The Great Outdoors

Out in the great outdoors for the first time is seven weeks

For seven weeks now I've watched everyone I know logging rides, some virtual, some actual, on Strava. I could be wrong, but I'd bet most of them have been logging significantly more miles than they had last year at this time. Of course, there aren't really any of the regular big group rides, although a handful of riders have been getting together to keep the Giro and WeMoRi going. Those groups, as I gather from Strava, have been generally composed of four or five or six friends. Other riders have been logging long rides, either solo or with just one or two others. Meanwhile in Zwift land, there have been a number of pretty hard virtual group rides. So with all that active training going on all around me, it should come as no surprise that I have been feeling like I'm falling farther and farther behind. It is still uncomfortable to sit on the saddle for any length of time, and it's really not much better standing up on the bike either. Nonetheless, at seven weeks out I figured it was time to do a ride or two outside, especially since the weather has been so nice.

Baby steps

Saturday, yesterday, was the date that was supposed to be the Westbank Speed Fest. There are three big boxes of trophies, and another package of bib numbers, that are now orphaned down in the basement. Anyway, I figured that it might be an appropriate time to go outside on the bike and see what happened. So I rode about 15 miles, some of it while bumping along down the rather terrible and bumpy neighborhood side streets at 5 mph. It did hurt a bit. Once I got up onto the levee bike path things went more smoothly, figuratively and literally. Things were pretty achy in the pelvis area afterward, of course, but not a whole lot worse than they had been after riding on the trainer. So this morning I went out again, this time around 7 am, and ticked off around twenty miles, mostly at way under 20 mph and 120 bpm. It seems a little strange to get home from a ride and feel pain but not feel tired. Anyway, I survived two excursions out in the wild, so to speak, so I guess that's some kind of progress.

Visiting dad through the window

After riding today, I went over to Poydras Home to meet my sisters and visit my father by waving at him on the other side of the window. They've been locked down since all of this started, and when they tested everyone last week, his came back positive. So far he has not shown any symptoms, so we are hoping for the best there. He certainly looked fine today. It was also the first time I've driven the car since March 7th.

For the record, the City of New Orleans is still in shut-down mode. Coming back from the levee this morning I noticed that Zotz was serving coffee, having rearranged the counter so that it was just inside the door so that it was basically like a take-out window. The PJ's on Magazine Street is set up in a similar way. I doubt much will change in the city for another couple of weeks at best. New cases and deaths from COVID-19 in the city have stopped increasing at the rate they had been a few weeks ago, and of course pressure is mounting to let at least some businesses get back on their feet, but I don't see anything returning to normal for a long time yet.

Week Six

That's a hell of a gap in training.

Six weeks from the crash and things are still fairly achy. At this point, trying to monitor the rate of improvement is like trying to watch grass grow. Actually slower. Since I've been sitting here looking out the window since March 10 I've watched the city Parks and Parkways people cut the grass on the neutral ground twice. I had thought that by now I would be more or less back to normal, but I guess these particular injuries, while not necessarily any more painful or slow to heal than previous ones, have just made it much harder to actually sit on a bike, and therefore ride, and therefore not get fat. At any rate, I was frustrated enough that I thought I'd go back in my blog and see how I was feeling at six weeks after various collarbone fractures. I was a little surprised to find that those were also still achy at six weeks. The difference it that, despite the nagging pain, I had been able to get back on the bike and on the road, albeit solo, within three to five weeks after injury. But of course in those cases, sitting on the saddle wasn't a problem, and the complications of falling off the bike would have been significantly fewer, so I guess I should just be patient.

Marginal improvement in the New Orleans area

I've done a few rides on Zwift now, working up from about ten minutes to forty-five. They haven't been very comfortable, and the effort levels have been fairly low, but at least I've been able to get my heart rate up off the floor for a little while. The setup I'm using is low-budget to say the least. With Zwift set up for an "unsupported" trainer, and without an actual power meter, I think the power estimates, and therefore avatar speed, are pretty inaccurate. Just judging by heart rate vs. speed on the flat, and comparing actual experience to game experience, I'd guess it's under-estimating speed. It's not really a problem except that it just feels strange to have other avatars passing me at dramatically higher speeds all the time. I suppose I can tolerate it all for a couple more weeks.

