Notes for J:

This ride was GORGEOUS!!!! But this ended up being my first truly bad day on the bike. My body did NOT show up to play today…And I didn’t realize it until we hit the first really big (9% and about 3/4 mile) hill ~ 6 miles in.

I’ve been taking antihistamines (Zyrtec, Flonase) since spring started. This part of PA was about 3 weeks behind our part of MD in terms of spring. I took my usual doses of both meds this morning, but upon hitting that first big hill, I realized I should have double-dosed. My singular allergy symptom with pollen is mild asthma, usually triggered by exercise only at this time of year and only when pollen counts are super high, but I can normally work through it just fine. I’ve never needed an inhaler for it.

This was more than mild though: RR increase -> wheezing. I felt like I was breathing through a straw. My HR followed. Then my mind. Then my legs. Halfway up this monster hill that should have been within my wheelhouse, I had to get off and hike the bike the rest of the way up. My RR and HR did not immediately come down despite walking. I was alarmed.

It felt like it took forever for my HR and RR to drop, despite intentionally slowing down my breathing.

It got worse after that.

After the 3rd big hill, my joints started to ache, especially my knees, hips, and shoulders. Then my muscles went up in a ball of flames: arms, traps, quads, calves, hamstrings, lower back, all felt on fire. The longer we went, the worse it got. I had followed my usual nutrition, hydration and electrolyting plan to a T so it wasn’t any of that failing. I even got a hotel room with a kitchen so we could cook what works and not risk eating at a restaurant the night prior/morning of.

I’d feel much better on flats and downhills (my breathing would normalize, wheezing would stop), but I started really dreading the hills - they weren’t just steep, they were super long. And by steep, I mean that they had significant portions that were 9%+, with the “flatter” sections at ~6%. The steeper and longer the hill, the more awful my body felt and the harder it became to mentally push through it.

The Bull was the first of the legendary climbs. We took photos but they do it NO justice. It went straight up, from 12% to a max of 25%. I made it 1/4 of the way up on the bike then hiked the rest. Even hiking it was challenging. Again - I was very out of breath, HR elevated more than it should have been at my current fitness level.

I’m not sure I would have wanted to use an inhaler if I’d had one though…I would have been nervous about the HR increase that albuterol can cause.

The first aid station was after The Bull. We stopped, ate, refilled water bottles and continued on. I took Advil.

There was a lovely long downhill section after that aid station where I should have been able to recover but I felt physically miserable, even despite having eaten. The generalized joint and muscle pain I was experiencing was officially not dissipating now. It was ranging from a 6/10 to an 8/10 (for me, and I have a tremendously high pain tolerance.) I was truly worried at this point, and we still hadn’t even done the biggest climb of all: Goat Hill.

We made it to the next aid station (it was only a few miles away, but it’s the main station for that weird figure-8 with the steepest climbs of the course, set up so people can do those hills multiple times if they want.)

I wanted to skip the figure 8 entirely. We decided that the best thing would be to switch routes to the shorter Marmoset by connecting to its second half (Marmoset was 33 miles total.) We’d still be doing around 40 miles.

The problem was that we had to go back up that long lovely descent! It was 3 miles of climbing, 6-13%. I hiked half of it. I was in so much generalized pain by then that I have never wanted to quit something so badly in my life, but we had to continue.

Once we reached the top of the hill, it was all downhill, which was wonderful. I’ve really loved the last few rides where I’ve felt stronger at the end than the beginning, but that was not the case today. I was so happy to be done by the time we got back to the Velodrome.

There were some significant wins to this ride, but I’ll go into them at the end!

As for WTF happened with my body, I have several ideas:

1. I didn’t sleep very well last night. Hotel pillows were too squishy, + couldn’t figure out how to turn off the room’s kitchen light. Woke up at 11:00 pm to barricade the light so it would at least be dimmer. It helped. But maybe got 5 hrs sleep total. Not ideal, but I had slept well all week leading up to Friday, so this should not have been a massive hit to my strength and endurance today.

2. The muscle and joint aches were almost feverish, though I didn’t have the lethargy or hot/cold spells that come with a fever (granted, it was so cold on some of the descents, my teeth were chattering, then I’d be super hot when climbing. But I was attributing it to the weather + effort)

3 thoughts on all of that:
- I think I have the beginnings of a UTI. I’d been having episodes of going from 0-20 in terms of urgency to urinate, then production not being proportional to the urgency. I had attributed it to being extra diligent about hydration during the days leading up to MKF, but this morning it burned, so I’ll test myself when I get home tomorrow. I’ve been more prone to them for the last 2-3 years (1-3 UTIs per year, whereas previously I’d never had one!) but I hear this can happen with perimenopause. I’m extra diligent about changing out of sweaty bibs/clothes immediately post workout, but it sometimes still happens anyway.

