Derrailed for a few weeks

When your first stop is the pharmacy upon entering the host town on a world cup weekend, you really just have to go into the experience just hoping for the best.   Mary and I opted for the shopping cart over the hand basket as we loaded up on French Canadian versions of all our favorite pain relieving rubs, ibuprofen, assorted back and neck cooling/heating products/ braces to make certain we would be able to contest what was our 9th year of racing a world cup at Mont Ste Anne, Quebec.   Even if it was not looking as if we'd pull our best showing, Ste Anne was a world cup we were NOT going to miss…

Good to see Mike riding strong at MSA, playing catch up after mechanical issue.

We had the chance to spend a solid week back home in Massachusetts where we were supposed to be resting up for the North American leg of our world cup tour.  Unfortunately home had ceiling renovations, school reunions, bills, vehicle registrations cleaning and prep after a winter of neglect to take into consideration before we could get in any relaxing.   Home had us feeling busy and displaced from our typical simplistic travel routine and to complicate things further Mary (seemingly) managed to strain something in her neck/back while making a monumental house cleaning attempt to liberate a little space from the coating of dry wall debris and general disaster area. 

The back injury I sustained in Europe turned out to be a slow steady healer, demanding attention in that worst way possible way of doing almost absolutely nothing to remedy.   Luckily there was plenty of work to accomplish in the team management department and in my personal bike shop where I was happy to spend time setting up the latest (another most fantastic yet) version of Stan's NoTubes ZTR wheels & testing our new favorite chain lube (Squirt Lube) in the local conditions.   In general it was a good opportunity to do some RnD testing and give some attention to our race bikes that had stood by us so perfectly even while neglected over the past 3 months of intense racing and training while on another long mission out of the race bags.

Chiropractor, Dr. Curtis Langer adjusts Mary.

Mary and I made daily trips to our chiropractor for adjustments and treatments which made all the difference both physically and mentally keeping us positive and educated enough to accept the necessary down time to heal up before the next onslaught of racing.  Just as I was about to go crazy from not getting in any sort of riding work outs, the 'do nothing' protocol actually started to work.  Huge thanks to Dr. Curtis Langer for his amazing chiropractic care, wisdom and treatments.

Good thing Mike is handy...

As we were still weaning ourselves off the ibuprofen Mary and I hitched up our travel trailer and headed north.  We made our first stop just a matter of miles from home at our local sponsor Jim's Organic Coffee, where we got to catch up with Jim's great crew and restock our trailer cupboards with amazing organically produced and on site roasted beans that never fail to make our mornings a more pleasant experience.  Before leaving the home state we headed into Watertown, MA to catch up with our friends and sponsors at Seven Cycles.  We spent half the day in casual meetings re connecting while exchanging information that will help to berth the next generation of Seven Cycle's mountain bikes,  perhaps it was a bit more than casual.   We also spent some time discussing the latest in mountain bike technologies/ possibilities looking for how to best incorporate these into the next generation of cross country bikes that we are both excited to help influence along the way and be riding in the very near future.

A precious visit to the Laboratory at Seven Cycles.

Mont Ste Anne is a special place to race bikes,  this years brought a wet and wild version of it's familiar technical riding.  demanding climbs and traverses with a coating of slog slowly rolled us into descents that pushed  the limits of race day ride ability for some.   Mary and I opted for the predictable and confidence inspiring handling of our 29ers though we had brought along our trusty 26" hard tails as a remedy for the furious start paces and battles we have been seeing in the world cups as of late.   We have found it a bit frustrating to not be able to take full advantage of the descending capabilities of our rides as the way down is often bottled up with riders who just managed to beat us to the single track on a stripped down 26" bike. Oh Well!

Finally a good start, but then crashed on 3rd of 5 laps... struggled in for top 30.

Mary and I both felt that we could have been more competitive.  We both rode the race aggressively from a technical standpoint, proving it with a hard stack once or twice each - sometimes you just have to find the limit to make sure you are pushing it.   Even though we tried to be as prepared as usual for this event, something just didn't feel right in the preparation and organization of the team.  We were not having a good time and that was really unusual for us, some sort of bad attitude seemed to get mixed up in the normal bunch of fatigue and tension that we go through and this resulted in an unfamiliar dodgy run up to the canadian racing and even uncertainty about our next racing moves.  

We were happy to spend another fun 4th of July weekend with our friends in Warren, Vermont - where we enjoyed a few days to relax and enjoy.   It was easy to get into the patriotic spirit while enjoying the stunning summer weather, a few recovery road rides and refreshing swims in the crystal clear headwaters of the Mad river.  This was a perfect place to recharge the batteries in an effort to get into peak condition for the following weekends world cup at Windham Mountain, NY...

Cruisin' to the 4th of July Parade

I was feeling better day by day, but unfortunately, Mary was headed in the other direction.  She was becoming feverish at night and started to have limited bouts with a terrible whole body aching.   On the night prior to the Windham WC when we would normally be in the final preparations for the big race she felt bad enough to seek out medical help and headed to the Emergency room for an evaluation.    This E room visit almost turned into a scary western medicine nightmare scenario when where upon analyzing a blood test, well meaning but ultra conservative doctors recommended a very scary and controversial spinal tap (yes a puncture into the spine!)  to possibly figure out the cause of an elevated white blood cell count...   

