Four years in and I am still living with No Evidence of Disease (NED) and I was right, from the moment I received my head & neck cancer diagnosis, I knew cancer was going to change my life.
I was convinced that cancer would make me tougher and maybe it did.
I was convinced that if I made it through my surgery and treatments that I would try to make a difference in others’ lives. Hopefully I have.
I was convinced that I was going to use my cancer journey to change myself and write a different script for the second half of my life. (I was fifty at the time and am shooting for fifty more years.) I’m still working on this and suspect I will be for some time.
What I didn’t suspect was that I would get the opportunity to engage with so many new and incredible people. Had I not gotten cancer I may never have crossed paths with these individuals. From health care providers to strangers donating to my fund raisers, they’ve all affected me in so many positive ways.
As the cycling season winds down, the trees begin to offer up their riots of color and as I roll across the trails on my bike with fallen foliage crunching under my tires, I try to reconnect with why I am here and often come back to it being about the people.
The rest of this post is to share with you a bit more about one of those incredible people, Kam Krull aka Kam-Chow.
Kam’s dad, Brian, has been riding for Team First Descents and raising money for young adults battling cancer for five years so you can imagine this whole fund raising thing took on a new meaning when Kam was diagnosed with cancer.
At this point I think it’s best to hear from Kam herself and the incredible journey she took to get to Leadville this year. So finish up this blog by taking a gander at the video below.
And even though the fund raising is done for this year’s Leadville 100 MTB for Frist Descents, keep an eye out for next year ’cause my hope is that I get to line up again not just with Brain but Kam, too.
Coloradans love nothing better than a fundraiser that has beer and a chance to win stuff. In this case bike stuff on Wednesday April 3rd at The Golden Mill from 5pm – 9pm. The details are below and I hope to see ya there.
Who hasn’t made one and then watch it go by the wayside in just a couple of days?
A google search of how to hold yourself accountable will get you everything from articles from Forbes magazine to a whole slew of apps to help hold yourself accountable.
All the ideas and apps have a ton of value as long as you hold yourself accountable and use and apply them.
Do they work? You bet but the key is to find the ones that works for you.
For me and my goal of completing my second Leadville 100 MTB and earning another belt buckle it starts with sitting down and writing out a training plan that takes me from January to the day of the race on August 12th.
Can’t wait to get back to the Leadville 100
Around that plan I build out the rest of my life from getting up at 430am to ride and work out before work, to going to bed early, eating healthy, drinking less beer (that’s the real tough one) and making sure I still have time to hang with family and friends.
Last year I also added in the plan of creating video content around my experiences as I trained for the Leadville 100. Last year started well but the deeper I got into the training the less time and energy I had for video.
So this year I am going to try and do a better job of holding myself accountable when it comes to creating video content. Check out the video below as I kickoff the 2023 season.
No big secret, I love riding bikes. If the title of my blog, Bikes Kill Cancer, didn’t give it away then consider yourself in the know now.
I love riding bikes so much I’ll even ride when the temps are in the negatives.
Below you will find a link to my latest YouTube video on my channel. Yep, you guessed it. It’s also called Bikes Kill Cancer. Anyone sensing a theme here.
Anyway, I realized quite quickly that I don’t have much to add to the conversation for people who’ve been riding bikes for a long time. I do feel that if you are new or only been riding bikes for a short while that I may have something to offer.
So this video is for all those folks who discovered the joy of riding bikes during the pandemic and maybe need a little motivation or nudge to take their cycling to the next level. That next level is different for each of us but I’m willing to bet that you can find at least one thing in this list that will keep the stoke going in 2023.
Check it out and I hope you like it. If you do give it a thumbs up and a follow.
I thought finishing the Leadville 100 MTB race was cool. Even cooler is getting asked to blog about it for the organization that helped me get into then event to begin with.
Click the link below and head on over to First Descents web page to read my blog and learn a little bit more about an incredible organization.
Back story, I love riding bikes. I’ve done a lot of cool shit on bikes, like bike packing through the Rockies, pedaling through Tuscany and I’ve been to the Cyclocross World Championships. Ok, I didn’t actually race or even ride my bike at the World Championships, but I did drink a lot of beer while watching a bunch of really fast Europeans and a couple of Americans ride their bikes.
Nope, not riding this bike for the Leadville 100
Every cyclist has a bucket full of dream rides and races they want to do and I would be willing to bet that the Leadville 100 is on many of their lists.
The only problem is that the race is so popular you either have to qualify by doing certain qualifier races or taking your chances with the lottery. There is also the option to apply to ride on a fundraising team. That’s the option I went with this year and was fortunate enough be chosen to ride for First Descents.
Feel free to support First Descents by clicking here to donate and following along on my YouTube channel Bikes Kill Cancer as I put in a lot of miles on the mountain bike in the months to come.
Holy Crap I am excited.
Nope, this is not Leadville. Just a picture I took while out training the other day.
A little more than a year after finishing my last (I hope) radiation treatment for oropharyngeal cancer I rode a century on my bike yesterday, but this post is not about me celebrating some incredible comeback from the throes of cancers. I’ve actually rode my bike (for my health and sanity) through out my treatments and have ridden several centuries since then including 108 miles with over 10,000 feet of climbing to the top of Mount Evans and back to my home in Denver and along the way raised over $5000 for the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Humble brag complete now lets get on to the real champion of this post.
All smiles, just 99 more miles to go.
