using their elbows. I would lie if I said it didn’t bother me. I hated being beaten again and again but my Aquarian stubbornness kept me entering races. I never made any changes to my training. I just rode and raced. No structure or training plan.

Then Alberto found this gym not far from where we live. They specialise in Cycling and Personal Training. We spoke to the trainer there and we signed up for a 12 week program in preparation of the 2006 Tour of Bright. When I started building core strength and going to the gym regularly I could see the results immediately. Within one season I moved from D-Grade to C-Grade and even was able to "hang on" to B-Grade. The transformation was amazing and immediate. All of a sudden I could participate in races and not just hang on. I unexpectedly won my first race, the Brookwater Classic in April 2007, which gave me an immense boost of confidence. The same year I became Club Champion. I had started training with a structured training program and I had bought my Time frame and everything had changed.

For the first time I saw myself as an athlete and someone who could actually win races. Cycling and racing wasn’t just something anymore I was doing to get fitter or because Alberto was doing it.

I knew I had changed.

(This is about up to the point where I started writing this blog so feel free to continue reading from my first blog post)

My January Metric Century

A few weeks ago I signed up for Trio's One Century A Month Challenge 2009. Half way through last week I realised that January was almost over and that Saturday would be my last chance for my January century ride.

So here it is: Proof that I did ride 100 km yesterday. It is also sad proof that I have lost some fitness and power. (For graph lovers or people who just wanna have a closer look at my embarrassingly low numbers, click to enlarge)

I loved the ride and will hopefully follow up with my February ride next weekend. The ride was not without some pleasant and unpleasant incidents.

Early in my ride, when I was dodging potholes through Brisbane's outer suburbs in search for some peaceful country roads, plastic pipes were sliding off the back of a Ute. While I was making the driver aware of his escaping cargo, another lady Ute driver didn't appreciate my presence and started yelling at me from her open driver's window to get off the road. We were exactly ten meters away from a red traffic light so she wasn't going anywhere. After helping the very thankful guy with his plastic pipes I rolled up to her open window and ask her what the fuss was about. She was one of those really cranky rednecks. Maybe she had a bad day, PMT, a fight with her husband ... who knows? She kept harping on that I should get of the roads, that I have no right to be on the road since I'm not paying registration. WTF? I swear I'm not proud of the choice of my words as they did not contribute to an open, fruitful and constructive dialogue about shared use and friendly co-existence of motorists and cyclists on Australian roads. Oh, well!

I continued heading North, following the course of the Zupps ride and caught up with a young kid on Anzac Avenue. He jumped on my wheel and introduced himself as Sam on the next traffic light. It was great to have some company on a long lonely ride and he joined me all the way to Redcliffe, where he was heading for a Triathlon. Not long after that another young rider joined me. His face looked familiar and it turned out to be a friend of Cameron. We started swapping turns along the waterfront and across Hornibrook bridge back towards Brisbane. I left him in Sandgate to return through the wetlands to add kilometers since I was running out of road for my 100 km goal.

I love riding through the wetlands as the narrow twisty bike path gives ample of opportunity for bike handling practice and it's very scenic with no abusive drivers. When I arrived in Nundah I was still 15 km short of 100 km so I added laps on the criterium circuit. Dramatic skies finished off my first metric century ride for 2009. I'm looking forward to many more to come and will hopefully see the improvements in numbers over the next couple of months.

The holiday is over. Watching the Tour Down Under did what I had hoped it would do: Bring back my motivation to train. I'm off to write my training program for February now.