This is a big one, people. A GIANT post of ill-written word salad to make you feel better about yourself this weekend.

Well, I’m going to have to chalk this week up as a “lost week,” with only two days of hiking, and neither one of them was void of pain.

Monday’s 6-mile hike was the one that told me that I was fucked in the knee and lower back department. My back injury was brought forth from carrying Jake (The Dog), and my knee is fucked from overuse and being old.

With that, I took Tuesday and Wednesday off from lumbering and did lots of icing, heating, stretching, and foam rolling of body parts.

By Thursday morning, my back was feeling way better, but the knee was suspect. Still, I plodded off down the trail in hopes that if I stuck to flatter trails, it would be OK.

It was not.

As I hiked along, I kept thinking it would warm up and stop hurting, but after 3 miles in 19˚ temps, it still wasn’t feeling good. So, I thought it was best to abort and avoid any further damage. I headed out of the woods, completing just 4 miles in the end and just 10 miles total on the week.

I was due a week like this, and to be honest, I shouldn’t have attempted to hike at all. But, as everybody knows, I’m a moron.

So here we are at the end of the week, Friday morning, and any hint of spring is gone as we get bent over the winter weather barrel by Jack Frost yet again and are being holed out with a storm bringing anywhere from 3 to 7 inches of spring snow.

There will be no hiking, but I have some other things that I’m experimenting with to help burn some calories and get a sweat on so I can enjoy some guilt-free footy-beers later. Hoping for a physical and mental pain-free experience.

To be continued in a few hours. In the meantime, read the post below to kill some time.

Thoughts on Cycling, Part III Or is It XX?

The following is another “thinking out loud” piece concerning my unwarranted, over-complicated relationship with the simple act of riding my bike(s).

A couple weeks ago, as I sat at the breakfast table shoveling refried beans and eggs into my face, I saw a message on my Instagram from a Michiganderburgher on the left coast of Michigan that I know through cycling and the interwebs. 

In response to what I assume were some posts featuring shots from a recent Gravel Tramp®, he asked if I had given up on riding my bike to explore the dirt roads. My answer was brief, only saying I hadn’t been on a bike in over two years for various reasons, but never say never. However it did get me thinking—just what I needed at 6:45 AM.

I looked back through my Garmin files, and the last ride I did was on October 1st, 2021, a 24.5-mile gravel ride from the Cul De Sac Shack on the newly built Trek Stache. And then—nothing, nada, zilch¹

Why did I stop? I thought I knew all the reasons when I wrote this post last May; however, I admit I still have questions.

Then I looked back at my Blog posts from October 2021, and there is only one post for the entire month and it answered no questions.

TAKE NOTE! Some of the information in the next few paragraphs concerning mental health has been spoken about at sickening lengths several times before, so skip ahead to the cue to rejoin. It’s cool, I don’t mind. Fuck, even I’m sick of thinking about it.

In that post, I blathered on about how good I allegedly felt off of antidepressants and how therapy was doing a better job. Most of it, in hindsight, was bullshit.

I remember that late that summer, my bank card numbers got hijacked, and a large (for me) amount of savings was stolen (we got it back months later); B’s high school soccer career was about to end, I was looking down the barrel of soon being an empty nester, the holidays were approaching, I had a brief bout of COVID, it became apparent that I will never find a “career” again and really don’t desire one any longer, and I was a miserable prick about every single bit, mostly kept to myself while hunkered down alone in the Bed of Torment.

I also failed to mention in that post that while I told my then doctor I wanted to ween off of whatever bullshit med (Paxil, with a twist of some other bullshit, I think) she had me on, I had already started off of it more than month earlier and endured all those mental blows without medicine, but with plenty of side effects to keep to myself. That was a huge win in a twisted way, but it came at an accrued mental cost and unknown long-term effects to my brain; the result was not good. 

I spent a lot of time alone, thinking way too much, and I was filled with a heavy, overwhelming sadness that only ever left in the form of self-loathing and misanthropy. I 110% knew better not to go off the meds alone, but I was desperate to lose the weight that the ill-prescribed meds had packed on me. Take my word, never do that shit.

Yada, yadda, yadda, I gave MB2TWOK one more try a month or so later, had another fail, ditched her, found a new doc, went back on low-dose Lexapro, and continued therapy with the O.G. Mindbender, and it’s been good since. For me, depression is not about feeling happy all the time (no one is, or can be) it’s about NOT being overwhelmingly sad and filled with lifelong self-hatred with no real reason.