Old books, occasionally referenced

Hopefully I'll be able to get out on the road by then. I doubt I'll be too comfortable riding with a group for the foreseeable future, however. Therapies for COVID-19 seem to be evolving, which is good, but I'm old enough to be at a little higher risk should I become infected, which is something I'd rather delay as long as possible under the circumstances. With cities and states getting understandably anxious about re-opening their economies, it seems inevitable that there will be a second wave of infections at some point. New Orleans itself seems to be moving in the right direction, but of course that doesn't mean that SARS-CoV-2 is just going to disappear. It's going to be a long summer. All bike racing has been shut down for a month and it's looking like it will stay that way for at least a couple more. Schools are starting to think about how they might, or might not, be able to re-open in the fall. Graduation ceremonies are all going online.

Went for a Walk

Taking a walk in this neighborhood has its challenges

It is looking like it will be a very busy week here at the home office. COVID-19 related news, good and bad, has been coming at us from all sides. There's federal legislation, there's lots of fast-developing research, there's city issues, state issues, Facebook issues - you name it. It's like trying to drink from a fire hose at times. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. I'm excited to have a nice solid task list, actually, and frankly I love reading the research reports that have been coming out one on top of the other. There have been some interesting models over the past few days that look at various scenarios using various assumptions to hint at the likely evolution of the pandemic. Here on the local front the news has been slightly encouraging, although it is hard to get too excited when "encouraging" means it's not getting worse at a logarithmic rate any more. I have noticed over the past few weeks that the reporting of both deaths and infections has obviously been lacking over the weekends. Today the Governor said that the state had shown its highest increase in deaths. Then he kind of backpedaled, stating that the dates when the deaths are counted isn't necessarily the dates on which they actually occurred. In other words, the Monday numbers are usually playing catch-up for under-reporting over the weekends. Anyway, however you look at it, here in New Orleans it's not as bad as it could have been, and that is being attributed to the quick action to shut things down a few weeks ago. Not that that means the virus had magically disappeared, of course, but at least we have thus far managed to avoid completely overwhelming our healthcare system. Also, it looks like the treatment options for the most seriously ill have been evolving. People are not staying on ventilators as long, for example.

Yesterday I spent about 30 minutes on the trainer on Zwift, which left me a little achy in the pubic ramus area, so I decided it might be wise to skip today. I still have about five more days to get to the magical six-week mark where, at least theoretically, there should be some actual bone holding things together. Not a lot of it, but at least some. It's been pretty frustrating to see everyone training, either outside or inside, while at the same time I'm just sitting around gradually losing whatever residual fitness I might have.

A cool front came through last night and so it was around 60 this morning, which made for a very nice day, especially in the afternoon when the sun finally came out. At that point I decided it was time to go for a walk. I've been getting around fairly well for about a week and walking slowly hasn't presented much of a problem, so I figured, what the hell? Taking a walk in my neighborhood isn't quite as easy as you might assume. All those hundred year-old oak trees, together with a hundred years of deferred maintenance by the city, has resulted in some pretty difficult to navigate sidewalks. Fortunately, I didn't have any problem with them and got in a nice little walk, being careful to take shorter than normal strides just to be on the safe side. I'm still having some difficulty sleeping, partly due to the broken bones and partly due to the worn-out bedroom mattress. By about 3 am my back is killing me and I can't get comfortable, given the rather limited positioning options I currently have available. What I have discovered, however, that the little single bed in the back room office, the one that used to be my daughter's bed when she was young, is way more comfortable than the soft one with the dip in the middle in the bedroom. I ended up sleeping there for a couple of hours last night.

Anyway, perhaps I'll try and get back on the trainer in the morning before my first Zoom meeting.

