Wood-N-Wave hosts a road ride every year called the Trail of Tears Century that has always been on my radar. I love riding with the people from the shop and also heard the course for this ride was a tough one. You get a Trail of Tears pint glass for finishing the full 100 miles and I intended to get me one this year. The only problem was that this ride was the same weekend as the Lock 4 Six Hour. Ugh. There's always a difficult decision with scheduling...unless you're feeling crazy. I decided that my fortunes at Lock 4 are not worth me skipping a fun ride to focus on that race. I opted to try both events. I decided on this back in August, so some of my long rides in September and early-October were in preparation for the double. I felt ready after Race to the Canal. I was riding really good and knew this was a good chance to do both events and do both of them well.
My preparation got a little complicated the week of the events. I had an awful day from Hell at work two days before Trail of Tears. I had to unload a huge cookie dough order by myself at the worst load-in we have. The people at this school must hate us, which is odd considering we are not only delivering them cookies, but also a big fat check for their part of the sales. You think they would love seeing us pull in. But they make things as difficult as possible for us and I wound up having to push a 400-lb. cart of cookie dough up a long hill six times to get the truck unloaded. The truck was late arriving and it took me longer to unload than we had planned, so we tried to pick up the pace on the packing process. I was worn out when we left at the end of the day.
Everything was fine until the next morning. I woke up with a sore forearm that got drastically worse over the course of the day. By the evening, I had a huge knot on my tendon and could not move my wrist without severe pain. I could not only feel the tendon creaking as it slid through the surrounding sheath, but you could hear it! I did not freak out as this has happened to me before. I aggravated the same tendon about four years ago while doing trail work with new, heavier clippers. It's inflammation around the tendon and the tendon sheath. It's called tenosynovitis. It's simply from overuse. In my case, from flipping boxes of cookie dough all day. The cookies come in four-pound boxes that are then packed into a bigger box that holds eight of the smaller boxes. The cookies came in plastic tubs with handles until a few weeks ago. The handles and the rim of the plastic tub made it easy to pull the cookies out of the big box. Now they have changed from plastic tubs to smooth boxes which require you the handle them more. With the rush to make up time, I did not handle them in the best way and wore out my forearm with too much wrist rotation.
It takes time to get rid of tenosynovitis. You can't just stop using your wrist altogether. I had to slog through a work day of therapy where it seemed I needed my hands all day so it was pretty aggravated come Saturday morning. Shannon worked hard on massaging it to break up the tendon from the sheath. If she had not done that I doubt I would have been able to ride. I slapped some kinesiotape on it to reduce tension on the tendon and packed the car for the trip to Grand Rivers, KY for the Trail of Tears Century.
Cruised over to Kentucky Lake before the ride to see the first colors of Fall
The weather was sketchy that morning. Rain was forecast, but there was a chance the majority of the weather system would miss the area. I had convinced myself it was going to miss. It was a little disappointing when the rain began to come down the second we started the ride. We were not even out of the parking lot yet and it began to pour. I stayed up front early to be sure I didn't caught up in some crash because of the rain. To my surprise, there were just five of us together after four miles. I was hoping for a big group to stay together early so I could save my legs for a fast finish. My goal was to finish in under five hours on this hilly course, but I knew it would be a challenge as my legs were sore from pushing that cart at work.
After eight miles it was just Tom Gee and myself together up front. We were not going hard, but apparently it was harder than anyone else wanted to go. I felt like we were going easy so I just went with Tom and decided to go for the all-day breakaway. Tom is a true legend of cycling in these parts. He's in his 60s and can take just about anybody in this area. You might be able to go faster than him for a minute, but I promise he will beat you in the end. The man rides so many miles it is scary. He has ridden Paris-Brest-Paris multiple times. If you aren't familiar with PBP, it's 1200 km long and you have about 80 hours to complete the route. Yeah, Tom's freaking awesome. I have ridden with him a few times and every time is a lot of fun and an honor to ride with someone with so much experience on the bike.
Tom Gee and myself early in the ride
photo by Shawn James
The rain poured on us early on. I felt ok at the start, but my legs started to fade out at mile 10. That is never good on a 100-mile day. All I could do was eat and hope the legs would come around later. I kept feeling worse and struggled up the climbs. The rain gave us a break after 25 miles. Shawn James was out on course helping us at turns and giving us updates. We were 12 minutes ahead of the group when we got to the town of Smithland, KY after about 35 miles. Shortly after Smithland came the biggest climb on the course and Tom rode off from me. My legs just gave out and I struggled to make it up the climb. Shawn offered me a Coke at the top, but a Coke was not going to help me today. This was not from bonking. My legs just weren't there.
