More than I could ever imagine

grateful

[greyt-fuh l] adjective

1.warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received; thankful:I am grateful to you for your help.2.expressing or actuated by gratitude:a grateful letter.3.pleasing to the mind or senses; agreeable or welcome; refreshing:a grateful breeze.

Family,  friends and strangers

Over the past several weeks I have been overwhelmed with the amount of love,  encouragement and support that has been given to me to help me in my journey to race for CMT awreness this month in Leadville: I have received donations to the HNF on my behalf,  my two brothers surprised me and booked a trip to Denver in mid July so that I could test ride parts of the trail and see how the high elevations will affect me on race day. I spent 3 days riding at altitude and felt pretty good. The first climb on the race course will be tough as it comes very early on and my body typically takes several miles to warm up. The longest climb ofmthe day will be 8 miles long, raises over 3, 000' and takes you above 12, 600' above sea level, it is long and tough but very doable. Race day will be a different story as I will have to do it all at a much faster pace if I want to finish under 12 hours.

I was fitted in late June with custom carbon fiber low profile AFO's that were designed with my input to fit my specifics needs that I will have durring the difficult steep sections that will require a good deal of walking. These were provided for me by a good friend Rick Mckibben who is a Physical Therapist and Clinical Electrophysiologst who is very familiar with the struggles that CMT patients go thru, his company Integrity Rehab Management is located in Pine Mountain, Georgia. Please look them up if you are in the area and have any PT needs, he is the best. The braces were actually designed, built and fitted by George Gatewood at Gatewood Prosthetics located in Columbus, GA. Again, if you are in the Columbus/West Georgia area and have any needs for AFO's, braces or prosthetics, look no further. 

I have had friends that have helped me by giving us money to help offset the cost of the trip (you know who you are, and we are forever thankfull) I have recieved Facebook messages from fellow CMT 'ers (that's a word now as far as I'm concerned) that I've never met that wish me luck or share their stories about the struggles that they or their family members go thru or have gone thru in the past. These are the types of things that make me realize I made the right decision that day on a casual bike ride to try to give this thing a shot, but the response has been humbling to say the very least.

May in a nutshell

My last month in numbers

It has been entirely too long since I've updated my blog and so much has happened since late April. I thought I would share some info on what I've been up to since my last post on April 29th.

Miles Ridden:  1,013.81
Time spent on a bike:  77 hours, 04 minutes
Calories burned:  31,335
Total elevation climbed:  71,454'
Longest ride:  103.72 miles
Shortest ride:  8.71 miles
Most consecutive days without riding a bike:  4
States in which I've ridden:  4
Number of times my wife has said "Don't go today, just hang out with us at home, you can train later":  0

Update on my health

I had the ultra sound on my carotid arteries and everything was fine, as was the results of the EKG for my dizzy spells. The doctors believe the lightheaded feelings I was having were just my body trying to adjust to the lower pulse rate and possibly from my lower body weight and it should (and has) get better over time. I did injure my back last month 3 days before I competed in my first mountain bike race in 13 or so years, and it was a 6 hour race to boot! I had Heather my wife tape it up with KT tape the morning of the race and downed a few Advil along the way. As you can imagine it's hard to heal a back when you ride constantly so I ended up taking 4 days off the bike to give it time to heal, which it finally did late last week.

Big rides and races

I've had several big rides since my last post that I'm really proud of for various reasons. They all will help me get stronger and faster as I prepare to race the big one in August, but they are also rides that I've wanted to do in the past but I was not in good enough shape to try them, I didn't finish them last time I tried, or I did one of the shorter routes. The first I did was the 3 State 3 Mountain Challenge Century in Chattanooga, TN. This was one that has been on my radar for years but I've never done it and even when I thought I might do it a few back I wasn't going to do the full century, it has over 7,000' of climbing and is a little over 100 miles long. Well I did the whole enchilada this year and finished 279th out of 615 riders, that's 336 non CMTers that finished after me! The last mountain we climbed came at the 80 mile mark and had grades as steep as 20% near the top (25% is a 45* angle). I saw many, many people walking the steepest parts but I told myself I would pass out on my bike before I walked. I can't tell you how rewarding it was to ride past thick legged hammerhead guys pushing their bikes up this mountain, It was also very encouraging when after I passed them, and I know they saw my legs and knew I was not like the others out there they would give me a shout out "good job, you got this". That is the reason I feel more comfortable in my cycling shorts around 500 strangers than I would at a pool with 6 people, the cyclist see me as one of them, a guy that can for the most part hang with them. The pool people? They just stare.

