Time to get on with the rest of my life.....

Beasty

Having closed the door on my last thread yesterday, it's a new day and a new thread.

It's been a stressful few days - quite a lot of travelling, then spending most of yesterday in the High Court. I'm going to be travelling again next week, with a trip to Derby tomorrow and I'll be helping out at the Black Line Open on Monday, as well as the Duane Delaney Track GP at Sundrive next Saturday (with trips to Nottingham and London on work, and to Epsom racecourse on Friday). The week after I'll start venturing to the cricket World Cup, taking in 6 matches up to one of the semi-finals in July

So it's going to be a frantic few weeks, with perhaps little chance of much serious bike work. But that's the way it's been for some time anyway, and finally I'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Before I get there though I've another daycase back procedure to undergo in 3 weeks time, a minor procedure on the foot which will leave me in one of those post-surgery boots for 10 days or so, and a CT scan on the heart at the end of June. That's because my regular health check showed up a bit of an abnormality a few weeks ago. Hopefully nothing to worry about but I'll probably get a bit stressed out anyway

I was coaching at Sundrive this morning, and inflicted some of the pain I've been suffering on the WB on those who turned up. Certainly think they got a decent workout anyway. Would have gone into the gym this evening, but I've had a bit of a migraine. With everything I've got on over the next few weeks, I may as well pretty much write off most of the rest of this season. However it also gives me a chance to start thinking about next year, and the plan is to get a decent winter in, as I'm hopefully through most of the physical and other issues, and will have a bit more time on the bike as I start to ease back towards retirement from work

That's it for now. An opening post setting out some "current" background, and hopefully a thread I'll start to visit a bit more than the last one over the coming months

Beasty

6 and a half years later, and I come back here to draw a line under my racing "career"

First there was the pandemic, then towards the end of 2021 I had my right knee replaced. A lot of hard work got me back to some level of fitness, but I then had a headache that lasted around 16 months. I say headache, but it was a pain that returned pretty much every day during those 16 months. I ended up having an ablation where they cut the nerve which was transformative. I got back on the bike and shifted a lot of excess blubber I had accumulated particularly during those 16 months. About 34 kg at one stage, but I have put some of that back on. Indeed I needed another one of those pain killing procedures a few weeks ago.

I did some racing at Sundrive during 2024, but that came to an end when I managed to crash into the back of someone else in the warm up for the Leinster championships. Fortunately they stayed up, but I hit the deck quite hard. There was no way I could race and I drove off to a VHI clinic to discover I had fractured a collarbone, in 2 places. That meant I had to call on family members to get me back home as I was not allowed to drive with those fractures.

I managed to do some work on the turbo, but was separately getting some dizzy spells. After a pretty dramatic collapse I was diagnosed with postural hypotension. Low blood pressure reducing its flow to the head when standing up. Various tests were done and earlier this year I had a loop recorder implanted into my chest. That monitors the heart rate, and a week or two later I was phoned by the specialist to tell me my heart rate had hit 220 one Sunday morning (when I would have done nothing more that being sat in front of the TV). Then it hit 196 and I was put on beta blockers. I also had a couple of these dizzy spells on the turbo. I have not been out on the road since the collar bone fracture, and these dizzy spells meant there was no way I could push myself in any races. I will aim at getting back to some leisure cycling, but my racing career is officially over. I do still plan on helping out at Sundrive, and indeed may look out for opportunities at the new indoor velodrome, although both involve round trips of over 300km.

And just to add - I'm getting the left knee replaced in February. The right one feels pretty normal, although it did take some time to get that way.