Cycle 1, Days 7-8. There Is Light at the End of the Tunnels.

Gaaaahhhhhh!!!  If you were using this blog to check in on me and have been worried for a few days...Sorry!!  I have improved 4000 percent since Sunday evening, took Monday off from the computer and felt so good yesterday that I spent most of it out of the house catching up with some friends (go eat brunch at Tasty & Sons on Williams, owned by TNT alum John Gorham, NOW), running some personal errands and going on a walkabout in the West Hills.  

Monday morning was like waking up on a new planet.  I slept seven straight hours and was able to eat breakfast and drive myself out to my naturopath appointment at St. MCV's.  

Going to the naturopath was probably the best thing I've done for my mental health since the stupidfuckingcancer odyssey began (by the way...its been exactly two months since my diagnosis.  Never has a 60 day chunk of time seemed so short and so long at the same time.)  Our appointment was 30 minutes of my verbal dump, 15 minutes of him processing that verbal dump and 15 minutes of him laying down some new laws.

At first, I thought the guy was a bit of a kooky hippie, but by the end of it I found him to be quite remarkable.  Working with cancer patients is all that he does and I believe him when he says that he's good at it.  This is why.  

For 30 minutes he listened to my life story quietly, without affect, judgment or posture.  Asked me about work, about why I liked bike racing,  if I had set any post-treatment goals.  Then he left the room, gave me 15 minutes to compose myself and came back into the room in exactly the form I needed:  the coach.  Which is basically to say that he was able to read me like a teary-eyed open book and presented his treatment plan in a way that totally resonated with my personality.  He's given me a set of nutritional, mental and physical challenges and has basically said "If you do this, you can win."  And by "win," he means "not get your ass knocked around by chemo for four months." 

We're starting small--base miles, bitches.  There is a list on my refridgerator that is 6 items long.  Three of those items are related to digestive health, otherwise know as pooping.  I will save the lengthy pooping discussion for another day, because it really does merit its own post.  Suffice to say, everyone knows that if you're not pooping, that is bad.  If you are doing chemo and not pooping, this is super duper bad because that means your system is struggling to get that toxic shit out of your body.  It just sits there like antifreeze in a sewer.  Ugh.

The fourth item is protein related.  In a nutshell, chemo kills your fast growing cells like a Serbian mercenary--that is, without discrimination.  Chemo get cancer, but it also gets hair cells, fingernail cells, cells on the inside of the mouth, blood cells.  Without protein, the body struggles to rebuild the good fast growing cells. Most people get enough protein, but apparently cancer patients struggle with protein because many of the food that are palatable during chemo are high-fat, high-simple carbohydrate foods, not high protein foods.

Sorbet and dry cheerios, my comfort foods of choice, do not contain enough protein for my body to rebuild and fight.  Thus, from here on out, yogurt and at least two eggs per day, every day.  Normally, I can't eat eggs on a regular basis because my body doesn't do well with them when I am exercising at a high intensity.  Which, obviously, is not happening right now.  So eggs now taste good.  I'm going to try and learn how to poach eggs one of these mornings.  Maybe should get a video camera first. 

The next item on my marching orders, pun intended, is to walk at least 5 miles every day.  Even if I have to do it in 3 or 4 segments on my rough days, 5 miles.  I made it four miles on Monday (was still pretty tired from the four days of chemo hell), but did five and half yesterday afternoon.  On Terwilliger.  None of this pussy waterfront shit for me.  If I was going to walk five miles, I am going to WALK FIVE MILES. In the rain.  Uphill both ways (seriously-it was Terwilliger, people, there is no downhill.). 

My whole concept of five miles has changed.  On a bike, that's what....15 minutes?  Maybe 30 if the whole 5 is uphill?  Five point five miles on foot took me eighty minutes yesterday.  Granted, that was because most of it was uphill, but still.  Eighty minutes. 

I was fucking sore and tired by the end I got home.  But I was gloriously happy the entire time.  It was like exercise crack.  Slowing down made me appreciate the scenery and really listen to song lyrics.  As much as I hate to admit it, Lady Gaga is sort of a genius.  Madonna, too but she tends to waver between awesomely ridiculous and ridiculously awesome.  Compare anything on "American Life" to anything on "Erotica."  Night and day.  