I also raced my mountain bike in a 6 hour solo race on May 16th at a State Park near my home. It was great, Heather my wife was my support crew for the entire day and my daughter Sydney was there for a few hours. My parents as well as my older brother and a few good friends were their to cheer me on as well. I did ok, not great but ok, I completed 5 laps which was 51.75 miles in 5:42:55. I was racing in the Masters Division which is by age and finished 12th out of 17 guys. My time would have put me in 5th place in the Sport division if I had decided to be categorized by skill instead of age, but it was a lot of fun anyway.

Before the race with my #1 supporter, my wife!

Fig Newtons and a Coke at the 30 mile mark

In May I also was able to ride my bike to the top the Pisgah Mountains of North Carolina to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Heather's Grandmother and Aunt live in the small town of Canton, NC and over the years I've taken my bike with us when we visit always with the intent of riding to the top but I've always had to return to Grandma's house before I could get to the top, well not this time, I made it to the Parkway. It was a 22 mile trip one way, with the last 9 miles being the climb to the top. It was beautiful and rewarding, not to mention the 9 mile descent on the 22 mile return home!

It's going to be a long day 

That's where I'm headed, to the top!

That's my happy face

The last big ride I had was last weekend, a charity century bike ride near my home. I've ridden the ride before but only the metric century (100 km or 64 miles), but this year I was doing the whole century. Not only did I ride the full 102 miles but I was able to average 17.7 miles per hour for the entire ride, a new personal best for me!

The next few weeks

My training distances are starting to get longer as I get closer to August, most days after work are now 30 miles with intervals and sprints thrown in just for fun. I believe my plan also has me riding 100 miles every Saturday for the next month so I'm really going to be testing the whole "I'm behind you 100%" from my wife. I know it's tough on her for me to be gone 1 1/2 to 2 hours after work during the week and then 6-7 hours on Saturdays and another 3 hours on Sundays. Did I mention how supportive and helpful she's been? I certainly wouldn't be doing this much if not for her and my kids, they are the best.

My body after 4 months

Surprisingly enough I'm still fairly healthy except for the back issue that seems to have gone away and a chronic sore shoulder I'm still going to the Chiropractor every week and my leg pain from the CMT is still lingering but it may never go away. One thing the 6 hour mountain bike race did reveal is that I need to strengthen my shoulders and core more in the next 2 moths. I've done some research and found some cycling specific core strengthening exercises that will help. The only problem is finding time to do them! 

It's probably nothing

My progress on the bike

It's been a while since I've updated my blog, sorry about that, I've been riding a lot, trying to save a little time for the family and have been busy at work as well so my spare time is virtually non existent. I did ride a metric century a few weeks ago (100 km, or 63 miles) and had on of my best rides and highest average speed in a long time, 17.5 mph. I do have the occasional bad day still where it is just a chore to crank out 25-30 miles and keep my average above 14.5 mph. I also learned a couple of things about hill climb sprints a few weeks ago when they started showing up on my training program: #1 I do not like them one bit, they hurt and they hurt a lot, as a matter of fact I cringe when I see them on my training schedule. #2 They have the magical power to make it rain. Every time I've done these horrible things it has been in the rain, so if any one has crops that need water call me and point me to the nearest hill, I'll hook you up.

This scene keeps playing in my head over and over

A little maintenance is required

My road bike is being ridden more now than it ever has, and it's starting to show the effects, in the last month I've had to replace the bottom bracket, install new bar tape and rebuild my pedals to keep it running smooth. Unfortunately I'm having to do a little maintenance on my body as well to keep it running smooth. For the past few weeks I've been going to a Chiropractor, Dr Wilbur, just to do a little preventative maintenance and for a little tune up so to speak. I know with my legs like they are, bio mechanically I'm a wreck, and I'm sure I have some issues from the compensatory work the rest of my body has to do, couple that with much riding as I've been doing there has to be a few areas that are out of whack, and there are plenty, but Dr. Wilbur is working on that so as far as my back, neck and hips go I'll be good to go soon. 