Five Week Benchmarks

Looking out the window from the home office

I'm five weeks out from my falling off the bike incident and probably still a couple of weeks away from almost back to normal. I doubt I've slept for more than a couple of hours at a stretch since March 7th. Trying to sleep while lying on broken ribs is no fun. It's only been about a week since I've been able to sleep more or less lying down rather than mostly sitting up, so I guess that's progress. Yesterday I discovered that I could actually lie down on my stomach. I still have some fairly variable pain from both ribs and pelvis, although for the past few days I've been mostly walking unaided. Hopefully that's doing more good than harm. At any rate, I think it will be a full 6-8 weeks before I'm comfortable.

Fake riding

I've done a couple of fairly short and low, low-intensity rides on the trainer recently. The biggest issue with those is that I can definitely feel the pressure on the pelvic fracture, which is mainly a kind of dull ache for quite a while after a ride. It would be completely impossible to ride at all with my normal saddle. Fortunately I found a relatively cushy one in my parts box. I don't remember where it came from. I have it tilted down quite a bit, and together with the dramatically higher handlebar, it is more of an irritation than anything else. I won't be doing anything resembling a workout until that feels a lot better, however. On the other hand, it's been nice to at least get my heart rate over 100 bpm for fifteen minutes or so, and I definitely feel generally better afterward.

Makeshift upright position

We have been pretty good about staying at home. Candy has been going to the office to pick up mail most afternoons, but I haven't really been out at all in three weeks. Candy made a brief trip to the drugstore, another to the grocery store, and then an emergency trip to Elio's when we started to run dangerously low on wine. I've been mostly restricting myself to one glass a day just to put a little dent in the daily calorie count. I'll probably be ten pounds heavier by the time I can start training again, despite my best efforts. Of course, the unending supply of Easter cookies, girl scout cookies, and other readily accessible but ill-advised consumables aren't helping. I really have no relevant experience with this level of inactivity. The last time I spent this much time at such a low activity level was around 1981-82 when I had a bad case of mononucleosis that hit me pretty hard for the better part of a year. It took a long time to dig myself out of that hole, and I was a whole lot younger then.

A little softer than my normal saddles

The whole Zwift thing is still kind of a mystery to me. I mean, I'm glad it's there right now since the time goes a lot faster when there's something to look at. In my case, that's basically a steady stream of avatars flying past from behind. I haven't been very selective about which Zwift course I ride, just going with whatever comes up. With my minimalist setup, and super low-intensity effort, Zwift is recording uphill speeds in the low single-digits a lot of the time, so in twenty minutes it will show a total mileage of something like three miles. I guess I should try and find a flatter course. Anyway, I can't really see spending much time on Zwift once I'm able to get outside again. I miss the feel of the road, the wind, the feel of the draft, and especially the sweat actually mostly evaporating rather than dripping down my face. I'll have to re-position my fan once I get to the point where I can do more actual exercise.

Empty!!

On the COVID-19 front, it's at least encouraging that the rate of increase in positives and ICU beds occupied seems to have slowed locally. The urgency that we felt a week ago about the possibility of running out of both beds and ventilators has relaxed considerably, thanks no doubt to the delayed effect of social distancing finally beginning to show up. Although things in the city are still largely shut down, the street outside my window is by no means deserted. Lots of people are still working at groceries, drug stores, restaurants, etc., although not always in the way they used to be working. The university announced the other day that all of the summer sessions would be done online, which was no surprise. USA Cycling also announced that event permits through May 30 would be cancelled. With the Tour de La scheduled for the following week, we are looking at some possible dates in September and October. Setting an actual date will depend on a lot of things that are still up in the air. For one, the City of Covington will need to give us the OK on a date. I'd love to be able to put the race on in August, and maybe that is still a possibility, but nobody is making any promises right now and we will need some time to get things organized once we can settle on a solid date. There will still be date conflicts to work around, police and venue availability issues, sponsorship issues, and no doubt participation issues. I'm guessing it will be another couple of weeks before we have a better idea.

