Saratoga 12 and 24-hour race report 2009

Summary

I got a disappointing result of 5th place and 344 miles (my goal was 400) while noting several excuses including weather delays, a slow wheel change after flatting a tubular, a slow cassette replacement, a slow spoke repair and replacement of a faulty tail light that together kept me off the course for a lot of time. And for the first 10 hours or so I didn’t seem to be properly fit.

Race description

The 12- and 24-hour races both started at 8am on Saturday July 11th and finished respectively 12 and 24 hours later. The course is a 32.5 mile loop with one significant climb up Beacon Hill and otherwise flat to rolling. Drafting is not allowed. You keep riding around and around the loop and the rider to cover the most miles wins.

Beacon Hill seems no big deal at the start. It’s one mile of about 4-5% average, including about a quarter mile of 8-10%, followed by another mile of gentle climbing. After about 10 runs up it is a much bigger deal than it was.

The 12-hour race

And in the 12-hour race the hill was decisive. The climb starts 2 miles after the start/finish checkpoint, where many people set up the supplies and have a helper. At close to 8pm, 2-time solo RAAM finisher Rob Morlock led ultra-marathon neophyte Sven Stoltz through the start/finish. From there, Sven chased over the first 2 miles and positioned himself about 50 yards behind Rob on the climb. Then Sven attacked on the gentle second mile of the climb, passed Rob who couldn’t match speed and was soon recorded at 1 mile ahead by the end at 8pm. You don’t always get a close finish in these kinds of races.

Not to detract from Rob’s result (in a race like this it was equivalent to a photo finish in a sprint), it was a brilliant debut from my friend Sven, whom you might meet sometimes on the Quad rides. 236.50 miles in 12 hours is 19.71 mph! Remember that’s not drafting and not stopping the clock when the bike is stopped like a cycle computer usually does. I wonder if, with less adverse weather and more experience in these events, Sven could better Sandy Whittlesey’s course record of 250.3 miles.

Also of note is that another well know Boston-area rider David Lafferty came in third with 227.5 miles, course record for a fixed-gear bicycle. (Boston’s messenger-wannabe fyxomatosis sufferers can suck on that!)

My 24-hour race

But I was in the 24-hour race which started at the same time as the 12-hour but finished 12 hours after at 8am. I started close to last because I was absolutely determined to ride relatively slowly for the first lap and not get caught up in the excitement and exuberant speed that characterizes the start. I had been warned over and over by Melinda Lyon, 24-hour women’s course record holder, to pace it gently early on. Nevertheless I expected to pass more of riders during the first 3 laps. The first clue that I was not fit was that I didn’t.

After 3 laps I was in terrible shape and needed to rest. I don’t know what was wrong though I have hypothesis — it’s a long story but, in short, my guess is chronic dehydration since the weather warmed up around the end of June and possibly related to some remaining diabetes insipidus (i.e. my kidneys aren’t working as well as they should) from my problems in 2007-8.

I did a 60-80 mile fastish ride most weekends in the winter and that picked up to 100-130 mile rides since April. Being clapped out after 3 laps at a moderate speed showed something was really wrong.

Diet and recovery

I switched food at that point from high-tech overpriced sports drinks and gels to real food and drink. Potato chips and coca-cola helped greatly. It was silly of me to not follow my own advice from the start. (Sven eventually relied on the same formula in his ride too.)

After a rest, change of clothes and a turkey sandwich I began lap 4 feeling pretty good and started to enjoy the ride a bit. But in the last few miles of that lap the same abject grottiness came over me again. So I took another slightly shorter food rest.

A few miles into the 4th lap I crossed 100 miles at exactly 2pm which gave me an average speed that would get me to my goal of 400 miles if I maintained it. That was disappointing since lap times don’t generally get any faster over the course of a 24-hour race. Towards the end of the 3rd lap I had noted a very satisfactory average speed so I must have stopped for a long time at that first rest.

I lost count of laps after the 5th so I don’t know which of the following events happened when. But with the change of diet, more cola, water, chips and sandwiches I was feeling stronger and ride more comfortably. Then the technical problems began.

Technical problems

I flatted about 2 miles from the start/finish. A big fat rusty sheet metal screw with washer all the way in my nearly new Vittoria CX tubular front tire (those things aren’t cheap!). I had to unscrew it to get it out. There was sealant in the tire so I tried inflating it but it held pressure for only a few seconds. (Now that I think of it, if I had left the screw in perhaps the sealant would have worked.) Being so close to base, it wasn’t worth putting on the spare tire so I called Eva, my beloved wife and support crew, to get my spare wheels ready and rode very slowly back to the car.

Next problem was that, as the rain started, the SRAM Open Glide cassette started to malfunction. I had noted intermittent problems with it in the past and I had though about swapping this cassette with a Shimano while preparing for the race but didn’t (rats!). I rode two laps using only the biggest 4 cogs, the others performing so bad that I was afraid the chain wouldn’t take it. After that I swapped the cassette with the Shimano from the tubular wheels I started the race on. A big delay.

