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!