OldTryGuy

Last ride was a week ago of 72 miles. Knees have been acting up and had to have a total house re-plumbing this week so no miles on the bike. Made it out at 12:40AM this morning for first segment ride of 77 miles. Blasted 68yo body didn't start to feel good until the 35 mile mark and still couldn't manage any speed without knee pain. Sucks eggs taking so long for a simple ride. Got back home, showered, dry kit change, a bit to eat and headed back out to meet up with the LBS Saturday group BUT IT NEVER HAPPENED.

With no other bikes to "wheel suck" and wind picking up I was becoming disgruntled and decided to call it a morning. Only able to manage another 50 miles with total for the morning of 127.15 miles. Going to try and get out early tomorrow for a walk since my Disney Marathon is quickly approaching.

zacster

33 miles in a loop to Rockaway Beach. The waves were huge, bigger than I've ever seen them in NYC. The funny thing is that I started the day on my brand new trainer trying things out and one of the things I tried was the climb of Mt. Haleakala in Maui. I did that once for real and you start by dipping your wheel in the ocean to start the ascent to 10000'. And the waves there that day were huge as they always are. So I got my waves today, but no big volcano to climb.

JanMM

53 Hilly Hundred miles today on the ti 'bent. 2000+ feet of climbing. Sunny and temps up to 87F. There were hills. There was some uphill walking. There was some cramping. Overall, much fun!

canklecat

26 miles Friday night after a miserable couple of days with no energy. Rode to a friend's beer joint but I only had cold brewed coffee -- beer still doesn't agree with me while my thyroid is misbehaving. Felt pretty good, nice night. Kinda tired Saturday so I skipped some local group rides, napped in, then did an easy 30 minute spin on the indoor trainer.

OldTryGuy

So what's up with your thyroid???? I was having issues, had blood work, ultrasound and biopsy. Turned out to be Parathyroid Tumor plus Goiter. Had tumor removal and right half of thyroid removed so now on Synthroid plus further improved diet after prostate cancer diagnosis.

jcoyle

33 miles, good workout. Have another route mapped out. This will be 42 miles. I want to work up to being able to do a 100 miler in July.

MidSouthBiker

We are going from highs in the upper 80's today and tomorrow to upper 60's later this week. That should be a shock to the system.
Got in 111 minutes today.

camjr

I had been spending a lot of time behind the bars of my '74 Motobecane Grand Touring lately, but today hopped on my 2013 Fuji Absolute 2.1 hybrid and did a quick 10 mile ride up and back to a local food truck festival where the school my wife is the Head of School (Montessori Episcopal School) had a booth. I've never had lobster from a food truck before.

Hybrids are made for rides like today's...

John_V 

61 miles for the annual Rails to Trails ride on the Withlacoochee State Trail in Inverness, FL. Rode with my friend Karen, who does this ride with me every year. Great ride with lots of wind.

canklecat

Pardon the lengthy recap of this year's health amusements...

Not sure what's going on now with the thyroid. Around 20 years ago a family doc suggested it might be Hashimoto's but the symptoms flip-flop and sometimes resembled Grave's disease. Apparently that's common with some auto-immune disorders affecting the thyroid. A much younger friend has had the same problem. But she's remained slender because she's a vegetarian or vegan and very careful about her diet. My weight has dropped from 205 lbs when I was first diagnosed almost 20 years ago to 155 lbs now. I've gradually lost weight by modifying my diet without going to extremes. My peak condition weight in my 20s was around 150, so while I still have a little belly fat and less muscle mass I'm pretty close to where I should be.

I was on levothyroxine for several years but stopped taking it around 2007 when I misplaced the bottle. I didn't feel any worse so I just forgot about it. Then suddenly this winter I felt like I had the world's worst flu, except it wasn't the flu. I found my old levothyroxine prescription and resumed taking it in January. By March I was feeling pretty spry again and even cracked a few Strava top tens. Best condition I'd been in since I was in my 20s.

Then in May I was hit by a car. Borked my shoulder, Grade 4 separation and fractured coracoid. When the ER did a neck X-Ray to check my spine it was blocked by a huge impenetrable mass. The techs were baffled and asked if I had some sort of neck implant. I made some lame joke about aliens. It was my thyroid. It was so swollen and calcified it was basically bone and impenetrable to X-Rays. So in addition to the shoulder injury I was set up for multiple tests -- ultrasound, MRI, CT scans, biopsies -- to figure out what was going on.

Meanwhile, around late June, an ill-informed nurse practitioner in my "geriatric" clinic told me to discontinue the thyroid meds because my thyroid panel was normal. This made absolutely no sense but instead of challenging her recommendation I played the role of cooperative patient.

I'd resumed riding using an indoor trainer, with limited outdoor rides due to the shoulder injury. I was still pretty strong and fast.

