Living with MCL

It all started last Tuesday night, racing at Eldorado Park.  It was fast, and while I stayed in till the finish, there were a number of times I almost quit.

Then on Wednesday, I went for my usual morning ride to the coffee shop. That’s not normally a very fast or hard ride, although it can be at times, so I wasn’t feeling too bad, but I really think it was the ride to Glendora Mountain Road on Friday, that has totally wiped me out.

So wiped out, that on the Saturday ride (aka the Hammer Zone), I got dropped almost before we started. I was totally demoralized, and ended up going home to mope and do nothing the rest of the day, and deciding not to ride Sunday and Monday to try and recoup my energy.

I’m sure everyone will agree that was a good decision (you have to listen to your body, everyone always tells me), but unless I have something else to do, if I don’t ride, I feel like I’ve missed out on something, and things just seem to go down hill from there.

Then of course I had to go to work today, which presents additional challenges, some welcome, but a few not so much.

I don’t know, maybe I’ve been riding too much lately (last month I put on 965 miles, and so far this month I’m already approaching 700 miles, and it’s only the 22nd), but whatever it is, I better get over it soon, because right now I’m just not feeling much like doing anything.

Even getting up to head home from work, seems like a chore, and I’m sure not motivated to race Eldo tonight, but I may just have to force myself.

Well almost anywaze.

Just thought I would give everyone an update on the limited success I’ve had in solving the problem with the latest version of WordPress.

Miraculously I’ve fixed the problem with the permalink structure, so now everyone using the various search engines will be able to benefit from my vast wealth of knowledge on lymphoma [and many other things], without encountering a ’404 error’ messages when linking to my site.

The only problem is, the Category and Explore functions on my site no longer work.

Fortunately the archive section still works, and you can search the website, so until the WordPress gurus come out with v2.6.1, addressing the problem, I’ll just have to deal with that.

I’m done fretting over the whole matter.

IMPORTANT UPDATE 5:21 PM PDST – All is well, the problem seems to be fixed.  Just eliminating one permalink structure attribute seemingly has fixed the problem.  All links appear to work for now.

WHEW!!! I feel a lot better now.

If anyone out there has tried to comment on my blog lately, you might have discovered you can’t.

It seems that in the process of upgrading to the latest version of WordPress (v2.6), my custom permalink structure no longer works, and you have received a ’404 error’.

Well, I have managed to fix that problem, so you can comment now should you desire, but until WordPress can fix the bug, many of the links I have embedded in my posts won’t work. I could go back and correct all the links in the 381 posts I’ve written in the past 3 years, but I’m not sure that would be worth it.

And not only that, I just realized people searching for information on lymphoma etc. on Google, Yahoo, or whatever won’t get the benefit of my wealth of knowledge, until those search engines can update the links, if they ever will.

Oh well, that’s what I get for trying to be fancy. Next time I’ll keep it simple [stupid], and I won’t upgrade until I’m sure all the bugs have been worked out, especially when it wasn’t broke in the first place.

Well, at least not for a long while.

I typically pass on offers to ride Glendora Mountain Road (GMR) on my bike. I decline, because I know what a tough ride it is, but mostly I hate driving the 45 minutes minimum to get to the start.  Plus it’s either too hot or too cold, and if you know me, that’s usually enough of a reason.

But for some reason, today I agreed to do GMR with an old bike riding buddy, who also is a lymphoma survivor. Even under those circumstances I normally have declined, but since it’s been over 4 years since my last trek up the mountain to Mt Baldy, I decided this would be a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

Well if nothing else, today certainly reminded me why I’ve avoided this ride for the past 4 years.

It’s a tough ride, made even tougher by the fact it was particularly warm today, 80°F at 9:45 AM when we hit the turn around point at Mt Baldy Village.  (It was 88°F when we got back to the car 2 hours later.) Plus there was an unexpected 3.5 mile climb, in the middle of what I remembered as a section of rolling hills, after the initial 9 mile 2800 feet of climbing, which just about did me in.

Total, the ride was 51 miles, with 5400 feet of climbing, and lasted 4.5 hours [with rest stops]. It was just fortunate the return trip was a lot easier than the ride out, otherwise I don’t think I would have been able to make it back.

But, I persevered and managed to make it back with little trouble. I’ll just think long and hard before deciding to that ride again, regardless of who’s doing the asking.