Typical line at the "kybo" during RAGBRAI
There is nothing quite as intimate as riding your bicycle across the state of Iowa with 10,000 fellow cyclists. At least as far as cycling goes, that is.
If you have had the pleasure of riding RAGBRAI – the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa – you know exactly what I mean by intimate. There is a sense of shared adventure, mutual determination, and common suffering that turns complete strangers into kindred spirits. We’re all in it together and forever bound by the experience.
RAGBRAI 2010
Rolling out of Sioux City on Sunday morning, I was immediately immersed in a sea of cyclists that would both amuse and confound local residents for many hours. Despite every attempt to pedal alongside a group of riding buddies who had ventured down from Sioux Falls South Dakota, the slightest change in speed split us apart as each ensuing wave sucked us in and surged us forward.
It took awhile for each rider to find his cadence, as well as his favorite choice for coffee or breakfast. The early peloton was alive with an equal amount of “on your left” and “rider off” pronouncements. Enjoyment of the bucolic scenery took a back seat to safety as I carefully watched each rider jockey for position.
I hadn’t experienced this form of sensory overload for two years. Preparation for a sales meeting prevented me from riding the year before. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I hadn’t attempted a ride of this magnitude.
Once outside of Leeds, the first town to roll out the red carpet and offer an astounding amount of food, beverage, and Iowa hospitality, the throng thinned and my only remaining ride partner and I were able to pick up the pace without fear of being overtaken by an ad hoc paceline. We laughed aloud when one such paceline was populated entirely by recumbent riders (I always thought that they didn’t need to draft). That was until we caught a fleeting glimpse of the aero helmeted hard-ass hell-bent on winning the day’s time trial trophy…
We rode a comfortable 18 mph pace on the flats. We played the two-wheeled version of tag with the larger riders who thundered past us on the descents and wheezed at our wheels as we easily overtook them on the climbs. I felt stronger than I ever had with each climb and headwind we encountered.
All in all, not too bad an effort for a guy who had suffered a severe heart attack less than a year before.
The consequences of August 8, 2009 were never far from my mind each time I threw a leg over my Imola. A couple of days on RAGBRAI would be the ultimate test of my recovery.
The Heart Attack
Hearing an emergency room physician tell you in a matter-of-fact manner that you are having a heart attack is one of the most surreal moments I hope you never have to experience. It was the first time I had ever heard these two words used together in the present tense. Heart attack? Forty three year-old cyclists don’t have heart attacks!
Before I could even get my head around this shocking diagnosis for what I had been certain was nothing more than acute indigestion, I was peppered with questions. Are you a smoker? A drinker? Is there a family history of heart disease? My answers were no, no, and yes, respectively.
How did this catch up to me, the fittest of five siblings? I rode my bike as often as my work schedule would allow, usually two to three times per week. I worked out a couple days in-between and more vigorously in the winter. As each December roared in like a lion there was always deep regret about the riding I hadn’t done, but for the most part, I felt pretty good about my overall level of fitness.
I wasn’t overweight, but I was pushing close to that next BMI demarcation. I tried to eat healthy most of the time, but it can be difficult when you travel for a living. I always figured that my hours on the bike or in the gym would more than offset any lapses in food quality when my need for fast energy was satisfied by Little Debbie and her hillbilly cousin, Mountain Dew.
Lying flat on a gurney behind the pulled curtains of the triage bay, wired for sound, right arm tapped like a box of cheap Merlot, I encountered a cardiologist for the first time in my life. He wasn’t too pleased with me. Being the invulnerable cyclist that I am, I sort of delayed seeking medical treatment for the symptoms I had been experiencing for hours. Fourteen hours to be exact. I had also taken some aspirin for good measure. Fourteen aspirin, to be exact.
The fact that I started my day in California, drove to the airport, boarded a four and a half hour flight to Chicago, and drove for another hour back to my home didn’t seem to impress him in the slightest. Turns out that toughing it out during a heart attack isn’t courageous – it’s suicidal.
As I would soon find out, a myocardial infarction, the medical term for heart attack, is caused when arterial plaque ruptures and creates a blockage in a coronary artery. The blockage cuts off oxygen to the heart muscle served by that artery. Heart muscle begins to die, that’s right, die, after five minutes. The longer you wait for treatment, the more permanent muscle damage you sustain and the odds of going into cardiac arrest multiply. As an added bonus, you are at risk of cardiac arrest for up to one year afterward as scar tissue forms in the dead muscle.
Rolling out of Leeds with my ride partner and new pal, Josh, I wasn’t thinking about my risk of sudden cardiac death. I was living in the moment. I was taking in the scenery, chatting up fellow cyclists, and feeling thankful that I was still alive to experience this incredible ride once again. Josh was a RAGBRAI virgin and it was time to show him the ropes…
Pingback: 14 Hours and 14 Aspirin – How NOT To Survive A Heart Attack! | Heart Of A Cyclist