The bigger issue I've having is that since my resting heart rate and max heart rate have dropped from all the training I've been getting light headed almost every time I stand up, not just the run of the mill head rush but lightheaded enough that I sometimes have to stop what I'm doing and put a hand on the chair or car door until my head clears.

Not the place I wanted to be on a Tuesday afternoon

 I saw my family Doctor, Dr Mercado last week and first of all she couldn't believe what I was doing, and like most people that don't ride bikes much couldn't quite understand why anyone would want to try this, but after I told her about my blog and my fundraising effort through the HNF she got it 100%. She ordered blood work to check for anything unusual and the results came back yesterday, the only thing she said was my B12 was a little low. 

The nurse said this was the first time she's had someone take a photo of their blood being drawn

I go next week for an ultra sound of my carotid arteries and to be fitted with a heart monitor that I'll wear for a few days or a week that sends the Doctors EKG's regularly throughout the day. I'm pretty familiar with the monitors as I've had to wear them twice before when I was having the opposite issue with my heart, it was beating too fast (258 bpm max! Just try to top that!) Ultimately I was diagnosed a few years back with Supraventricular Tachycardia (SVT) and had an Ablation done which fixed the problem. Just my luck, it's either to high or to low! I'm not sure if the SVT is CMT related or not, but I have read that some Doctors and researchers believe it could be.

Business as usual

The good news is she didn't tell me I needed to stay off the bike, but of course I didn't ask her if I needed to stay off the bike, I'm no dummy! She told me to drink more fluids during the day and take an over the counter B12 vitamin and we will figure out what is up with the dizzy spells.

I'm taking on my biggest challenge yet this weekend, it is the 3 Mountain 3 State Challenge in Chattanooga, TN. It is a full century (100 miles) that climbs over 7000' of elevation as you bike through Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. I have never ridden that much elevation in one day and it has been 7 or 8 years since I've ridden more than 75 miles so I'm a little anxious to say the least. I will post my results as soon as I'm able to get out of bed and walk to the computer on Sunday !

Work, Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat...

I think it is starting to work

The heading kinda says it all, that is pretty much the theme around my house the last few weeks with an self proclaimed off day thrown in every 6 days or so. Not to say I'm losing my motivation but there have been one or two days in the last 3 weeks that I just wasn't feeling it, but I expected that to happen. One of the things that does keep my motivation up is almost every time I go on a ride I set new personal records on the same segments that I ride weekly, also I rode the same loop last Saturday that was my first official training ride in late January and beat my time by over 8 minutes which shows me all this is starting to work after all.

8 minutes faster than the last time

Personal Records keep me motivated!

My body is not a wonderland

I have had a few ups and downs over the last two weeks that have made riding daily a little challenging, first of all here in Georgia spring time means a few things: Birds chirping, longer days, rain, cool one day and then warm the next and pollen. I'm talking yellowish green haze in the sky, everything you own is yellow, sore throat, sneezy pollen, not ideal riding conditions but I guess it could be worse. Also as you can imagine when you ride 20-30 miles everyday after work and then 40-60 miles both weekend days you can become a little tender on your "bottom", and by a little tender I swear I had a pine cone in my shorts last Sunday morning, but upon closer inspection I was wrong, no pine cone just an extremely sore rear end. My CMT nerve pain in my left leg has been a pretty regular occurrence the last couple of weeks, it usually starts to hurt about 15-20 minutes into the ride and sticks around for 30 minutes or so (either it goes away or I just stop noticing it, not sure which it is). I have also had several aches and pains here and there and stiff,sore legs at times but I think both of those can be attributed to TMB. (To many Birthdays)

OK...Now What?

Good News and Bad News

January 15th 2015. That was the day I got my official invite to the race, that was the day of no turning back, that was the day I realized I was going to riding my bike a lot this spring and summer, a whole lot!

Uh oh, it just got real!