By myself at the top of the toughest climb of the day. Tom has already come and gone.
photo by Shawn James
After the crest of the climb, I was able to chase Tom back down and provide at least a little more help before leaving him to go on solo. We worked together another eight miles before I finally popped for good on another steep climb. I struggled on to the next rest stop at mile 60. I enjoyed the home-baked snacks at the stop and a dreary, but still nice view of the Ohio River as the rain began again. I was waiting for the group behind me. I thought they would surely be getting close with how slow I had been riding. I waited for about 20 minutes, but was forced to continue on alone as the rain was making me cold.
The Ohio River in the rain
The course then followed the river bottom for 20 of the longest miles of my life. The wind had picked up and was a full-on headwind, combined with a pouring rain. It was miserable. I was pushing with what little I had left and moving at about 12 mph on a flat road. I kept looking back, but never saw the group. I even stopped for some pictures at one spot and still no group. As I exited the river bottom back to Smithland, I finally saw some riders coming behind me. At the last rest stop, I joined forces with a group of about eight riders and we slogged through the rain to the finish together. I was in pain the last 20 miles. My leg soreness was back with vengeance. Every muscle in my legs became very tight and I started to have pain in my gastrocs and in my hamstrings. The scary part was that I had pain in my right gastroc in the same spot that bothered me all last winter on my left side. But I did not have much choice but to continue on. I hung onto the group for the full 101.7 miles. We finished well outside my goal time, ending at 5:35. Tom finished in under five hours despite riding over half the course solo. I was so destroyed afterwards. The wrist had not been much of an issue except for when sprinting in the drops. It was now the least of my worries. My legs both hurt in a very bad way. It was a rough day, but it ended well with a nice bowl of chili and a huge muffin from the Lite Side Bakery & Cafe across the street from the shop. That's one of the many perks that comes with your entry to this ride.
Riding towards Smithville
That night was focused on recovery and massage. I still had every intention of doing Lock 4 the next day. It had rained some at home, but not near as much as it did in Kentucky. I have had some awesome one-day turnarounds before, like last year the day after the Lock 4 Six Hour when I had an awesome day at Cross the Farm. But when I woke up on Sunday, it was clear that I needed to stay home. My entire body was tight and sore. I could not move my wrist, and I had a lot of pain in my right gastroc at the attachment to the femur. My measuring stick for gastroc injury is walking down stairs. Eccentric load on the affected leg will quickly point out damage at the muscle-bone junction. I had a lot of pain going down the stairs. It is against everything inside me to skip a race or DNF, but I knew this was serious and my body needed to rest. I was disappointed, but knew it had to happen.
I took four days completely off from all forms of exercise. The wrist was problematic. I couldn't completely rest it because of work. And we were really busy at both of my jobs. I modified the way I unpack cookie dough boxes which helped, but the pain was still there. Too much pain for me to even think about getting on a mountain bike.
I hopped back on the road bike after the rest break for a three hour ride with Pam Tanner. We met up in Cedar Hill and took a tour of the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. All was good until the end of the ride when the pain came back in my right gastroc. That started a three week battle of three hour rides that all ended with pain. I was pain-free for three hours then, like clockwork, the pain would come on. It came on at almost the same minute of every ride. Rest did not help. Massage was not helping. Riding was not helping. It was like last year's nightmare all over again, just on the other leg.
Field of dried soybeans on a morning road ride
It was discouraging, but I knew I could overcome this. I had more knowledge about the issue this time around and I knew how to attack it. We finally found "the spot" in the upper gastroc and after some work on it, I was able to handle some shorter rides at a fast pace. Intensity did not seem to bother it, so I focused on shorter, faster rides. It took about four weeks to get rid of the tenosynovitis in the wrist. It was possible only thanks to Shannon and my athletic trainer friend Holly spending a lot of time working on me. They threw the kitchen sink at it with massage, ultrasound and iontophoresis.
The right gastroc injury was my third injury in less than a year. I guess it was a fitting end to the year that has been full of setbacks and comebacks. I was forced to miss many local cyclocross races and the Dry Creek 6 Hour Championships in Dalton, GA that had been my target for November. Instead of working on riding, I was back to working on rehabing a gastroc. To make matters worse, my left gastroc was also sore from Trail of Tears, just not so much as the right side. If that ride had been any longer I may have experienced the full effect of the race's name.
More on my recovery in the next post...
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