Losing it all.

joenobody

themxperience said:

Interesting subject.
In ‘21 I had a really good year cycling.
I lost two stone in weight, clocked over 5200 miles which was my most ever, I was fitter, faster, stronger than I’d ever been.

‘22 started great. Averaging 150 miles a week for Jan & Feb, then I caught covid!
Six weeks later I was feeling able to start riding again, albeit not with the kind of form I wanted.
Then Mid-May I had a motorcycle accident and suffered a ruptured ACL, torn median meniscus and a fracture in my knee… :-(

I had four weeks barely weight-bearing, and have slowly been able to get back to where I can cycle. I haven’t clocked a 100+ mile week since W/E 6th February.

I’m on a waiting list for surgery on the knee now, but as it’s not life-threatening, it won’t happen quickly.

I’ve never suffered depression, but this, this episode has really got me down. I think it’s because I don’t know when it will end. I feel fragile, I feel weak.
Weight is piling back on. Every time I ride I feel pathetic. It’s honestly the worst I’ve ever felt in my life. Everything I worked so hard for is gone.

This has even effected other aspects of my life, such as work.

My drama will end, eventually, and I really feel for you if you cannot ride at all any more.

If you think of mental health as a continuum (e.g. it's a moving scale, rather than black or white) then, although you feel you're not depressed, you may actually be, or at least you may be on your way to being depressed. Either way, and this is easier to say than to do, you need to either find something else to do that helps move you in a positive direction, or reframe the way you think about what you're currently doing. Maybe consider that your fitness hasn't gone, but that it's just drifted away from your temporarily. Perhaps it feels out of reach right now, but that doesn't mean you can't retrieve it. Look for the small wins that indicate movement in the right direction (e.g. faster on a segment than your last ride) rather than comparing where you are now with where you were before covid and the accident.

There are a number of interpretations of the mental health continuum, but this explains it quite well:

DeVlaeminck

airwise said:

imposter2.0 said:

Some riders at the higher echelons of cycling performance would argue the exact opposite - that taking a break from cycling is exactly what they need...

At some point the lack of endorphins will kick in. Even after a month or two, most will start feeling sluggish which is a symptom of depression.

I understand why you may feel this - but I don't think it's inevitable.

Is it actually medically proven that high exposure to exercise related endorphins causes an equivalence to type 2 diabetes with sugar. If that were the case every professional or keen amateur athlete would be locked into exercise dependence to prevent depression.

Cycling as a hobby rather than just transport isn't always a healthy activity because it can become all consuming but there are a lot of people out there who are perfectly happy without ever sitting on a bike. My grandad was a keen sportsman but his sports were fishing and golf (handicap of 2), would stuff like that be an option?

I'm not trying to minimise the importance of not being able to do high intensity exercise - I wouldn't find it easy myself - but it's not inevitably the end of happiness and sentence of depression.

navrig2

I also agree about the linkage between good mental health and exercise. About 10 years ago I was in a bad place and was not good company when around those I lived and who loved me. I couldn't motivate myself to train meaning that Saturday social rides became a hardship and I dreaded being dropped again and again.

It came to a head when I started 2 weeks summer holiday when I should have been happy and looking forward to a break. I bit the head of my wife and daughter during a dog walk in the lovely countryside near home. I was totally out of order and knew it. That started the journey to recovery - GP, medication, time off work and talking with people I knew and trusted. The time off work was filled with, initially, walking the dog with the pace increasing as the fog cleared and fitness improved. I then ventured back onto the bike and then began to join buddies on social rides. Medication only lasted 6 months (GP said that was the minimum I needed to make it effective).

Dog walking helped. Fresh air helped. Talking helped. Time alone helped in small doses. Progressing to higher intensity exercise really helped and was almost like another medication however I did wait until I was sufficiently fit to do a decent ride. I couldn't face the failure of being dropped again. I suspect my buddies went easy on my rides - I told them what was happening.

There was one social ride earlier that year which keeps coming up in our chats. I was not fit and was being dropped all the time. The weather was rubbish and it was cold. All I could see was the red flashing tail lights half a mile ahead and then a bunch of guys hanging around at the top of each hill. Eventually on one particularly tough hill I was 10+ minutes behind and when I got to the top I was not happy. The bike went into the ditch and I chased the other off telling them I would phone my wife for help. She came to collect me. I was lonely and frozen. That hill is known as my hill and we laugh about it when we climb it now.

Talk, talk, talk.

airwise

So a Year on. I found this. It gives an idea of my condition. I don't form new memories (think Alzheimers).

In my case.

WRT cycling, 20-30 minutes into a ride I would become seriously hypoglycaemic, to the point where I would have seizures, one of which damaged the brain. This was because of a failure of the brain's neurotransmitters to react to falling glucose levels. So now I'm a subject of great interest to international epilepsy professors but would prefer to not be.

All medications given for conditions like mine actually have the opposite effect of going for a good ride, acting on the CNS as depressants. I get to take 10 tablets of that formulation a day and still record over a hundred likely focal seizures per day.

I am however convinced that increasing the levels of endorphins chronically, is the only way to prevent depression in some of us. That neuropsychology is aware but even I accept that it is not something they can prescribe for. I was right about the neurotransmitter failure causing the seizures and I'm pretty sure I'm right here but the only solution open to me is to illegally purchase medications.