REJOIN HERE

After that post back in 2021, I spent months stagnating and hating life. Then I finally started feeling better, went back to the gym, got bored with the gym and people working out just to “look good,” and eventually, in September of 2022, started hiking.

In just a few weeks, I had regained some long-lost mojo and was hiking 20 miles a week. A few months later, it was 25 miles per week, and by summer 2023’s end, I was lumbering 30 miles or more every week. I lost some weight, felt a little better about myself, and regained some confidence.

But no bike riding. Why the hell not??

All of the stuff I wrote in a post last May is true. After 25+ years of cycling, racing, and a complete obsession with bikes, growing pet peeves and a series of unfortunate events collided in my world, and I haven’t been on a bike since. I think about it on occasion, but nothing ever sparks the want to air up the tires and actually go for a ride, not even just around the neighborhood. 

For a while, I thought it was just about the way I felt and looked on the bike after gaining the Mindbender II (TWOK) weight, but there were times in the summer of 2021 that I was still putting in miles on the dirt roads as a certified ClydesdaleMAX with every roll of my body pushing my kit to maximum density.

Pushing manufacture recommended weight limits, July 2021.

While I’ll never be under 200 pounds again without the aid of a life-threatening illness, I am now I’m fitter than I have been in years. Still, the idea of choosing a bike ride over a near-daily lumber never crosses my mind. It’s oddly like the part of my mind that enjoyed pushing myself on a bike has been completely erased, Men In Black²style. It’s sort of fucked. I’m not mad at it, things are super cool in my outdoorsy world now, but it’s pretty fucked.

One of the O.G. Mindbender’s things is to “stay curious.”³ Meaning to stay curious about your emotions and feelings and the things that can trigger anxiety, depression, self-loathing (my unholy trinity), fears, sadness, etc. You don’t push shit down and hope to ignore it; you go inside, thank those parts for showing up and for trying to protect you, but let it them you can handle the situation. Then explore and dig deeper to find out the whys and get to work.

So you can imagine that I am very curious about the part of my mind that has shut cycling off. 

Is it simply that I have lost my passion for riding? Do I fear I lost the skills it took me a lifetime to be kind of OK at? Do I fear the work needed to get back in cycling form? Or do I just enjoy the fine art of lumbering through the woods with my camera too much to really care anymore? 

Still looks almost new with just 100-ish miles on it.

I have made a deal with myself that I will make an effort to take the Stache down to the shop for some Stans and see if something lights a fire under my ass. The worst case scenario is I have a 2.5-year-old bike with full XT parts, awesome wheels, and only 100 miles on it that continues to sit in my garage whilst I lumber in the woods. Only now, it has fresh Stan’s goo in the tires. 

I do it for me and me only

Lastly, I have been writing this post for a couple of weeks now, but for some reason never posted it, probably due to its relationship to too many other posts on the subject. But this week I got some some motivation as I was reading a friend’s post about a recent event he completed and his own personal love affair and goals related to cycling. In that post he said, “I do it for me and me only.”

I admit I lost sight of that along the way. There are no pressures for me to be in “race shape,” ride until everything hurts, get in pissing contests with other riders, or anything else. I need to look at riding like I look at my lumbers; the chance to be outdoors, pushing myself, taking photos, and enjoying the mental rub and tug that it brings.

I am hopeful, but not confident.

So Many Words, So Little Miles Part 2

It took 2 years, 4 months, and 26 days, but today, I climbed on the Hammer trainer in the Not So Stankment and Whooshed (not code for post-enema happenings) for 10 miles.

It felt great, both mentally and physically (especially with NO knee pain!), but mostly mentally.

I should have, could have, gone longer, but since I am nursing multiple injuries, I thought it best to let my loins ease into the saddle again.

The TV in the Not So Stankment also decided that it didn’t want to mirror my iPhone, and the virtual ride was delayed until I said fuck it and just used my phone.

This has been coming for a week or two now (see above post), but this most recent lumbering injury setback and the return of winter sped up the process. Thanks?

Will today’s positive experience transfer to real riding after the snow melts again? I have no idea, but for the first time in literally years, I am hopeful, and a bit more confident. I’m still very curious about what has REALLY been keeping me off the bike for so long. Time to dig a little deeper.

Later.

1. Apparently, I tried to Zwift 2 years, 4 months, and 26 days ago, but I can tell from the minutes and heart rate that no shits were given, I gave up at minute 30, and my Zwift account was deleted soon after.
2. To be honest, I’ve never seen that movie, but I believe there is some mind-eraser gadget involved if I recall the commercials.
3. Stay with me here, therapy speak out of session can sound pretty spaced out.