Monday, April 27, 2009

I'll Post More Often.....Promise!



I have been diagnosed with a hypothyroid. Basically it means that I have cooked my thyroid gland, and it isnt regulating my hormone levels, and bodily funtons as it should. This explains most of my symptoms and a lot of the odd things that have been happening.
Its not clear to me what really caused it. Whether it was from too much hard training, too much stress, or it could have been something that was steadily declining since I was younger. I suspect the whole Guadeloupe fiasco played a part in it though....I never felt the same after visiting that place..on and off the bike.

My condition is pretty slight. It do have all the symptoms and are definatly effected by them, but I notice it the most when training and riding really hard. I doubt anyone living a normal life would notice a HUGE problem, but when your body works frequently at the highest points its capable of, its then you notice slight changes.

So, I'm going to get the verdict of what type of medication on Thursday. From what I've been able to gather I can either go synthetic or natural(The natural med is made of group up pig thyroids). I've been basically spending all my time re-searching all these things. Usually multiple times of the day I'll start reading medical trials and studys then find that I've just spent 3 hours on the internet reading about 18-word chemicals, hormones and treatment plans, and case studies.

If an underactive thyroid doesnt kill me, or bike racing, then for sure radiation from too much internet time shurley will.

With all this going on, I've been riding pretty consistantly. The legs feel slow, but at least now I have an explination. I joined with riding group for a great Saturday ride. They took me on the Oregon roads I wanted to see, and knew were around, but havnt been able to find.
Of course I was treated with typical Oregon weather as well, made up of rain, sun, cloud, sun, 10-minute downpour.....repeated all day.

This area has some crazy nice rides and loops, it was just a matter of finding them I guess. There is also a shit-ton of climbing as well that I didnt realize was around. We probalby climbed over 2000m, which makes the ride no walk in the park. The ride turned out to be a little over 5 hours, and for that whole time we probably only rode through crap traffic for about 30minutes, while getting out of, and comming into town.

One of the fast guys in the group who has been giving me the info on the riding scene around here also went to the Tour de L'Abitibi twice as a junior. Its funny, the more I travel and ride with different groups, it seems everyone has gone to that race.

With that I'm out for a ride. Hopefully I can get this thing figured out and get back on track!

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