Tour de Livingston Kickoff Ride At Balloon Fest

Great morning for a ride, temps were on the cooler side and humidity was low but performance on this little ride was lacking.  I continue to have bouts of shortness of breath with exertion.  Last October I had heart surgery on two valves.  One was bad and was replaced with one of my good ones and in that ones place a donor valve was placed.  Complaints of shortness of breath and an increasingly louder mummer for the previous 18 months had indicated that the valve was going to need to be replaced at some point, it was a surprise that it came sooner rather than later.  I'd had lung testing and just about every other pulmonary test imaginable and all results were fine with no indication of pulmonary or breathing problems, except that I run short of breath with exertion.  The doctors, and I, had assumed that the valve replacement would do the trick.  So far, it hasn't.

I'd assumed that it was a lack of conditioning after having spent the fall and winter recovering and I hit it pretty good this spring with ever increasing longer and harder rides and workouts that haven't produced the intended results.  At this point I am in a deep quandary over the cause and will have to make a round of Dr. visits to try to unravel this.

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Andrew and me

My little Godson and nephew Andrew did great on the ride, we set out from the courthouse to the High School to watch the balloons fly-in.  For me trouble began when we left and split off between the short ride and the longer tour.  I fell behind on an incline, caught up eventually and promptly lost the group again only to find them later.  During my first fall back Andrew came looking for me and afterwards I encouraged him to stay with the pack and not wander off which he did and that was a good thing because I did eventually join up again with the group.  We spent some time riding all together and I later lost the group, only to take a couple of mis-turns that put me ahead of the rest of the tour and back at our destination a few minutes before they arrived back.

                                                                      My friend Jim Gilligan

In the week now since our Sunday June 30th ride I've been out and about running bike errands in town and took a couple of short 5-6 mile rides round the neighborhood, shortness of breath still comes and goes like is has the last little while. 

Longest Mileage Week This Season

A ride up the lake tonight and various places around town capped of my highest mileage week of this riding season.  Yesterday was a car free day, everyplace I went in town was by bike.  Weather temps have been more moderate, humidity has been lower and I am feeling very strong and have not had the shortness of breath that I was experiencing most of the last 6-8 weeks.  It's nearly a year since I first started riding again and I am pondering how to mark the occasion with a special ride or week.  Hmmmm.

For week #15 I have 56.15 miles.  Yay!

A Break in the Weather

Yay, very low humidity and temps in the low 70's.  Gorgeous day for riding and I took full advantage of it with a rare weekday afternoon ride!  Rode with Deb A out to Independance Lake, did the loop and back.  Shady lane dirt roads, pleasant temps, riding with a friend and feeling strong today. 

I did not experience much shortness of breath today and that has been a nemesis of mine for the last month and a half.  I'm not sure if it was due to having a light snack before riding so that I had energy to draw from or because of the lack of humidity or some combination of both of those things.  Whatever the case I felt stronger than I have in a long time and got up the two hardest inclines in the park today with no trouble.  Round trip was a tad over 12 miles.

Bike to Work Day...discovering all the gears

I ended up with a double commute today, had to make a trip home mid day. After work I had a very enjoyable ride. I've decided that the only way I am going to manage hills is to keep riding them. At some point I will get strong enough that they don't wear me out. So it was back to Island Lake State Park today. We had wonderful warm spring weather after a couple of days of rain it was nice to be out in the parks as everything is getting so lush looking and it seems like every tree, bush and shrub that flowers is out in full bloom. Spring is strutting her stuff!

Island Lake is pretty hilly and has some steep climbs (for these parts), I had the opportunity to discover my low gears today. So far with my new bike I've explored speed and the higher gears and found the joy of my large chain ring in front. Today was for exploring the low gears and the small front ring. I learned a lot about using it with various combinations of the rear cassette gears. I never got into what is called the "granny gear" which is the small front ring and the largest rear ring. Guess I didn't meet up with a hill that big yet. But I did notice that my average speed for my ride was greater than normal and that my time for the distance was shorter by a pretty fair amount. Not that I'm out to set records or concerned about speed. I prefer to enjoy my rides and surroundings. I do ride for exercise and fitness too and at times am more focused on the productivity of the ride, but don't sacrifice smelling the roses, I just don't stop an take pictures of them when I am out for a workout ride.

Today was certainly a workout ride and meant to be one, it was my mission. It just so happened to be absolutly gorgeous out too which just added to the whole aura of the ride. I might have had to stop and take a break while going up some hills today, but I rode up every one and didn't get off an walk once. That's improvement.

For me it's more an issue of getting winded instead of fatigue and legs giving out. While I had a normal early season conditioning issue to deal with (riding outside with wind and varying terrain and hills) is way different from a trainer in the winter on flat ground with no wind to deal with. So that passed quickly enough and I was gaining endurance and stamina. Then about two or so weeks ago I found that instead of getting stronger I was getting winded much more often. Just before that I had a flare up of my RA and took a Humira shot to tame it down. It was my first one since June of last year. Last year I had several bouts of shortness of breath and getting winded very easily. Three times it turned out to be pneumonia, however it happend more than that and pneumonia was not the cause as it could not be detected.

Last year I had a pulmonary and cardiac workup, several trips to various specalist doctors and loads of testing later that revealed no problems with lung functions and no significant heart items to cause what was happening. I have a heart murmur and some day the valve will need replacing but not at this time and it is not contributing to the shortness of breath. I have a 90% blockage in a very smalll artery going into my heart but again, the Dr. was not concered because of where it is located and the existance of 3 other arteries in that cluster that are ok with no blockage and agian, it was determined that this is not contributing to shortness of breath. I passed a stress test on a treadmill last year just fine.

So my family doctor (I believe they call them primary care physican these days) felt all along that it was more a matter of conditioning or rather being out of condition. One would think that continued biking would address that. Since I am experiencing this again several weeks into the season it leaves me to believe something I suspected last year and that is that RA is contributing to this. RA can attack organs as well as joints. A trip to the rheumatologist is in order. The most odd thing about this whole issue of shortness of breath is the following; during the first 20-30 minutes of a ride I get short of breath constantly and feel like I can't go on. Somehow I push through this and before I know it I am breathing fine and feel like I could go on for a very long time. That just dosen't make sense to me.

So, combined with commute of just over 4 miles and 9.3 at the park I had a total mileage today of 13 .8 and a total for Week #7 of 36.55 miles. I like it and I'm happy. And I brought home another big bouquet of lilacs and the home is perfumed by it.