By late July-early August I was suddenly exhausted. Pretty soon I could barely hobble from bed to the bathroom. Finally went to the urgent care clinic and, sure 'nuff, my thyroid level was low. Urgent care doc asked why the NP told me to discontinue thyroid meds. "I dunno," I shrugged. "Well, start taking them again. It'll take about 6-8 weeks to feel better." By mid-September my strength was coming back and I'm doing a few very casual weeks a week.

Meanwhile I registered with the VA because I'd kinda lost trust in that civilian hospital's "geriatric" clinic. So far, so good, the VA in our area is fantastic -- courteous, attentive, prompt, everything you'd want from an affordable health care provider. I have more tests coming up next week.

Left side of the thyroid is swollen to roughly handball size; right side is golf ball size. It's deformed my esophagus and trachea sideways about an inch or so and constricted both so it's difficult to swallow. My airway is clear enough for moderate to moderately difficult exercise, but I'm topped out easily and unable to breathe well enough for sustained high effort in cycling or any activity. I can manage decent sprints for a minute or so but can't sustain any long hard effort, so I've stopped participating in local semi-fast B group rides. I'm hoping to get back to that next year.

First biopsy showed the thyroid is just a calcified mass of dead tissue. No sign of cancer from that biopsy. But the VA wants to repeat the tests because there's an area behind the trachea/esophagus that looks funky in imaging. Personally I'd rather just have the whole thing removed since it's not working any more. They can section and biopsy the removed thyroid. If it turns out benign, great, one less thing to worry about. If it's malignant, yay, maybe we dodged a bullet. Thyroid cancer is considered less likely to metastasize than most cancers, so I'm not too worried. The only cancer in my family was my dad, prostate cancer, and he hung on for just over a decade before it metastasized and took him within a month.

Other than that, I can't think of any history of cancer on either side of the extended family. We mostly have heart disease, obesity, diabetes, COPD, all the usual stuff from poor diet and sedentary lifestyles -- all of which I'm trying to avoid by exercising and eating properly. So far, so good.

And the moral of this long boring tale: Get a second opinion before discontinuing meds that seem to be working. Biggest mistake I made -- besides neglecting my health for so long in the first place -- was taking the advice of a nurse practitioner even when it seemed wrong.

There are good nurse practitioners, but they're often just regurgitating stuff they're memorized without the same clinical and lab experience as medical doctors. And I've noticed in discussing issues with NPs that they're often not as well informed as I am. Some of them seem to refer to a very limited set of references that are sometimes out of date. I study lots of papers published on the PubMed NCBI/NIH site, and avoid pop culture and junk science/health sites. I try to avoid being one of those PITA patients who comes across as a know-it-all, but I do want to be informed.

Nycycle

JanMM

51 tandem miles today on second day of Hilly Hundred in Southern Indiana. There were HILLS, several of which were walked up. (We weren't alone.) But great roads and sights. About 2000 attended. Upper 80's by midday, which is unusual for October in Indiana.

scozim 

Been fighting nerve issues in my neck from bulging discs since April. Haven't been on a bike in a month because it was too uncomfortable. Doing some intense chiropractic treatment for the past two weeks and I was able to get out for 12 miles on my new mtb drop bar conversion - 1993 Trek 950

MadProphet

jcoyle

33 miles. Good ride.

Bob Ross

Saturday, 30 mile group ride in the rain...a rain that absolutely none of the half-dozen weather services I typically consult each morning even hinted at!
Sunday, 44 mile solo ride...plus a 1.66 mile ride later in the day to bring my wife something she needed at the gym
Today, nope.

John_V 

Was going to take the day off but a friend called and wanted to ride so I ended up with a 25 mile recovery ride this morning. Taking the day off tomorrow.

nemo57

No, but I did 210 km on Sunday. Perhaps that explains it.

JanMM

jcoyle

25 miles, Hill repeats.

wait4me

Got 30 miles in today. Cotton is ready to be harvested, the smell was strong out today. Some of the area's still have water from the hurricane three weeks ago.

Bob Ross

31 mile early AM solo road ride. Started in complete darkness and was already 10 miles in before the sun came up. At mile 15 I took a spontaneous detour on a gravel/dirt path through the woods...



Wow. So quiet and peaceful. I didn't want to turn around and go home! Gotta do more of that.

JanMM

8 solo miles after work yesterday evening.

John_V 

No ride today. Sitting at home waiting for all this bad weather we're suppose to have from Hurricane Michael but as of yet (4:00pm), we haven't had a drop of rain. The wind is a much different story. Wind ranged from 17-35 mph pretty much all day long and haven't stopped yet. Good thing Michael is nowhere near us but we are sure getting the wind that he's bringing.

JanMM

19 bike commuting miles today and what felt like a Fall day. Almost 90F this past weekend but wore running pants, jacket and full finger gloves to and from work today. Not complaining...........