Up until that day I had been riding a little bit to say the least, twice in December and three times in early January, I mean it was the dead of Winter, right?
I knew I had to start building base miles and lots of them before I could start training in earnest. Riding base miles is like cooking good bar-b-que, you've gotta go slow and low, slow steady pace and keep your heart rate low. My first ride post invite was a 41 miler through the rolling hills just north of my house that went well, Chris, a friend of mine is also racing  this year was with me on the first ride as well. I checked my weight that morning and actually made a note of it because I knew that was going to eventually change and I wanted to keep track of it, 170 lbs., not bad for a middle aged guy in the middle of winter but not exactly what I would refer to as my ideal race weight. Your power to weight ratio is basically the science and numbers behind how fast you can go and how fast you can climb. I knew that due to my CMT my power output would go up in the following months but not like it would for a more able bodied rider, so I need to get my weight down to help with my climbing.

Train in the Rain

As January turned to February I continued to ride as much as I could but it wasn't easy with the short days, so many rainy days and the cold. Oh, the cold! CMT sufferers often have trouble keeping their feet warm even on a cool day, much less 40* and raining with a constant wind of 14 to 20 mph blowing on them. To try to keep my legs and feet from freezing I would start with a fairly warm embrocation on my legs (embrocation is a balm type product that usually has capsicum which is the main ingredient in pepper spray and super heats your skin, wool knee socks, toe or foot warmers stuck to the bottom of my socks, gore-tex over socks, my cycling shoes and then a fleece lined shoe cover or "bootie" and would still come home with frozen feet and legs that would take hours to thaw, but it is what it is.

Despite the weather and trying to have a life I was able to ride on the road 10 days, my mountain bike 5 days and 3 days on the indoor trainer ( I loathe the indoor trainer).

I have a training plan that I am borrowing from my friend Brian who raced the LT100 2 years ago. The plan was put together for Brian by a very respected cycling coach in our area and is designed specifically for the LT100. Brian finished the race and brought home the finishers belt buckle so I figure that if I stick to the plan I will be bringing home my own buckle in 5 months.

It will take more than just me

When I first told my wife my plan to enter the race lottery let's just say she was not quite on board with the whole idea. Thinking back I believe her words were "Are you crazy!!, what if you get hurt!!" or something along those lines. But what I also knew was that she knew from my friends Brian and Randy's past training schedule for this race that I was going to be gone a lot. There was going to be this year a whole lot of sorry I can't do this thing with you and the kids or sorry I can't do that thing with our friends because I have to ride and nobody wants to hear that for 8 months, can't say I didn't blame her. But after seeing what this meant to me, and her just being her, she jumped in with both feet and is behind me every step of the way. She has yet to complain about the piles of smelly cycling clothes that seem to reproduce and multiply overnight, or the perpetual collection of sticky water bottles that we have on the counter in our kitchen, or the 7:30 dinners 5 nights a week (yeah, she waits on me to get home!) I'm sure by mid June her enthusiasm may wain, but I know she's still behind me all the way to Colorado in August.

No problems, yet..

As far as my body is concerned I haven't had any major issues to this point and my body is changing a little, my jeans are a little loose in the waist and my watch spins on my wrist now and I've lost 4 or 5 pounds. Some days my legs are a little stiff or tired but that is to be expected as I'm riding 6 days a week and averaging around 150 miles per week, but those numbers will soon change as I start riding 7 days a week with higher mileage this week.
As far as CMT issues the only thing I'm having to deal with now that it is warming up (no more cold feet, yea!) is I've been having some nerve pain in my left leg that has been hitting me about 3 times a week that comes and goes. The best way to describe it is to imagine sitting on your leg until it falls asleep and then just as it starts to hurt like hell because it's not numb anymore you put a huge clamp around your calf and tighten it as much as you can, you know, basic everyday pain that you've come to think of as normal if you've got CMT.

In the Beginning...

What made me do this?

First I think I need to tell you a little about myself; my name is Michael Watkins, I'm 48 years old I live in Braselton, GA I have an incredible wife, two great kids, I'm an avid cyclist (mostly recreational, my racing days are behind me) and this year I was chosen by lottery to race in the Leadville Trail 100 MTB Race August 15, 2015. The last part of that sentence is still a little bit scary for me to say considering that the race takes place high in the Colorado Rockies, is 103.3 miles long, take place at elevations ranging from 9,300' above sea level at it's lowest point to 12,550' at its highest point and makes its riders climb a total elevation gain of 12,612' all in under 12 hours. That is what my cycling buddies and I refer to jokingly as "a very busy day", it will surely be an epic ride for all 1,400 riders, but for me it will probably be a little bit tougher. I have CMT or Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease, a hereditary sensory neuropathy that affects the nerves in my lower legs. For those unfamiliar with CMT, the nerves in my legs are not able to transmit signals like they are supposed to and overtime this has lead to loss of feeling in parts of my legs and feet, bouts of extreme pain in my lower legs, pretty severe muscle atrophy in my calves (no nerve signals telling the muscles to move leads to the atrophy over time) and foot drop when I walk ( I wear braces or AFOs on both my legs to support my feet).