Another problem was a broken spoke on the rear non-drive side. Thankfully I didn’t notice it out on the road or I might have tried to fix it out in the dark and rain. It took ages to get the tire, tube and tape off, replace the nipple and spoke and reassemble/adjust everything. The hubs and rims on these Neuvation wheels seem solid but this event confirmed my doubts about their no-name spokes and dubious-looking aluminum (i.e. not brass) nipples.

Next failure was the Planet Bike Superflash I had on the back. It’s a great performer when it works but it started to turn itself on and off at will, apparently cycling through its modes. (I had another rear light on, a Cateye, so I wasn’t in grave danger.) While I tried to fix it at the start/finish check, John, the race official, mentioned he had some of the same model available for sale. I bought one.

And my Polar CS200 computer/HRM failed owing to the rain. (It has since recovered.)

Considering the result

Here’s the most annoying thing in all this: as the rain started in the evening I was starting to ride well and really enjoy myself out on the bike. I continued to get better through night and, while I was on the bike, I was having a really good time, feeling good and soaking up all the unfamiliar sights and sounds of overnight riding in the countryside. I picked up speed relative to the first hundred miles and could probably have made my goal of 400 miles if I hadn’t had so many technical problems. But they just kept on coming.

The last lap and a half were hard going. On the previous evening I had steeled myself to do the best I could despite the problems and I paced myself to ride to my limit at 8am. I paced it about right and gave it my all on the last half lap so I was really ragged at the very end. It was a relief when John picked me up in his van and drove the last 7 or 8 miles.

So I have to address the question: why was I riding on racing equipment rather than something more conservative? That’s a very good question that I’ll maybe answer in full in another blog post. In short, it was just a fancy, a whim, though one I’ve harbored for two years, and I’ve learned my lesson: a broken bike is not a fast bike and support vehicles are a necessary part of cycle racing because racing equipment is delicate. Unsupported long distance riders, even many of the fastest in the world, e.g. Sandy Whittlesey and Melinda Lyon, both course record holders as I already mentioned, use more conservative, heavier gear.

Weather

It was very hot and humid for most of the day with a stiff southerly wind which offered little advantage going north on the way out but slowed me down to 10-15 mph coming south along the Hudson on the return. The wind let up somewhat as the rain came in the evening. There were two big downpours and I was lucky to be fixing some problem under the canopy at the start/finish for one of them. The other downpour was much more fun.

I left the sort/finish some time after midnight with light, on-and-off rain, distant lightning lighting the sky and landscape but no thunder. The storm came gradually closer. Eventually I became a bit anxious. Around mile 15, shortly before the half-way checkpoint and exactly as I got to the traffic light at 32 and Bluebird, the clouds opened and I headed for cover at the gas station there. The roof of the Stewarts Shop there provided cover under which there was a bench for me to sit and watch the storm. Perfect timing! And thanks for the accommodations, Stewart. The sky put on quite a show, one of the best I’ve every seen, with several ground lightning strikes within a quarter mile, shattering thunder and rain so heavy I’d be scared to drive a car in it, let alone cycle. As the storm moved off to the east I set off and met up with the unlucky official at the half-way checkpoint who had stood under a modest canopy through the storm. (He shared some coffee with me. Thanks! I’m sorry I can’t remember your name.)

Specific memories

The freight train passing through Gansevoort blowing it’s whistle, narrowly avoiding some critter on the road that turned out to be a skunk, intrepid frogs (it was a very wet night), slugs in sufficient number to clog my rear brake caliper, several high-performance cats sprinting across the landscape, swirling fog around dawn, the sun appearing suddenly through the fog perfectly framed straight ahead just above the horizon, watching my first shadow of the morning riding beside me along the Hudson River.

Concluding thoughts

Would I do it again? Hard to say. Part of me wants to go back and get my 400 miles, which I’m now sure I can do. Another part says there are many ways to have more fun on a bicycle. Repeating the loop is less fun than doing one long loop or out-and-back. That part of New York is very nice but not so nice I want to do it 11, 12 or 13 times.

No drafting is really antisocial. The rules say you’re not even allowed to ride side-by-side during daylight. And the 10 meter separation rule makes riding near people with about the same average speed really annoying — you keep passing one-another since people’s instantaneous speeds vary in individual ways and that makes it hard to keep a steady effort.

So while this particular cycling discipline is not my favorite, I did enjoy the evening, night and morning riding and I hanker to do better after this disappointing result.

converting php/mysql/apache app from latin-1 to utf-8

these are the notes i wrote to myself as i was preparing to port a big and old app to utf-8. i do not claim they are correct but they worked for me. most of this is not original but derived and condensed from other web pages as noted below. the purpose of this list is as a cheat sheet or to-do list. feel free to leave comments but try to be polite and don’t yell at me if i got something wrong.

wordpress insists on displaying simple single quote and simple double quote characters in random open/close forms in the following. sorry. please ignore and imagine they were all just the simple vertical versions.

useful web sites

• http://www.phpwact.org/php/i18n/utf-8
• http://www.phpwact.org/php/i18n/charsets
• http://www.phpwact.org/php/i18n/utf-8/mysql
• http://devlog.info/2008/08/24/php-and-unicode-utf-8/
• http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/08/09/scripters-utf-8-survival-guide-slides/
• http://www.nicknettleton.com/zine/php/php-utf-8-cheatsheet
• http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars.html

immediately after opening a mysql connection, either:

• SET NAMES ‘utf8′;
• or mysql_set_charset(‘utf8′, $connection_handle);

use <form accept-charset=”utf-8″> on every form

convert html, php, js, css and other text files

declare css files as utf-8: @charset “UTF-8″;

declare linked js files in html tag as utf-8

if using htmlspecialchars, use htmlspecialchars($s, ENT_COMPAT, ‘UTF-8′);

• use ENT_COMPAT mode, e.g. so that if putting attribute values with ” into html tags from a script, it won’t screw up.

add to top of every script ?