- I carb loaded as usual, with a 3-day ramp-up, and same targets. The one change was that this time I reached more for sugary items to hit the numbers with more ease. The catch: too much refined sugar has historically made me feel shitty. It makes the workouts amazing, but the rest of the time I feel…not optimal. I don’t know how else to explain it. It does tend to make me feel more inflamed in the form of joint and muscle aches. Cutting out sugar (but NOT carbs!) is usually all I have to do to eliminate it.

- My period was supposed to start this week. I was taking norethindrone to postpone it - I did not want to deal with all that + bibs, so I delayed it. I’ve never done this before, but with all 3 races exactly a month apart from one another, I figured the shortest race of the 3 would be the best to experiment with a hormone change. My body has been fighting me on this every step of the way: I’ve been getting extra-intense period-type cramps all week anyway (intense enough to make me nauseated from the pain), but no bleeding. Rough periods for me usually go hand in hand with higher likelihood of joint and muscle pain/inflammation during that week.

Combined with the higher sugar intake, I think this was all just a perfect storm, but I would have had no way of knowing this was how it would go if I hadn’t tried.

Wins:
1. Bike handling on roads - this is the first time I’ve ridden so much on roads since switching to cleats and I did NOT stress AT ALL about having to unclip/clip at road crossings.

2. This course was epically beautiful. I wish it had been warmer, but at least it was sunny, and the sun was working!

3. Despite my body being on fire, my QL wasn’t sore!! AT ALL!! YAY PHYSICAL THERAPY!!!

4. Despite being in so much continuous physical discomfort, I still had the strength to pick up speed by pedaling standing up, both on flats and hills. Some of the lower % hills I did completely out of the saddle bc it was easier.

Carlos thought I would be disappointed with the ride, but I honestly wasn’t. I was just alarmed by the resounding “NO!” my body gave today, and not being able to immediately obey. I couldn’t just quit - we had to get back. So I endured. Which is the whole point of the sport.

Once back at the hotel, I showered and crashed in bed. I’m so glad I cut the route short because I do not want to think about how much worse I would have felt if we’d tried to do Goat Hill + the additional 10 miles.

I did this ride with gravel tires, and was glad I did: while it was only 10 miles of gravel total, some of it was chunky and deep - it would have been gnarly on road tires. The gravel tires held up beautifully.

I have a second wheel set with road tires set up at home, which I’ll be swapping to for more road-focused training now.

This ride fell under the “character building” and “live and learn” column for sure. Yesterday marked 1 year since I ordered my bike on a whim: the stuff I’m doing, even when it doesn’t go to plan, is still light years from anything I could have imagined when this journey started!

And yes: I am VERY interested in more power work so we can raise the ceiling! I really want to be able to power up hills with more speed!

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The other big highlight was you!! I think the moment I felt my best on that course was when you rode with us for a bit the first time. You got to see the best of where my cycling is currently at!

I am so very proud of you! You did 40 miles on a very challenging terrain (and some personal challenges). You’ll get there I am sure of it. It was wonderful to see you (pre-during-post race)

And i hated when the guy from Annapolis was talking to us about his mishaps. I was like: it’s my time to talk to Nicole, I don’t want to hear your stories” the entire time he was talking.

I was so angry at that guy too. You had just asked about work and I wanted to tell you about being told that people on the team find me intimidating…I literally do nothing to make myself intimidating. I’m always offering to help, I’m available to answer questions. I’ve NEVER had this complaint before in my career (I was really proud of the fact that newbies have historically found me approachable), and I truly think it’s a “them” problem. The people on this team have never worked with a truly advanced nurse before, so they have no other frame of reference. Lately if I chime in with information on something, I get eye rolls, so I’m just quiet in the corner happily minding my own business. But now I’ve been deemed “intimidating” because of it. I can’t win with this team. I feel severely under-utilized and under-stimulated, and like everything I learned last year has faded away because of disuse.

I’m excited about working with the old department tomorrow and Wednesday. It will be a welcome change from the mind-numbing sameness that is the current department. Maybe I can get a foot in the door there again if I end up liking it…they’ve been talking nonstop for 2 weeks about how excited they are to have me with them!