Little Milestones, Bigger Victories
My goal of guarding a harem crushed, I set my sites on getting back into prime cycling condition.
I have no testosterone. I am, essentially, a eunuch. By rights, I should be guarding a harem which was a traditional role for eunuchs. I applied for a couple of eunuch positions, but Carol wouldn’t hear of it. I had to give up on my dream.
My dearth of testosterone is by design, of course, because testosterone fuels my type of cancer. The treatments I am on eliminate testosterone, and, thus, inhibit the growth of my cancer — at least for a time until the cunning little bastard adapts and finds a way around the treatment.
The list of side effects of these treatments is long, but chief among them are weight gain and loss of muscle mass. I have had both over the course of my treatments.
When we arrived in Santa Barbara on January 26, I weighed 199 pounds, 21 pounds over my ideal weight. I set about chipping away at the weight and doing my best to retain, and maybe even build, muscle mass.
My method of goal-setting has always been as incremental as my “turn-the-pedals-one-rotation-at-a-time” philosophy. Keep the goals short and in range, and just keep hitting those small goals and then extending them.
Before you know it, you will have hit some huge goal that would have seemed daunting had you started by looking up to that mountain peak.
It’s a simple approach that has worked for me in the past on everything from massive work projects to my health and fitness. Just keep tapping out the effort and hit those near-term goals. Breaking tasks down into smaller increments is the secret. As the old saying goes, “Success breeds success,” so achieving every small, incremental goal creates the little incentives needed to get up that mountain.
I’ve been on the bike for 67 days since we arrived, and off the bike for 26 days. I’ve ridden 2,100 miles and climbed almost 140,000 feet. Last year in the same time period in Santa Barbara, I had ridden 1,100 miles and climbed just over 100,000 feet.
No surprise, then, that I got on the scale Sunday morning and I was at my college weight, 178 pounds. I had lost 21 pounds since arriving.
This called for a celebration.
So this morning I woke up early, had my steel cut oats, took my medicines and headed out the door to do a ride I had only done twice before: The Gibraltar Loop.
The climbing starts in earnest just a couple of blocks from home up Laguna Street toward Old Mission Santa Barbara. By the time you reach the mission, you’ve already climbed 230 feet. Up Mountain Drive and around the hairpin onto Mission Ridge Road and soon you find you’ve climbed 600 feet.
Save for a few brief downhills, the climbing continues until the Garmin indicates 4,000 feet of total elevation gain, right near the top of Le Cumbre Peak on East Camino Cielo Road, the highest point in the Santa Ynez Mountains.
The road continues along the ridge of the front range, providing spectacular views down to the ocean and deep into the back country.
After a few more rollers, including another 300 foot climb, a sharp left onto Painted Cave Road begins the descent, and a steep one it is. Painted Cave was the site of a terrible fire last fall. Much of foliage in the area is black and dead, but the late March rains have already started the process of rebirth.
A significant stretch of the descent is one lane, so the brakes get a workout. Twice I was met by oncoming vehicles. There was just enough room for us to squeeze by one another.
I was home by 12:15, having covered 34 miles and 4,757 feet of climbing. I lost another pound.
Hey, side effects, kiss my less-ample derrière.