• $default_locale = setlocale(LC_ALL, ‘en_US.UTF-8′);
• ini_set(‘default_charset’, ‘UTF-8′ );

and just before page output PHPLIBtemplates.inc.php:

• header(‘Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8′);

in apache config

• AddDefaultCharset utf-8

in php.ini

• mbstring.func_overload=7
• default_charset=UTF-8
• mbstring.internal_encoding=UTF-8

mbstring.func_overload=7 covers ereg and some string functions as listed in mbstring functions and detailed below. many string functions are still not safe.

PCRE

• all pregs need the utf8 u modifier: preg_match(‘/myregex/u’, $str)
• avoid pcre i modifier
• avoid \w \W \b \B

to find the byte count of a multi-byte string when you are using mbstring.func_overload 2 and UTF-8 strings:

• mb_strlen($utf8_string, ‘latin1′);

to validate form input as utf8, http://devlog.info/2008/08/24/php-and-unicode-utf-8 says

• (strlen($str) AND !preg_match(‘/^.{1}/us’, $str)) // true means bad utf-8

but http://www.phpwact.org/php/i18n/charsets says this cannot be trusted. so use mb_check_encoding() to get a true/false answer

to quietly sanitize utf8 input strings (http://blog.liip.ch/archive/2005/01/24/how-to-get-rid-of-invalid-utf-8-characters.html):

• $s = iconv(“UTF-8″,”UTF-8//IGNORE”,$s);

which quietly deals with bad utf-8 input. it’s safe to use the result but it doesn’t require adding code to send the form back to the users for re-entry.

test strings

$strs = array(
		'Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn',
		'החמאס: רוצים להשלים את עסקת שליט במהירות האפשרית',
		'ايران لا ترى تغييرا في الموقف الأمريكي',
		'独・米で死傷者を出した銃の乱射事件',
		'國會預算處公布驚人的赤字數據後',
		'이며 세계 경제 회복에 걸림돌이 되고 있다',
		'В дагестанском лесном массиве южнее села Какашура',
		'นายประสิทธิ์ รุ่งสะอาด ปลัดเทศบาล รักษาการแทนนายกเทศมนตรี ต.ท่าทองใหม่',
		'ભારતીય ટીમનો સુવર્ણ યુગ : કિવીઝમાં પણ કમાલ',
		'ཁམས་དཀར་མཛེས་ས་ཁུལ་དུ་རྒྱ་གཞུང་ལ་ཞི་བའི་ངོ་རྒོལ་',
		'Χιόνια, βροχές και θυελλώδεις άνεμοι συνθέτουν το',
		'Հայաստանում սկսվել է դատական համակարգի ձեւավորումը',
		'რუსეთი ასევე გეგმავს სამხედრო');

to be lazy, sanitize $_GET and $_POST input with

function clean_input(&$a) {
    if ( isset($a) && is_array($a) && !empty($a) )
        foreach ($a as $k => &$v)
            clean_input($v);
    elseif ( is_string($a) && !mb_check_encoding($a, 'UTF-8'))
        $a = iconv('UTF-8', 'UTF-8//IGNORE', $a);
	return true;
}

replacement for strtr()

function mystrtr($s, $p1, $p2=false) {
  if ( is_string($p1) && is_string($p2)
        && mb_strlen($p1, 'UTF-8') == mb_strlen($p2, 'UTF-8') ) {
  $t = '';
  for ( $i=0; $i < mb_strlen($s, 'UTF-8'); $i++ )
    $t .= ($j = mb_strpos($p1, $c = substr($s, $i, 1), 0, 'UTF-8')) === false
      ? $c
      : mb_substr($p2, $j, 1, 'UTF-8');
    return $t;
  } elseif ( $p2 === false && is_array($p1) ) {
    return strtr($s, $p1);
  }
  trigger_error('mystrtr() called with bad parameters strlen(p1)=' . mb_strlen($p1, 'UTF-8')
    . ' strlen(p2)=' . mb_strlen($p2, 'UTF-8'), E_USER_WARNING);
  return $s;
}

notes on specific functions learned from own tests, links noted above and in the table

