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From:
Date: 22 Feb 2006
Time: 17:03:31 +0100
Remote Name: 213.55.89.8
Time for a brief medical interlude for a bit of perspective on the reality of what I can and cannot do these days on my wheels. Probably best to put what I can manage on the Tour d’Afrique in the context of what I found doing the Tour du Canada in 2003. The TDC is around 7400kms over two and a half months. I rode all of this except around 150k for one day when I was sick; dizzy, couldn’t walk in a straight line, throwing up, etc. If I’d have just been heaving, I would probably have ridden, but never having been a dizzy blonde (apart from the time in my early twenties when I had a curly perm and my three male flatmates decided to call me a bimbo for the next couple of months) I decided it wasn’t a good idea to risk taking a tumble because I had no sense of balance, so sat out the day. I was pretty ok throughout the trip, and even though I had quite a few longish days, I felt fairly good although I found the last 10 days tough going. I think I could have done with more recovery time each day than I could fit in given the distances, and it caught up with me in the last week or two of the ride. The TDC was the first big trip I had gone on since my insides had been hammered with high dose chemotherapy and bone marrow (stem cell) transplant eight years earlier, and I treated it as a bit of a test to see how much that had taken out of me. One thing I did notice in a big way was that I didn’t seem to be getting as much air into my lungs as I wanted to when I was breathing in. When I got back to the UK, I booked myself in for a lung function test. I had had a heart and lung function test immediately before the high dose chemo as standard benchmarking for a reference point. But I had never had the “after” test. Anyways, the lungies seemed to be operating at about 70% of where they should be, so I was referred by my specialist to a lung guy for follow up. The conversation went something like this; Me: “I just cycled across Canada.” Lung guy: “Really?” Me: “Yes, and I didn’t seem to be getting enough air into my lungs when I was breathing in.” Lung guy: “Couldn’t keep up with your little friends, then?” Me: “No.” Lung guy (after rifling through mountainous medical files): “Well, considering all the treatment you have had from diagnosis and two relapses, you are doing remarkably well.” Me: “OK, then.” Lung guy: “Go away, I don’t want to see you again.” So off I went. I did get a lung function test done just before the TDA, and apparently my air to oxygen conversion is around 65 – 70% of what it should be, which means that I am a third less efficient at getting the air I breathe into my bloodstream and to my muscles than other people. This is probably a consequence of the combined effects of radiotherapy covering the lung area in my early twenties and a few of the chemotherapy drugs which are highly toxic to lungs – bleomycin being the prime culprit, resulting in a bit of pulmonary fibrosis just to spice things up a bit. Not much I can do about it, but it’s nice to know what’s going on in there. All this means I am now crap at climbing hills on my bike. I read Lance Armstrongs first book a couple of years ago, and he reeled off a list of about nine chemotherapy drugs that his specialist said he was going to avoid in his treatment because of the resulting permanent damage that would end his cycling career. As I read through this list, I thought to myself: “S**t, I’ve had seven of those nine in vast and copious quantities” – in fact, I might even had said “S**t” out loud as I was reading. I wasn’t learning anything I didn’t know already, but seeing it in black and white was a reminder that I am not as invincible as I sometimes think I am. But back in the real world, I do actually know my limitations, and I cycle within them (most of the time). So I am pacing myself on the TDA. As long as I can ride every day and get enough recovery time to continue to ride every day for the duration of the trip and stay healthy, I will be a happy camper. Irrespective of how fast or slow I’m going, every day on the bike is a good day.