I've seen the LT100 in person two times to support my younger brother, a Leadville CO resident who has finished the race 5 times and also to support some friends who were chosen to race in 2013. Each time I left there I was amazed by what I saw (Wounded Warriors, amputees, a severely diabetic woman checking her blood sugar at a feeding station, a blind man riding on a tandem bike for 2) and how those people pushed their bodies way beyond their limits on that race course. And each time I thought "that's to much for me, to long, to steep, to hard, twice as far as I ever ridden a mountain bike, etc., etc." But like clockwork every year for the last 5 years my brother would say to me, "you gotta do it, you gotta try, it's the hardest thing you will ever do in your life and you will love it" And every year I wanted to try but didn't think I had it in me..until this year.

It was scenes like this that made me realize what we can do if we want it bad enough  

Checking her blood sugar 40 miles into the race

The bike ride that changed it all

My 14 year old son Riley has CMT also, he's had very painful corrective surgery on each of his feet over the past 2 years to help alleviate the pain he has from extremely high arches and claw toes, but through it all he played football, first for the local rec team, then his Middle School team and then last year for the 9th grade High School team. He would come home from the long summer practices and football camps and his first words were "my feet are killing me!' but he kept playing, and started all but one game last year despite his problems. During the off season this year he told me and his Mom, "I don't want to play anymore, it hurts to bad and I'm too slow, I just can't do it". Hearing this broke my heart, but I knew exactly what he was going through and there was nothing I could do about it or anything I could say to him that could "fix" it. Several weeks after his decision I was on a bike ride like I had done a thousand times on a road near my home I had ridden a thousand times and I was feeling good. Sometimes when you ride it just isn't happening, you don't feel it, you just want it to be over, but sometimes you feel like you could ride for days. This was one of those great days, I was thinking "I could do this all day" and it hit me, why don't I see if I really can do this all day? Then a little doubt started to creep into my head, "it's to long, to steep, you don't have the legs for it, etc., etc..." But I decided then and there I was going to do this, I was going to do this to show myself I could do it,I was going to show everyone else that has CMT that if I can do this you can do this, I was going to show everyone that has ever stared at me when I'm in a pair of shorts that I could do this (sorry if it sounds like I'm angry in saying that but I can see your stares people, you need to learn to be more discreet!) and I wanted to show my son that he can do this, or things like this, sometimes we just have to work a little harder than most to get what we want and the harder you work at something the greater the feeling you have when it's over.

Telling people my "secret"

Part of the application process for the race is sharing a story about yourself that makes you a little different than the rest, or what makes you stand out from the countless thousands that have also applied. When I saw that I thought "do I mention the CMT, do I want someone within the race organization committee to key in on this and make a big deal out of it?" because up until that point I've not been very vocal about my CMT at all only my closest friends, riding buddies and family knew about it. I have never mentioned it to anyone at work my entire adult life, casual acquaintances, neighbors, or the like knew nothing about it but I'm sure they thought "why is he wearing pants to a pool party, it is 97* out here ?!" I just shiver at the thought of how uncomfortable it would make us both feel, "oh, hey by the way have you ever heard of CMT? No, well I have it", no thanks! But I figured if I'm going to do this, do it all the way so I decided to share my CMT story on my race application and even decided that I was going to somehow use this as a platform to both raise awareness to others about CMT and to also show other CMTers that even though we may have the deck stacked against us in many facets of our lives and that all sorts of things others take for granted we have to really struggle for and that we all have it in us to do what you once thought was beyond your limits whether it is something as crazy as what I'm trying to do or taking a water aerobics or yoga class or just opening a jar of peanut butter! 
My training started last month and is going well and I will keep this blog updated with training notes, how my body is changing for the better or worse as my training progresses as well as any CMT related issues that may or may not flare up in the next 5 months. Also, I will let you know how those awkward CMT conversations go with the neighbors and the mailman!