addcslashes	DO NOT USE
addslashes	DO NOT USE
chop	see rtrim
chr	only use for ascii
chunk_split	SUSPECT, probably works on byte strings
count_chars	operates on byte strings, use only on ascii or 8859
crc32	see md5
crypt	see md5
echo	presumably mb-safe?
explode	SAFE, but can use preg_split
fprintf	DO NOT USE, http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php#89020
fscanf	DO NOT USE, http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php#89020
html_entity_decode	DO NOT USE, see htmlspecialchars
htmlentities	DO NOT USE, see htmlspecialchars
htmlspecialchars	OK but use htmlspecialchars($s, ENT_COMPAT, ‘UTF-8′)
implode	probably OK?
join	same as implode
lcfirst	DO NOT USE, mb_convert_case
levenshtein	SUSPECT, testing needed
localeconv	?
ltrim	OK without a $charlist 2nd param. or use preg_replace(‘/^\s+/u’, ”, $s);
mb_strtolower	DO NOT USE, confirmed buggy! mb_convert_case($s, MB_CASE_LOWER, “UTF-8″)
mb_strtoupper	DO NOT USE, confirmed buggy! mb_convert_case($s, MB_CASE_UPPER, “UTF-8″)
md5_file	probably ok
md5	probably ok, i guess it returns the MD5 of the byte string, as one would want
metaphone	SUSPECT
money_format	?
nl2br	DO NOT USE, preg_replace(‘/\n/u’, ‘<br>’, $s);
number_format	?
ord	only use for ascii
parse_str	Use mb_parse_str
print	presumably mb-safe?
printf	RISKY. ONLY use on 7-bit ascii, http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php#89020
quotemeta	SUSPECT, preg_replace
rtrim	OK without a $charlist 2nd param. or use preg_replace(‘/\s+$/u’, ”, $s);
setlocale	ALWAYS USE
sha1_file	see md5
sha1	see md5
similar_text	SUSPECT
soundex	SUSPECT
sprintf	RISKY. ONLY use on 7-bit ascii, http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php#89020
sscanf	RISKY. ONLY use on 7-bit ascii, http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php#89020
str_getcsv	OK if local and LANG set correctly
str_ireplace	DO NOT USE, preg_replace
str_pad	DO NOT USE
str_repeat	SUSPECT
str_replace	SAFE, or use preg_replace
str_rot13	DO NOT USE except on 7-bit ascii only
str_shuffle	DO NOT USE
str_split	> mb_split or use preg_split instead
str_word_count	SUSPECT
strcasecmp	DO NOT USE
strchr	SUSPECT, use mb_strpos or mb_strrichr
strcmp	according to comments on php.net, ok if is locale set right
strcoll	according to bug reports, ok on posix systems, not windows. but set locale
strcspn	DO NOT USE
strip_tags	DO NOT USE
stripcslashes	DO NOT USE
stripos	> mb_stripos
stripslashes	DO NOT USE, preg_replace(array(‘/\x5C(?!\x5C)/u’, ‘/\x5C\x5C/u’), array(”,’\\’), $s)
stristr	> mb_stristr
strlen	> mb_strlen, OK unless you need byte length, e.g. to save a file, then use mb_strlen($s, ‘latin1′);
strnatcasecmp	SUSPECT
strnatcmp	SUSPECT
strncasecmp	SUSPECT
strncmp	SUSPECT
strpbrk	SUSPECT, use preg
strpos	> mb_strpos
strrchr	SUSPECT, use
strrev	DO NOT USE
strripos	> mb_strripos
strrpos	> mb_strpos
strspn	DO NOT USE, use preg_match
strstr	> mb_strstr
strtok	DO NOT USE
strtolower	DO NOT USE. mb_strtoupper fails on some cases when mb_convert_case($str, MB_CASE_UPPER, “UTF-8″) does not
strtoupper	DO NOT USE. mb_strtolower fails on some cases when mb_convert_case($str, MB_CASE_LOWER, “UTF-8″) does not
strtr	DO NOT USE with 3-params. 2-param version ok with valid utf-8.
substr_compare	DO NOT USE
substr_count	> mb_substr_count, or preg_match_all?
substr_replace	DO NOT USE
substr	> mb_substr, see also mb_strcut & mb_strimwidth
trim	OK without a $charlist 2nd param. or preg_replace(‘/(^\s+)|(\s+$)/’, ”, $s);
ucfirst	DO NOT USE
ucwords	DO NOT USE, mb_convert_case($str, MB_CASE_TITLE, “UTF-8″)
vfprintf	DO NOT USE, http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php#89020
vprintf	DO NOT USE, http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php#89020
vsprintf	DO NOT USE, http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php#89020
wordwrap	SUSPECT
urlencode	OK
rawurlencode	OK
urldecode	SUSPECT
rawurldecode	SUSPECT
utf8_encode	only use on ascii or 8859-1
utf8_decode	?

Neophyte errors at Quabbin Reservoir Road Race

i was in the 4/5 35+ race. the pace was pretty strong and i’m glad there were downhill stretches between the ups. it’s 63 miles with very little flat. nice course with good quality surfaces and safe wide downhills.

by 25 miles in there were only about a dozen riders left in the group i was in. having kept close the the front, i was under impression it was the lead group. at 35 miles i got a flat and pulled over to wait for the support vehicle. it never came.

eventually the support for the 4/5 open race drove by without acknowledging me. later the women came by and a vehicle stopped. an official said she had no support with her but took my number and said the wheel truck is only a minute behind. it too blew past me.

it seems that the error i made was to misconstrue the organizers’ promise of support, as stated in the flyer and then explained to us before the start of the race. i spoke to an official after the race and he explained that the support vehicle only supports the race leaders and vehicles aren’t supposed to help riders in other races.