Next item is my reading list.  He looked at me and said, "You're a smart woman.  You can read two books this week."  Um, okay, hippie facist doctor man.   First on the list was Lance Armstrong's book.  You know, that one.  The one we have all already read.  I read it ten years ago, while my grandfather was dying of leukemia.  Reading it ten years later as a bike racer and cancer patient, it basically blew my mind.  I will write more on that later.  The second book is "Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Life" by David Servan-Schreiber.  Going to start on that one today. 

The final item on my list is a writing exercise that is intended to help with my anxiety.  As soon as I wake up, five minutes with a written journal.  Whatever is making me happy, anxious, angry, depressed, sad gets written down--without proofreading or wordsmithing.  

It may surprise you, but I've never been a private journaler.  I've kept private blogs every once in a while, mostly to play with writing styles, but nothing freeform, personal or on a consistent basis.  I've only done this exercise twice, but both times its lasted over 20 minutes and I feel like I've been through detox when I'm through.  So THIS is what I've been missing with journaling, but its better to have learned this lesson later than never. 

Whoa.....it's eight AM and I have to get moving.  I have a walking date in Forest Park, lunch with another survivor and, if the weather holds, a short bike ride with the effervescent Ms. Heidi Swift planned for today.  Better go eat my eggs and yogurt.

Over and out. 

[The Lights Blink, Signaling the End of Intermission]

Haven't felt much like writing about bikes lately. Don't get me wrong, there has been plenty of bike in my life-commuting and intervals and Tuesday PIR and cyclocross training and mountain biking. My short track knee healed, then became my Mountain Bike Oregon knee. Riding home late now requires lights and my days of carefree commuting on my race bike are numbered. The winter bike is tuned up and ready for the first September rainfall. Cross is starting soon and I have a lot of work to do to get rid of my double-hopping, triple salchow remount.

What was lacking was any inspiration to write about riding. The acts of training had become so scheduled that they were performed almost mechanically. Which may sound bad, but it wasn't. Rather, it allowed me to get my fitness back for cyclocross without expending a lot of emotional energy.

What I have been writing about is relationships and love and sex and my own perceived loss of sanity. Not here, obviously. Once I realized that there are people out there that ACTUALLY READ THIS THING, I decided that a private blog would allow me to get my verbal knickers untwisted with minimal risk of catastrophic embarrassment.

There has been a lot of "relationship" cycling (pun totally intended) through my life in the last few weeks--both on the romantic and friendship front. Things that are promising. Things that are disappointing. Things that disappear from my life just as quickly as they appeared. Things that were old that become new again. Things that appeared new, but were in fact old but wrapped in shiny new clothing. Things that keep me up too late at night. Things that just make me want to sleep for days.

As is my custom when my life gets complicated, I tried to simplify and focus by selecting a song and listening to it 20, 50, 80 times in a row. This strategy frequently backfires, as I usually pick something sticky sweet and romantic (currently playing: James Yuill's "This Sweet Love"), which begets a trance-like manic and repetitive inner monologue:

I am lonely.

I lost five pounds!

I am a bad friend.

I got laid!

I think I am going crazy.

Frye boots!

I am going to die an old cat lady.

Nachos!

I need new cyclocross tires.

I love my life!

I hate my life.

Nachos!

And so on and so forth. I really did feel like I was going, as Burns eloquently puts it, "cuckoo for CoCo Puffs." Luckily, the timing of this most recent spell coincided with reading a book on chemistry of the female brain. As an aside, this book was given to me by an ex-boyfriend who claimed that it helped him understand me. I, therefore, refused to be understood and refused read the book until I found myself going away for a long weekend with nothing to read (Ayn Rand did not count as reading material. Getting through that book is basically a character building exercise.).

There was a chapter on what happens, chemically, to the brain of many childless 30-something women. In a word: Bonkers.

This made me feel a lot better. I may be insane, BUT ITS NOT MY FAULT. I can blame hormones. I no longer had to be accountable for crying uncontrollably during minivan ads. Or when Fred Meyers runs out of gummy bears. Or when wedding pictures for people I don't even KNOW are posted on Facebook. Because these events have all happened in the last six weeks.

So I wrote about all of it. Obsessively. Then erased everything. Compulsively.

Now that the estrogen wave has subsided, I'm back. Back to thinking and writing about "normal" things. Bikes, bikes and more bikes. So stay tuned for a scratch-and-sniff post on Mountain Bike Oregon and how I survived three days without taking a shower.

