Swings and Roundabouts

I've been quiet recently, having not raced since June. It's been a tricky few months, and not what I'd expected for the second half of the year.

On the minute chance I’ve got any avid readers who wait impatiently for every piece I publish, apologies for the lack of recent activity. The last few months haven’t been some of the best I’ve had.

Long story short, I’ve had Epstein-Barr virus since National Champs in late June. Having finished 5^th in the U23 TT earlier in the week, I was looking forward to the road race on a course that I really liked. In quintessentially British fashion, there were no major climbs, nor any flat. Add into the mix the road surface resembles 80 grit sandpaper, and it’s about as Anglo-Saxon as it gets.

National TT Champs. Credit to Milan Josy

The day before, my legs felt a little heavy, but it was nothing that made alarm bells sound – I’d had worse before and come around just fine on race day. The day of the race felt much the same though. For the first hour or two, not feeling great, I tried to ride as efficiently as I could and hope I could “ride myself into it” – the phenomenon whereby bad legs seemingly miraculously come good with no scientific explanation and powered by nothing but blind faith.  

While I never felt “good”, I did start to feel somewhat better as the race progressed. The result was nothing to write home about, so I learnt what I could from it and started to think about the rest of the season as we drove back down to London.

The next day, I could tell something wasn’t right. I had a splitting headache and there was the ominous sign of a resting heart rate through the roof, indicating something was afoot. Initially, and in hindsight quite naively, I assumed it was just an adverse reaction to what was a hard race – albeit that was never a way I’d reacted previously – and I’d be fine tomorrow.

National RR Champs - the last time things would be “normal” for a few months. Credit to Milan Josy.

When the next day was worse, I figured it was some kind of minor virus. No big deal – a few days off and I’ll be back to normal. I did recover somewhat after a few days, but only to 60-70% of what’s normal. To fast forward a month or two, that number remained pretty much the same – and lower on some days, much to my frustration.

It took a while to find out what the problem was. I’m clearly no expert in it myself, so my explanation here may be about as clear as mud. Between the ages of 8 and about 11, I had glandular fever twice in roughly as many years – quite the achievement I’m told, although not one that I’m particularly proud of. Glandular fever is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, which merely becomes dormant in your system rather than truly leaving it -  hence why it become difficult to “catch it” multiple times when you’ve already got the antibodies.

It can, however, reactivate at times when the immune system is compromised, such as when there is a virus in your system and you accidentally race with it…

My assumption is that virus I had was COVID. I only tested a few days later, likely too late, but have been told lots of “long COVID” is actually just reactivated EBV.

Anyway, that’s been my last few months in a nutshell. Frustrating is an understatement. The lack of any noticeable and linear progress is probably the most frustrating aspect. Going round and round in circles is infuriating. That’s why I stopped racing on the track… (sorry, terrible pun there. Not even true in fact, just a really bad pun. I’ll get my coat…)

While I’m distinctly aware that bike racing isn’t the be all and end all, at this stage of my life, it is the most important thing to me. Quite frankly though, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I recognize that my priorities may change as I get older and other aspects of life take equal importance, but right now – racing bikes is above everything else. Add into the mix that for as long as I can remember, cycling has been my release and my “happy place”, and there have been some days where I’ve not been in the best headspace. I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir there with that last point though, I’m assuming I don’t need to explain that feeling to much of this audience

Coppa della Pace 1.2U. The week before coming back to the UK, 7th there gave me confidence before Nationals. Credit to Zannoni.

In the end, I took the decision to just end this season here and take an earlier off-season. Riding an hour or two a day at 200 watts really wasn’t proper training and going out and feeling awful on some days didn’t do masses of help. It got to the stage that there wouldn’t be enough time to build back up to some semblance of shape and race again this year, so it made sense just to call it, rest completely and see how much that helps me. Hopefully that’ll be enough the get me back to normal, before having a longer build up to next year.

How long it’ll take before I’m up and running again? I don’t know. That’s something that is beyond frustrating. The more concrete timeline that comes with a broken collarbone, for example, means there’s always light at the end of the tunnel and a rough idea of when you’ll be back out on the road. The lack of that here means staying positive becomes a bit more of a chore after this length of time. It’s not like I can stick it out on the turbo for a month knowing I’ll be back on the road at a certain date I’m told of in advance.

I’m not blind to the fact that there are really major injuries in cycling that, though not everyday occurrences, do unfortunately happen. The likes of the Jakobsen crash in Poland being the extreme end of the scale. This isn’t that, my life was never in danger and I know I’ll be myself again eventually. That said, the fewer concrete options about how to get better seem few and far between with EBV. The vague advice of “rest” isn’t something I’ve ever been very good at. It’s not like there’s physio and rehab I can throw myself into, or you can plate a bone. I really hope I’m not coming across as making out that EBV parallels is the end of the world, that’s why I’ve given these other examples, but it comes with its own challenges and has made for a bit of a rubbish last few months, to put it in polite terms. The fact that I look my normal self from the outside doesn’t make things. The lack of a cast or sling means there’s no obvious external reason why I feel terrible on my bike, tired a lot of the time and haven’t raced since June.

Apologies for the slightly more negative post than usual, I promise won’t make a habit of it. This second half of the season has been far from what I’d hoped and expected. I’m doing my best at “resting”, as much as that goes against everything I’ve come to know, so it becomes a bit of a waiting game now. I’ve given my body everything it needs, so I’m hoping beyond hope its simply a matter of time before I’m back on my bike again.