so there must have been a break ahead of us that i was unaware of. though i rode near the front (i thought) until i flatted i didn’t see them go and i didn’t see the support vehicle pass. i guess it must have been a small number of riders in the lead group.

thus in a relentlessly hilly race like quabbin, in which the field necessarily gets strung out, it seems that when they say that support is provided, this has to be construed as meaning that no support is provided to 95% of the riders. unless confident of being in the money, you must assume that you’re on your own.

i wish i had known that in advance.

anyway, i chased the women’s support truck for 8 miles on a flat without catching it. i stopped to talk to the policeman at the turn in hardwick and asked if there was a way to contact the support crews. he said he had no idea and bemoaned that he had been completely unprepared, that nothing had been explained to him.

a back-marker from the 4/5 open race came past then and offered me co2. i remembered that i had sealant in my tires so i accepted and it worked. the tire stayed inflated to the finish. i’m very grateful for that. i rode on my own except for about the last 8 miles with one of women from the group i passed.

my other error was: forgetting to get the 3-hour bottle of perpetuem out of the cooler box before going to the start line. with spending half an hour waiting for imagined support i was out of water with more than an hour of hot riding to go and very thirsty. 3 bottles was not enough. i was getting bonkers towards the end. i have only myself to blame for that dumb error.

astonishingly, the results put me 60th out of 70 starters and 67 finishers, 45 minutes behind the winner. i though my ride was bad enough; i’d love to hear the stories of the 6 behind me.

Commenting Philip Dawdy’s comments on bipolar II

Regular readers of Philip Dawdy’s excellent Furious Seasons web site will be familiar with his opinion of the DSM’s bipolar II diagnosis. In keeping with his idea of “a free market of ideas in the mental health world” I would like to contribute my opinions on this topic.

First, let me be clear: I admire Phillip’s work on Furious Seasons, have supported his fundraisers, and hope he keeps at it.

The opinion that causes some controversy is succinctly put in his interview with Christopher Lane in Psychology Today.

Here’s the quote in full:

I may be the only writer in America who thinks BP2 is controversial and I can hardly think of any doctors who do. For me, it’s a questionable classification and something of a cop-out by the DSM writers for a couple of reasons: One, BP2 isn’t bipolar disorder, properly understood. There’s no mania, there’s no hospitalization for mania, and there’s no one running naked down the street. The most prominent features of BP2 are depression (and that covers the vast majority of a person’s time who is diagnosed with BP2) and bursts of energy, broadly understood. To me, that sounds a whole lot more like depression and agitation than it does manic-depression.

Two, the minute someone gets hit with a bipolar disorder diagnosis of any subtype, then they are faced with a profoundly bad set of social assumptions; they get stigmatized by friends and family; and they lose their jobs. I know of multiple cases along these lines, including one of a sheriff’s deputy in King County, Washington who was fired from her job as soon as the brass learned she had BP2, even though she had a stellar track record as a cop and had done nothing wrong on the job. That hardly seems fair when we’re talking about a disorder that doesn’t involve hallucinations or psychosis and has none of the off-the-charts impulsivity of true manic-depression. While it’s nice of researchers and mental-health advocates to claim that we’ve got to end this kind of stigma, in the real world that would take generations and by then people with BP2 today will have reached the ends of their natural lives.


Why BP2 wasn’t called something else is beyond me, but the diagnosis has sure caused a lot of unfair social damage.

I have a BP2 diagnosis, the comical history of which you can read here, and Phillip’s description in the first paragraph doesn’t characterize my experience at all well. The reason I have a BP2 dx rather than BP is that I haven’t suffered “marked functional impairment” in any of my “hypomanic episodes”. If I had then DSM 4’s criteria would have me as BP.

Hospitalization is not a required criterion for diagnosis of mania or BP. Nor is running naked down the street. What I experienced included delusions (e.g. I once began planning to become Prime Minister), paranoia, demented spending (thankfully I had no lines of credit when the behavior was worst when I was younger or it would have been ruinous), crazy creativity with loss of my self-critical faculty, no sleep, ludicrous self-esteem and embarrassing incidents the memory of which make me wince decades hence. This is a bit more than a “burst of energy, broadly understood”. And there is suspicion of genetic evidence: my father’s odd behavior and suicide smacks of manic depression. I rather agree with my shrink that the criteria of mania and BP are met rather closely except that, because I never lost a job, got kicked out of school, got arrested or was hospitalized, it lacks “marked functional impairment”. In other words, I got away with it. Apparently that makes it BP2.

Nor is this behavior agitated depression. I have a lot of experience with that and it is entirely different. In agitated depression my mood is dysphoric, pessimistic and cynical but I can’t sleep, relax or let up with the negativity whereas in hypomania I am euphoric, self-confident, optimistic and at one with the world. There’s no way to confuse these states, in my experience.

On Philip’s second point, I don’t really disagree but the statement sounds a little sweeping. I’m sure some people have suffered negative and unfair social consequences but I’m not aware of any affecting me, at least not so far and certainly not within the first minute of diagnosis.

Whether or not a different name for this disorder would, on the whole, have been better for patients, I really don’t know. Would the social consequences for something called, say, Major Depression with Hypomania (with, as most new psychiatric disorders have, a three letter abbreviation, say MDH) be any better? I don’t find that very convincing but I honestly don’t know.

