Hello, it’s time for the July blog post. Last month was insanely difficult to write with the loss of my mother. This month is at least a little easier to write despite the up and down emotional roller coaster over the past couple months now since she’s been gone. I started training when I got back home and it has been progressively increasing week by week very gradually with intensity. Power numbers have been going up and I have purposely been trying to not overdo it. I really value consistency but sometimes it’s just easier said than done to maintain. Typically which happens each year I struggle a bit with the heat here in Phoenix although I am able to keep the house hovering around 74 to 76°. And with the AC and also a small portable swamp cooler that blows directly on me. That swamp cooler is so much better then a large fan . I think the issues I have bumped into in the past month and a half or so since I last blogged is just sometimes not sleeping the best with the heat and then I recently found out I’m anemic.
So, I’ll share the reason how I found out I am anemic in the paragraph below.So I stated above things were great and I just came off one of my best training days with power numbers for my 30/30s of three sets and followed that with 10 minutes of upper Zone 4 and low zone 5. Reading that you would think I’m not anemic. Well, I wasn’t fully surprised but I didn’t realize how low the number actually was. Last year my hematocrit was in the mid-40s. When I did that hard work out on Tuesday I forgot to put the bandage on my shin and I put the bandage on my shin to protect it from rubbing on the bar on the trainer. Well, because I forgot it it rubbed the small hole in my shin. Because I don’t feel that I forgot to clean it. The next morning I started feeling off getting some spasms thinking it might just be a UTI but I really didn’t think that was it. Well, over the day I had increased chills and I started noticing some redness on my lower left leg but my bladder was also spastic. I was thinking that I need to get both checked but let me drink a bunch of fluids and see if maybe I just need to flush out my bladder. Well, the bladder really wasn’t producing much of anything which meant that my white blood cell count was probably pretty high and that I was getting some cellulitis. Bingo! I decided to go to the ER in the evening, and my girlfriend was kind enough to go with me, to find out what I had thought. I had cellulitis, no UTI, but they also did a blood analysis and I found out my hematocrit was 37. That is low. The thing is I was thinking about how much animal product I probably was not eating over the past many weeks or longer and all the added stress from the events over the past two months contributing to my fatigue off the bike. Even my easy days on the bike weren’t really that easy. My hard days were okay because I’m pumped up on caffeine. Go caffeine! So my wonderfully kind girlfriend and I were at the ER for about 6 hours. That’s a long time. I’m happy that the cellulitis is slowly getting better with a couple antibiotics and I’m on a treatment to get that hematocrit up. It’s a non pharmacological treatment for hematocrit but I’m going to do the best I can to get it up north of 40 before the world championships. If I can produce the numbers I’m producing for the time trial I’m confident I can get top five but I want top three. Maybe I can get top three with those numbers it just all depends. We need to make sure all markers are checked off. I’ve been off the bike for 5 days now and tomorrow will be the first time I will get back on and try an easier ride. I really just need to make sure I protect my lower leg. It is so fat! And I’m not talking p h a t. If a bear was to chase me down he would probably just eat my big fat lower left leg thinking it’s muscle or something.
A bit of a long explanation above but sometimes life just throws a lot of curve balls at you. A very good friend of my mother’s has been in the hospital the past week and a few days. He is a great man and we are truly praying and hoping for him he’s able to make it out of there. Friends of 30 years and neighbors here in Arizona. His wife and my mom talked daily. I’m very close to them as well and I was able to go out and see him one time and looking forward to the next time I get to go out there and see him. Got to give him some time to heal a bit more before visitors can come and visit. There was one time of my life, that started about a year before my accident to a couple years after my accident, that involved quite a bit of family trauma with deaths of grandparents, cousins, and an sunt. A very tough time for my family but that’s interesting why we experience hard things so close together sometimes.
I’m really looking forward to the World Championships coming soon over Labor Day weekend in Huntsville. Fingers crossed and going to do as much as I can to be as best prepared as possible so I can’t look back and not say what if. Grateful one of my best friends from back home in Washington will be out there supporting me. And, please keep ommy friends in mind that ade dealing with lung issues and in the icu. I will close with, how great Thou art!