In rapid succession, going in for a simple blood test turned into 9 hours in the hospital, complete with cat scan and prescriptions for three weeks of antibiotics, pain medication and significantly more worry than we had prior to checking in.   We (thankfully) opted out of the spinal tap.  For the past days we had begun to suspect that Mary had contracted a sort of tick born illness, perhaps Lyme disease, which may had been causing these worsening health issues.    We were really just wanting a solid diagnosis to determine if she was indeed suffering from the effects of Lyme disease from a tick bite she sustained a few weeks earlier so that we could begin the appropriate protocol for recovery. 

This extended visit to the ER along with Mary's overall not feeling well made for one of the most difficult nights we have had in a long time.  I was a bit surprised by Mary's resolve after giving 7 vials of blood,  getting a cat scan, and sleeping precious little that she still decided to take to the line and have a go at the Windham WC.  Though physically not right Mary wanted to give it her best shot and represent for our team and sponsors to her best ability even in such a compromising situation. whoa!!!

Mary raced her 26" IMX (Carbon and Titanium) at the Windham World Cup - Seven Cycles' lighweight super responsive hard tail XC race bike.

After such a nerve racking ramp up there was understandably not a lot of satisfaction on the results side for either Mary or I.  it was more a case of happy to have made it through the race and now back to my real focus of the day: how the heck do I get healthy!  With the endorphins running high from the competition we still managed to enjoy a fun night BBQing in the thick humidity of the Catskill mountain evening with our friends and sponsors Stan and Cindy Koziatec, creators of NoTubes.com and several of their other awesome sponsored athletes.  Having Great Sponsors and friends come out to personally attend events is something really special to us as racers.  We live such a disciplined life that when people don't take the time to see us in our environment and at the races then they cannot truly get to know who we are.  I am pretty sure you would have to be a true bike person or a great supporter to enjoy these nights but for those in the know it is a precious chance to just hang out talk and celebrate the life around bikes!

Thanks for an awesome weekend, team NOTUBES!!

It felt completely wrong watching Mary suffering painfully after a sleepless night while I was packing up the bikes for the next weekend's National Championships out in Idaho.  At this point it was a war between what we wanted to accomplish at national championships and what we were really up against with mary suffering through some serious undiagnosed issues.   Throughout the day we felt that it was in our best interest for Mary to begin taking the antibiotics that she was prescribed because something was very clearly not right with her.  Later that night Mary was hit really hard by the combo of the antibiotics and illness and we felt strongly that it was going to be mandatory to take a bit of time off to recover her health!   A few days later the blood test confirming lyme disease came and we were happy to already be on the road to recovery. 

Lyme is a disease that is contracted through a tick bite.  The disease itself comes from a bacteria that lives in the tick,  The tick bites the human and allows the bacteria to enter the blood stream.  This bacteria that gets into the blood and can cause all sorts of ills.   Luckily most can be treated with antibiotics if caught immediately. Unfortunately this disease continues to claim more victims and still manages to elude detection,  doctors find it difficult to diagnose without administering the right kind of blood tests and and long term cases become harder to treat as time passes. 

Mary tests out her BMX start

With athletes any pain based symptoms can be even more tricky to diagnose as we are prone to ignore pain and push past fatigue in search of our goals.  This 'disease' is becoming very common with people who spend a lot of time in the woods or close to nature - so be aware!  often test results do not always show up as positive though in mary's case we felt lucky that they did.  We are very relieved to now know for sure what we are fighting and can take the appropriate steps and get Mary healthy as soon as possible!    

Crazy that the roots of lyme disease can be traced back to biological warfare experiments carried out just off the New York coast during the 1970s.    Here scientists performed research on ticks and their ability to literally carry out biological warfare.  Although we did not read the book yet, "Lab 257", details the Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory (by Michael Christopher Carroll; HarperCollins, 2004).  Legend has it that the experiments were disbanded but the area was never properly cleaned and slowly the infected ticks spread thru natural means utilizing the local deer population and migratory birds.  Scary stuff that picked up over time, this insidious little experiment has become a huge problem for the east coast and beyond.   Now Lyme disease can now be caught in various parts of the globe.  

Having your health thrown off course by a sinister biological warfare experiment gone bad can certainly mess with your mind and ruin more than even that.  We are relieved to have confirmation that it is Lyme disease that Mary is suffering from, which rules out any number of other ills that she could have had.  With early detection the prognosis is good that that Lyme can be completely eradicated from the body!  This is what we are shooting for at this point.  

Mary is currently in the early stages of the antibiotic treatment and already seems to be responding well! She is back out on the bike and smiling after a week of treatment - so all is looking good!!! We are very hopeful that this early detection and immediate medication and rest will allow for complete remission of the disease and a quick return to feeling good 100 percent of the time!

Thanks for sending us your good energy!  We missed seeing everyone out at Nationals but are glad to have this time at home to rest and recover.  We'll keep you updated with the latest.  

Meanwhile, don't let the day pass you by with out doing that extra little thing… to realize YOUR good health.

All the best,

:-)

Mike and Mary

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