Moreover, I imagine there may be benefit to patients from the BP2 name. It seems clear from the reading I’ve done that it’s important to treat BP2 in basically the same way as bipolar, especially in regard to the dangers of antidepressants. I imagine that many (most?) physicians are aware of these concerns in bipolar. My own GP refused to prescribe an antidepressant because of his suspicion of bipolar. He sent me to a psychiatrist who refused to prescribe an antidepressant without first a robust mood stabilizer. It took two years to get that right before I was given the antidepressant. According to, for example, Husseini Manji, this is the safest approach. (He even prefers in cases of MDD that are familial.)

If BP2 had instead a name that failed to make the association with bipolar, I wonder if some physicians, especially those who aren’t psychiatrists, might be less likely to recognize these risks. Given that most BP2 patients present with depression, the association with the bipolar word may spare them some risk.

Bontrager inForm RXL saddle review

Bontrager inForm RXL saddle review

Summary: I tried out a Bontrager inForm RXL saddle for two weeks and took it on two 70+ mile rides. It was ok on short rides but after about 40 miles it started to hurt. By the end of the two long rides I was hurt so bad I needed a couple of days to recover. The saddle also has a fairly slippery cover that I also found undesirable. I prefer a saddle that presents more resistance to lateral forces so I don’t slide around unexpectedly.

Background and requirements: I am 44 years old, male, with 40+ years cycling experience. I ride long distance events and recently started road racing. On my long distance comfort bike I usually ride a Brooks B17. It is generally comfy but puts too much pressure on the perineum when riding low on the drop or on aero bars. I can start to feel my family assets go numb after only about 100 miles on a B17. That’s ok if I’m in no hurry because I can sit up more but I’m planning on riding the Saratoga 24-hour time trial this July and would like to do 400 miles if I can. A B17 isn’t going to work for that. I need a saddle that will be comfortable for 24 hours with a lot of that spent low on the drops or aero bars.

My racing bike has a Specialized Toupé saddle that is pretty good but also not comfortable enough for long rides. After about 80 miles the tissue under my public arch (the bone cyclists sit on) gets sore. So I’m looking to solve that problem too.

I was interested in the Bontrager inForm because of their claim to have put some formal scientific study into the physiology and biomechanics relating to saddle design. I was also attracted by their 90-day trial period. I was measured and chose the RXL medium width. It was good as far as reducing pressure on the perineum was concerned. The problem, like the Toupé, was with the tissue under the public arch. I became so sore after about 40 miles on both the longer rides that I found myself standing far too often just to relieve the pressure. The pain was present for a couple of days after both rides. It is a wonder that anyone could achieve such an uncomfortable saddle design. I returned it.

So I’m still looking for the right saddle. Fizik Airone has many followers, perhaps the Tri version. And I was recommended Sella Italia Flite Gel Flow and SLC Gel Flow. Any other ideas? Trial and error can get expensive in this game.

Recovering from lithium

In late August 2008 I consulted my GP about the Lithium, frequent urination, dehydration and associated symptoms. He knew a lot about lithium-related diabetes insipidus (which means watery pee) and has several patients on lithium with the side effect.

He considered my theory that lithium was responsible for loss of athletic performance plausible given that the symptoms began when I started taking the drug and that dehydration can produce these symptoms. His view was that putting up with these urinary problems as an active 44 year old man was not a good choice. For an old person who mostly sits at home, perhaps the decision would be different but for a person with decades of active life ahead it’s not a good way to live.

I took a few other factors into consideration. The effects of lithium on the kidneys may get worse with duration of treatment. The effects may be only partially reversible or not at all with the chances of recovery worsening with treatment duration. Moreover, cycling is beneficial to my mental health: the flow, the accomplishments, the fun. And it’s the closest thing to meditation that I’ve experienced – it changes my mental state.

My GP advised that I try another mood stabilizer but warned me not to stop the lithium without consulting with my shrink.

So I stopped taking lithium immediately without consulting my shrink. I’m like that sometimes. It was a mistake. I don’t recommend it. I became really depressed very quickly and ended up back at my shrink in a couple of weeks with my tail between my legs.

She offered either valproate or trilptal. Valproate appears to be more effective but has worse side effects. Trileptal doesn’t look all that impressive from the trials data but it doesn’t have the threat of serious weight gain. I chose Trileptal.

At low dose made me irritable, anxious, jumpy, easily angered and sometimes confused. So we decided to try a higher dose which made these side effects even worse and made thinking quite hard at times. Then we switched to valproate.

The trileptal side effects went away and I started to feel myself again. Depressed. Mild to moderate depression was my baseline condition by now. It had been like that for about three years. But I wanted to give it time to see if the valproate was working as a mood stabilizer before adding an antidepressant. What’s happened mood-wise since then is a story for another blog entry.

But the main point for this story is that about 6 weeks after quitting lithium, I noticed that my cycling performance was improving. Then it improved quickly over the next two or three weeks, after which I had a couple of rides that confirmed that I was back on form. I was pretty much back to my former condition. Since I’d never quit training, my legs and cardio system were still strong and it seems that all I needed was for my kidneys to recover so I could get my hydration back to normal.