It's Come to This

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

So it's come to this.  Prior to the recent multiple catastrophes, Zwift, and for that matter indoor trainers in general, was something I thought of as a nice occasional training solution for those less fortunate than myself. I'd always been able to put in a couple of hours on the bike, outside of course, before work. The relatively rare days when the weather or other necessities made that ill-advised or impossible served as random rest days in my random training program (I use the term "program" here in its loosest sense). Now, going into my fifth week off the bike during which I have been basically sedentary, I sit at my desk looking out the window onto South Claiborne Avenue at Broadway, watching the cars and bicycles and joggers and walkers go by. It will probably be toward the end of next week before I'll be comfortable sitting on the bike for any length of time, but I figured I should at least get things set up for what I assume will be another two or three weeks of indoor riding. It still hurts a bit to take deep breaths right now, so no doubt it will be a long road back to whatever used to pass as fitness for me. Without the injury, this would be the perfect time to be putting in some long miles, and also to be incorporating some long-neglected upper body work. I've been doing a bit with the Theraband, but I'm not pushing it when I can feel the ribs, which is most of the time. Anyway, a few days ago I figured I may as well go ahead and set up a Zwift account in order to give me something to look at when I finally am able to ride the trainer. Historically, I have about a 40-minute threshold on indoor trainers before I just can't stand it any more. Yesterday I set the Garmin to "indoor cycling" mode and spun my legs for about thirty seconds to make sure it worked. Then this morning I put the laptop into a string backpack (the only way I can carry anything like that while using the crutches) and went downstairs to the basement where I have the Orbea set up on the trainer. I was happy to find that Zwift was able to find the old Garmin speed and cadence sensor right away with the ANT+ dongle I'd gotten, and rarely used, a while back for the WattBike. I didn't have the Wahoo HRM with me but I'm confident it will find that just as easily. I guess I'll break down and pay for a subscription before my free trial runs out next week, link it to my Strava account, and dream about spending an hour cycling through cyberspace. Not exactly my cup of tea, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Somebody just went by the window, turning left from Claiborne to Broadway, wearing one of the old red, white and blue NOBC jerseys. Couldn't tell who it was, though.

Never thought I'd be living this.

Near the end of 2001 a good friend, Gina, who was at the time finishing up her MPH at Tulane and was racing with us locally gave me a copy of The Coming Plague. I read all 622 pages, practically all at once, and wondered why I'd never considered getting into epidemiology when I was in school. I never imagined that it would serve as back ground reading for the current pandemic. Gina went on to get her DO, doing a residency in Emergency Medicine at Emory, and ended up as an ER doctor in Charlotte where she is no doubt employing lessons learned during her MPH coursework. I knew things were starting to get serious up there when she broke her long Facebook silence with "Thank you, pray for us! And educate your friends on the importance of staying at home and social distancing. Transmission stops at the community level. There is no cure. Healthcare providers are at increased risk with repeated exposures to high viral loads. Unfortunately we do not have all of the protective gear that we need. We have children and families who also depend on us. Be a hero. Stop the spread. Stay at home!" 

Things in New Orleans are still pretty critical. The city is mostly shut down and the tourism industry is completely shut down. Normally vibrant hotels are empty. Restaurants are closed or just offering delivery service. The mayor starts and ends her daily press conferences with "stay home!" Hospitals are still scrambling for ventilators and PPE and trying to add more and more ICU capacity. It could easily be another couple of weeks before things peak here, and even if it does, it would be another month or more easily before the situation gets back to where it was just four weeks ago. I'm at least glad that I am comfortable with myself, although it would help a lot if I wasn't still nursing the broken bones and able to at least do some work around the house and get out on the bike.

