Baltimore through Providence

Gosh, I really haven't written anything for a while. My bike racing season has been lackluster, but all things considered not as bad as it could be. I have generally struggled on Sundays due to the floppy leg. My good leg can take a heavy load when the bad one lags.....but only for a while, and I pay the price on day two.

I had a decent result on Saturday of Baltimore with 4th place. In addition none of our team was robbed. Pretty good day. Day two I paid for the effort and lagged behind a bit.

Then things got interesting. I got a cold that week and didn't feel so good going into Gloucester. I gave it a good try Saturday, but I wasn't helping the sinus situation. I pulled off into the pits and called it a day. I watched the finish and went about my post race day as usual. That night, after dinner with my old teammate and buddy I was leaning on Chabanov's car just chatting when I started to feel dizzy......kinds barfy.

Then after what was an undetermined amount of time I found myself pushing myself up off a granite curb, bleeding out of my head while Brittlee ran over shouting "Oh my god, are you alright?". WTF? Apparently I just lost consciousness and fell straight down to the curb. Well, I had a pretty good gash in my brow and a big smack in the cheek. Nothin like a good ol trip to the hospital. Not that this means much, but at least I now have health insurance. They put in some stitches in my brow and did all the test they are supposed to do.

Everything came back fine, but a question lingered amongst everyone around. Did this have anything to do with the bloodflow problems in my leg? That teammate I was chatting with happens to also have the Iliac artery endofibrosis. His case is actually the first I had ever heard of this back in '07. Well, the best option was for me then was to DNS Sunday's race and head home. Everyone was very worried about me driving and I'm not gonna lie that I wasn't a little wary. I stuck around half the day to make sure I was OK and went home to see my doc. After reviewing all of the data from the tests it was concluded that this had nothing to do with any problem in my leg and this was just a case of dehydration, hunger, fatigue, etc. I was skeptical. I have been WAY more depleted in all those departments over the course of my career. The reason it was believed to be unrelated to the artery problem is due to the fact that this restriction is only at high blood flow situations. I'm still a bit skeptical here as my low flow leg showed up in a zoomed out view of my thighs while I was half asleep, laying down on a table. It seems to me that if it is noticeable there then it MUST have SOME effect in everyday life. I don't know, I'm no expert.

Well, after that debacle, I was given the OK to skip Providence altogether.