That was back in October and was very encouraging. I’ve kept the training up over the winter and I’m planning to start racing in a couple of weeks and have plans to ride the Saratoga 24-hour time trial in July.

D2R2 really delivers

• Photo gallery below, after my comments

I first heard about D2R2 while riding a brevet in 2006. I think it was the BBS 400 km. I was with two riders who spoke of it. I think they were Ted Lapinski and Russ Loomis. They talked about the ardors and cruelty of the ride, the relentlessly steep rough roads, the pain and suffering, the exorbitant length and breadth of the thing, the sadism and masochism, and the DNF rate. I listened while they went on. And on. And I listened on. Eventually I had some sort of a brain malfunction, perhaps an overload of the brag detection centers, and I blurted out, “So why would anyone do this other than to prove how much pain and hardship he can endure? Is that the whole point of it?” I think it was something like that.

Ted, I think it was, corrected me. I had it all wrong. It’s a beautiful ride, one of the nicest in the region, one of the nicest he’s done. The views – splendid; the roads – quiet; the terrain – varied; the sights – all overwhelmingly picturesque. I immediately regretted my outburst and made apologetic sounds (uh huh, mm mmm, right, yeah) as though I understood. Since then I heard a lot more riders talk about D2R2, usually about its vicious brutality.

I didn’t get to ride D2R2 in 2006 or 7 but this year, 8, I did. Clearly I was going to ride the 100 km variant. I wasn’t going to spoil what sounds like a very enjoyable ride by choosing the 170 km death march. I know how my mind works: concern about finishing would cause me to focus on the difficulties and finishing and would distract me from enjoying the ride. I don’t need to drive a gasoline-fueled motor car four and a half hours round trip  from Boston for that. Besides, the nine o’clock start for the 100 km is quite civilized.

So what can I tell you about the ride besides the already well known? I used a road bike with 35 mm cyclocross tires, standard Shimano triple (30t granny) and 12-27 cassette. It was fine. I used the 30/27 ratio a lot. I put SPD pedals on for this ride but I’d probably have been alright with KEO too. I unclipped on the climbs only twice. Once, when a stick got caught in my chain-set and the chain dropped off inwards. The other time, close to the first climb, was more educational.

There was a tight group at the front on the flat roads before the first climb. They made me nervous. It was like I feel on CRW centauries – too many of the riders (a few is enough) in the front group looked more eager stay attached than skilled. There were a lot of skinny tires in that group. I let a gap develop without going so slow that I got swamped by those behind me. In short, I wanted some space. But the gap wasn’t enough. On the first climb, which, in the D2R2 genre, is steep and rough, the lead group got off and walked. It only takes a few riders to put a foot down (and discover, teetering, that they can’t get stated again) to block the road. I slowed down as much as I could and looked for a gap to get through. One opened and I went for it, only for another cyclist to ride into it ahead of me stop, right there, to get off and walk. Sigh.

After that I spent way too much of my attention on other riders rather than on enjoying where I was and what I was doing. Things only settled down in terms of overcrowding after the first water stop.

Lesson learned: give the leaders a few minutes head start. Or ride the route some other day.

D2R2 is a swell ride. Really lovely. It’s picturesque to the point of absurdity in places: vistas seemingly composed for the photo shoots of exaggeratedly pastoral picture postcards and glossy Vermont tourist calendars; the sort of views that flat-landers might sprinkle croissant crumbs over in the Sunday Boston Globe while reading the tips on where and when to find the best leaf-peeping.

Also remarkable is how the route avoids roads with much traffic. This was impressive. We touched Route 2 briefly and that was about it. But beware: these dirt roads are not entirely devoid of traffic and some of the locals are fast. Don’t assume and don’t, as I witnessed a couple of times, take a blind bend riding fast downhill on the left.

Anyway, I loved it. Immensely. D2R2 really delivers. I want to do it again soon when leaves are turning.

I recommend it to anyone who’s ok with steep climbs and rough dirt roads and who likes overlooks with old-timey country goodness. Don’t let the D2R2 war stories put you off – it’s not that hard. Nor do I think that’s what this ride is about. Certainly the 100 km route isn’t. It’s relatively hilly by Massachusetts standards in that there is proportionately less flat and gentle riding than is typical. But it’s far from mountainous and none of the climbs are long.

 

 

Wayne’s 2008 Summer Party Photos

A selection of the photos that were on the CF card in my camera after the party July 5th 2008. Since lots of people used the camera and I have no idea who took what, I take responsibility for none of them!

 

Essex County Pancake Ride

On July 5th 2008, 5 cyclists including myself joined Melinda Lyon on a very lovely bike ride of her design. It was 83 miles with about 20 of them on unpaved surfaces ranging from decent dirt roads to rivers deeper than my knees and stuff I probably wouldn’t be able to do even on my mountain bike.

It was one of the most enjoyable bike rides I’ve done. The route took in the best and the variety of beauty available in that corner of Massachusetts. The roads ranged from nice for cycling to top-notch. The off-road stuff was entirely away from traffic and, it seemed, hardly used (why not?). Among us, only Ted had a mountain bike, the rest on road bikes with wide knobby tires. Young John made it through the tricky bits on his Surly LHT, a touring bike with absurdly long wheelbase, much better than the rest of us. We took the whole thing at a gentle pace that caused no stress. I had a really swell time. I hope Melinda runs it again in the fall.