Help Wanted

Anyone that has spend more than 30 seconds around me during the last few months will quickly find out that I haven't been that busy at work lately. And by "lately," I mean a few months. I love where I work, but the downside to working at a "lifestyle friendly" law firm is that sometimes things get slow and I have nothing to do for days on end. For some of you out there, this may seem like paradise. I am, however, a guilt-ridden, results and schedule driven control freak. The only thing that scares me more than chronic boredom and lack of productivity is clowns.

About a year ago, I started to think about doing more non-work related writing-but didn't do much about it other than this blog. I am now starting to think about finding that feeling of enjoyment I get from blogging in other writing projects. Maybe even get paid for it.

One of the first rules of writing is to write about what you know. So I've started to outline a piece on the top 5/10/20 things new triathletes should know about. I'm seeking some fun (and ultimately informative) answers to the following questions:

What do you know now that you wish you knew before your first race?

If you’ve never raced before, what are your burning questions?

I'm also interested in any entertaining/silly/humiliating anecdotes about first race experiences.

And because no blog entry is complete without a photo, here is a demonstration of running in place while wearing a neoprene swim bonnet:

The End of Constipation

This is officially the end of a seven month bout of writer's block. I'll start with the clif notes version of my misadventures since Seattle to Portland:

1. I spent July and August swimming, going to PT and cycling whenever it didn't cause pain. So my tri season effectively ended at Hagg Lake. I did do some short track mountain bike racing at PIR in July and early August, which was simultaneously hilariously fun and scary as shit. During the last race of the season I was in a position to win the beginner women's race, then hit a root and did my first endo into bush and some spectators. I don't remember a lot about it, but my boss saw the whole thing and said it was awesome.

2. Finished the 25th running of the Cycle Oregon. It was a fantastic experience that can be be summed up like this: wake up. eat. ride up a hill. eat. ride down a hill. shower. eat. drink beer with Doug and Walter. eat. fall asleep in a tent. rinse and repeat. I did about 440 of the total 490 miles (thank god for rest days) and still managed to climb almost 30,000 feet in 6 days. The payoff was some of the most beautiful scenery every witnessed from a bike and lots of photo ops.

4. Cross was full of lots of ups and downs this year. I raced B women the entire year and managed to work my way up from the cellar to a top-10 finish at Estacada. After Estacada, things generally went downhill as I spent most of the next race falling off my bike into the Hillsboro mud and finished the season by DNF-ing at two races-one mechanical and one ladybits-meets-top-tube incident. There was this great quote on Bike Snob NYC about cross that pretty much sums it up: "Cyclocross is the opposite of sex--if you're doing it right it hurts, and it's only fun before and after." Except for when you can't have sex because of cyclocross-then nobody wins.

5. I have three new love interests: two bikes and a human male by the name of Brian. The first non-human is a used singlespeed cyclocross bike, an On One Il Pompino. For those of you out there not fluent in Italian, "Il Pompino" means "blow job" in Italian. Those British are so naughty. The frame is turquoise and the tires and bar tape are (duh) pink. So basically it is the bicycle version of a drag queen.

The second addition to my two-wheeled family arrived in Oregon today and will be replacing the much maligned, but forever beloved, Hornet: a 2008 Kona Kapu. OSU orange steel frame with polished lugs. I'm going to have to fight the urge to name it the Beaver. But then again, maybe I won't fight it.

The human love interest is Brian. Brian is pretty awesome. Mostly because he is smart, funny, kicks ass at cyclocross and knows how to cook, but partially because he wore an orange tuxedo t-shirt to the Cross Crusade prom and almost got kicked out for having a flask full of whiskey. The latter incident was enormously entertaining, even though I feel sort of guilty as I had already consumed most of the flask's contents and he was the one who got busted. But it ain't really the prom 'til someone gets busted. Here is a photo from that event. Yes, I am wearing a tiara, my date is carrying a pimp cane and there is a bust of Jesus in the background.
6. Team in Training has started again. We have 114(!) people on the team. This year they have been foolish enough to make me Seth's Girl Friday/Half Ironman Team Captain. Some of the alums are already starting to call me "Captain Fabulous." That is much better than Calamity Jane. Just wait until they see me on the On One....Captain Fabulous' Drag Show Extravaganza.