Shut-in

Never thought I'd be anxious to get on the trainer

So it was another work week at home, and the feeling of frustration is even stronger. Being stuck in the house is bad enough, but being stuck in the house and at the same time not being able to do much is making it even worse. I am still kind of limping around on crutches trying to keep most of the weight off of my left leg. The ribs and pelvis are hurting less and less, and I've been getting along without Tylenol for a few days now. I've developed a post-nasal drip that I'm just hoping isn't from COVID-19 and is instead from allergies or something else...anything else. Since I got back from the hospital on March 11th I've been out of the house only once and that was for the followup at the UMC clinic on March 23rd. To make matters worse, the weather has been pretty great, at least as far as I can tell from sitting on the front porch. I can kind of tell that sitting on a bike saddle is still going to be bad, so I've been holding off on even trying. Even so, yesterday I hobbled around the basement and put the old Orbea on the even older wind trainer. Then I changed the existing stem for one I had around from when we were fitting Danielle to her Cannondale. For her, we had it set so that there was a distinct negative slope in order to get the bars lower. For me, I installed it the other way, which put the bars about even with the saddle. I had to disconnect the front brake since the cable wasn't long enough, but I won't be needing a front brake on the trainer. I also tilted the nose of the saddle down a few degrees on the assumption that might make it easier to sit on. That old trainer has an interesting history. I was riding home from a morning ride on the levee about twenty years ago and spotted it out on the street where someone had put it out for the trash. I picked it up and rode home with it, and have used it a few times, mostly after breaking collarbones. It works fine. This evening I downloaded Zwift, but had a lot of trouble with it and even after waiting forever for it to update the software I couldn't get it to actually run. I think my internet speed is running really slow right now for some reason, so that may have something to do with it.

Anyway, most days lately have been spent immersed in COVID-19 news, legislation, and Zoom meetings and I'd be lying if I said is hasn't started to get me down. I'm still getting up around 6:30, which seems ridiculously late compared to normal, making coffee, which is something of a chore when on crutches, and sitting down at the desk around 8:00. It's starting to feel like a routine It would probably help if I could go outside and ride, even if it was solo, for an hour or two every day. It might even help if I could do it inside while staring at the computer. Back in 2008 when I broke my collarbone the first time when the dog ran out into the middle of the Giro Ride, I was back riding the trainer about 20 days later. Right now I'm 27 days out, so this is the longest I've been off the bike in, well, recorded history. I may do a little experimentation on the trainer this weekend if all goes well. We'll see. It's not like I need to get back in shape right away for a race. Speaking of that, we're looking at dates in the late August to early October timeframe for the Tour de La. I can't imagine that things will be sufficiently back to normal by early June, they way they're going.

Basically, everything is up in the air right now. Bike Easy is trying to get an SBA loan through one of the new CARES Act provisions in order to keep everyone going for the near term. I guess USAC is going to have to extend their event cancellations beyond the original May 3rd date, but they are in no rush to do so quite yet. COVID cases in New Orleans are still increasing, although the testing lag has made that trendline pretty questionable. What's not questionable is the death line, which is still increasing slightly.

See the blue? That's New Orleans.

Some new data from Unacast based on cellphone locations showing how much people are moving around indicates that while New Orleans has actually done a not too terrible job of heeding the "stay at home" edicts, the rest of the state hasn't. You can see a similar pattern from the Google mobility data when comparing Orleans Parish to the rest of the State. The Governor has actually been doing a pretty good job thus far and is showing some good leadership. Our own Mayor has been doing OK, although it seems to be more with messaging than action.

Google Mobility Data for New Orleans. You can see when the Shelter in Place order went out and its effect.

Tulane Medicine has been pretty impressive. In the midst of dealing with the unprecedented chaos at Tulane Hospital and nearby University Medical Center, they have managed to get the coveted Roche rapid testing up and running at Tulane, splitting the daily number of tests equally between the two hospitals. Bob Garry and company have gotten their PCR-based testing up and running at the Medical School, currently restricted mostly to patients and I think healthcare personnel. There's also drive-through testing at Tulane's Perdido Street building. They have produced a number of informative videos, and I watched the Grand Rounds yesterday which was as interesting as it was depressing. Or office has been having morning Zoom meetings on Monday, Wednesday and Friday that have been helpful and somewhat reassuring. Candy has likewise been doing multiple Zoom meetings every day. This afternoon, with Danielle's help, she ordered groceries to be delivered, which worked out fine and at least kept her out of the grocery store.