The ride passed by the famous Clam Box in Ipswitch. Here’s a high-res of the parking-lot scene: click the thumbnail.

 

Pitiless, insatiable, man-eating monsters

A recent conversation with my friend Ken touched on the astonishing drama that fills the lives of many of the students at the community college at which he works and how starkly this contrasts the lives of his own milieu. I described my view of the opposite regime: the middle-class suburb where the safe standardized environments of home, school, church and neighborhood enforce strict bounds on thought and behavior and indoctrinate their own narrow values and aspirations to produce a homogenized, neutered humanity. Later the same day I happened to read the following passage in Thomas Bernhard’s memoir that addresses the same issue but in Bernhard’s dazzling prose.

Background to the excerpt: Thomas Bernhard, was a sensitive child and had a mostly very unhappy childhood which spanned WW2. His family was impoverished but essentially middle-class in values, behavior and ambition. Shortly after the war, living in Salzburg, Bernhard was attending grammar school, which he hated, when one day while walking to school he took the opposite turn on the Reichenhaller Strasse from the direction to the school and instead visited a labor exchange where he got a position as apprentice at a grocery store in the blighted Scherzhauserfeld Project.

The excerpt is from Gathering Evidence by Thomas Bernhard, chapter 3: “The Cellar: an Escape” pp192-194 in the David McLintock translation published by Vintage in 2003.

What I was seeking was something different, something I had not known before, something that might be stimulating and exciting, and I found it in the Scherzhauserfeld Project. I did not go there out of any feeling of pity: I have always detested pity, and especially self-pity. I did nor permit myself to feel pity; my only motive was the will to survive. Having come so close co putting an end to my life, for every possible reason, I had the idea of breaking away from the path I had taken for many years because I was too stupid and too unimaginative to choose another, and because I had been set upon this path by those who brought me up to fulfill the dreary ambitions they entertained on my behalf. I did an about-turn and ran back along the Reichenhaller Strasse. At first I simply ran back, without knowing where I was heading. From this moment on it’s got to be something different, I thought—in my excitement this was the only thought in my head—something that is the very opposite of what I have done up to now. And the labour exchange in the Gaswerkgasse was exactly in the opposite direction. Under no circumstances would I have turned again and gone in any other direction. The farthest point in the opposite direction was the Scherzhauserfeld Project, and it was on this farthest point that I set my sights. The Scherzhauserfeld Project was the farthest point in every respect, not just geographically. There was nothing there to remind me even remotely of the city and of everything in the city that had tormented me for years and driven me to despair, to thinking of scarcely anything but suicide. Here there was no mathematics master, no Latin master, no Greek master, and no despotic headmaster to make me catch my breath whenever he appeared. Here there was no deadly institution. Here one did not continually have to keep oneself under control, keep one’s head down, dissimulate and lie in order to survive. Here I was not constantly exposed to the disapproving looks I had found so deadly. Here no outrageous and inhuman demands were made on me. Here I was not turned into learning and thinking machine. Here I could be myself. And all the others could be themselves. Here people were not constantly being pressed into an artificial mould as they were in the city, in a manner that daily grew more sophisticated. They were left in peace, and from the very first moment I set foot on the Scherzhauserfeld Project I too was left in peace. One could not only think one’s own thoughts: and one could express them, when and how one liked and as loudly as one liked. One was not in constant danger of being attacked for being headstrong. One’s personality was suddenly no longer suppressed and crushed by the rules of the bourgeois social apparatus, an apparatus designed to destroy human beings. In towns where stupidity reaches such alarming proportions as it does in Salzburg, human beings are constantly tweaked and shaken, constantly hammered and filed into shape, and they go on being hammered and filed into shape until there is nothing left of the original human being but a revolting, tasteless artifact. In towns of medium size (I will say nothing of small towns, where everything is grotesque) every effort is directed toward turning human beings into artifacts. Everything in these towns is opposed to human nature; even the young are nothing more than artifacts from A to Z. The human species today can preserve itself only in the unadulterated country or in the unadulterated big city—only in the unadulterated country, which still exists, or in the unadulterated big city, which also exists. In such conditions one still finds natural human beings—beyond the Hausruck or in London, for instance, and as far as Europe is concerned one probably finds them nowhere else. For in Europe today London is the only genuine big city; admittedly it is nor on the continent, but it is in Europe all the same; and beyond the Hausruck I can still find the unadulterated country. Everywhere else in Europe one finds only artificial human beings, people whom the schools have turned into artifacts. Whoever we meet in the rest of Europe turns out to be an artificial human being, a tasteless replica of the real thing. The number of such products runs into millions and—who knows?—will perhaps shortly run into billions; and all their movements are controlled by various educational systems, which are in reality pitiless, insatiable, man-eating monsters. All the time our ears are assailed, if we are still capable of using them, by the sickening din of mass-produced marionettes with not a single natural human being among them. It is possible that in the Scherzhauserfeld Project I experienced the Hausruck or London effect, but I was not conscious of this at the time. I had obeyed my instinct and gone in the opposite direction.