This post is to celebrate my better half having completed her first 100 mile ride. This is her second attempt. A few years ago as we were getting ready for a cycling trip to Italy, she was thwarted at mile 88 by an overzealous course marshal who wouldn’t let her continue due to hail, lightening and the threat of tornados. Sheesh… she’s way tougher than all three of those combined.
Yesterday, my hear swelled with pride as I watched her role across the finish line with a ride time of eight hours on the nose.
Finishing strong!
Over the last years I have watched her struggle with her own health issues while still standing by me during my own. This year only layered on more adversity as she has dealt with both a foot and a knee injuries yet she still pushed on with her training. Maybe she wasn’t able to always complete the physical aspect but that only made her tougher mentally.
That extra bit of toughness came into play on Sunday as the day got longer and hotter, she didn’t quit. As the thunderstorms and hail rolled in again, she slipped passed the course marshal and kept on riding through the rain and hail. Lesson learned, don’t let safety and common sense get in your way.
With the sweep vehicles just minutes behind her, she rolled across the finish line. I’ve completed a lot of centuries in my life but I never felt the pride in myself like I felt at that moment for my wife and her grit and determination.
A couple of years ago, a friend of ours painted a custom hat for her with a large comic book like “BAM!” across the front and no doubt “Bad Ash Middleton” lived up to her name yesterday.
Warning: As the title suggests, this post is about farting. If you don’t find farting funny then you probably won’t enjoy this post.
“Proper preparation prevents poor performance.”
James Baker
“The race is won by the rider who can suffer the most.”
Eddy Merckx
“Proper preparation can be offset by a bad case of GI tract bloat. A bad case of bloating can be cured by a good bout of farts.”
Jay Middleton
If we started with Eddy Merckx’s quote you would probably be led to believe that this post is about how I suffered on the bike to take an amazing victory at the Pony Xpress 165 in Trinidad, CO. Sadly, this is not the case. This is a post about a digestive tract gone haywire and how it feels to pedal a bike for sixty plus miles with what feels like an entire Thanksgiving dinner resting in your gut.
The Pony Xpress 165 (that’s kilometers, not miles) is a gravel road bike race that takes place in the shadows of the Spanish Peaks in southern Colorado. For the most part the gravel is smooth and fast. it’s hilly but not overly steep, and the scenery is typical: drop dead gorgeous Colorado with its blue skies, sweeping vistas and big mountains.
Here’s a brief overview for those readers who aren’t familiar with gravel riding or racing: If you can imagine a road bike that, upon initial inspection, looks like the ones seen at a bike race like the Tour de France. If you look closer, though, you’ll notice that the bike has wider tires with small knobs, much like what you would see on a mountain bike, but smaller. There are other more nuanced differences with the bikes, as well. They include gear ratios and frame geometry. This isn’t some geeky bike blog so we aren’t going to go down that rabbit hole. I guess the easiest way to explain gravel bikes is that they look kind of like road bikes but they are made for riding on… well, gravel and dirt.
When did the bloat start? Was it the Jersey Mike’s veggie sub on the way to Trinidad? The chocolate chip cookies Gary and I devoured after the sub stop? Was it my 2nd COVID shot I’d gotten just four days before?
Actually, I think it was the incredible ravioli I’d had for dinner that night. Generally, good pasta (I mean, one hundred years of family tradition passed down from generation to generation kind of good!) is no problem for my digestive track. That pasta and its sauce (especially the sauce) were so delicious that I sat on the curb and gorged myself. I must have made quite the spectacle, as families stopped to gawk and take videos of my voracious feeding.
And then, just as I finished the last of it, I regretted everything I’d just done. A sudden burp erupted from my mouth. It was quickly followed by a rush of acid reflux up the back of my throat. Time had brought about changes in my body that I was not at all used to. I used to think puberty was the last stop on the Big Body Morph. Nope. Aging, it turns out, is puberty in reverse.
I was full and uncomfortable as hell. I remained that way for hours.
As the night sky wrapped the state park in a cool Colorado evening, I thought about farting. I wanted to fart so, so bad but I couldn’t do it! My stomach was tight and swollen. My only relief was the occasional pasta sauce-flavored burp.
Had I not been so bloated I could have thoroughly enjoyed this sunset.
In the morning I had some coffee. It was effective in that it got my “stomach gurgles” rumbling but, in the end, it failed to deliver. I felt dejected and hopeless as each trip I took to the pit toilet proved fruitless.
My normal pre-race meal of cold-soaked oatmeal may as well have been a bowl of wet heavy cement. Each bite dropped into my gut with an audible plop, where it would surely sit for the remainder of the day.
I packed some toilet paper and wet wipes into the bag on my bike. I guess I was hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.
As I reached the second check stop, I debated whether or not to continue. There were 45 miles left. To drop out would mean that I’d have to wait forever at the aid station for someone (and there really wasn’t anyone available anyway) to come get me OR I could reverse my course and head back to the start. Forty-five miles back or fifty-five miles forward. Might as well go for the finish, I figured.
Despite my swollen belly I had a strong start. My energy waned quickly, though. I knew that it was because all that food and hydration were just sitting there in my gut, heavy and unmoving. My gut was backed up like a line of Porta-Potties at a barbecue festival.
I pedaled away from the aid station, feeling like I’d just finished my third helping of Thanksgiving dinner. Only there was no easy chair to sit back into while I loosened my belt. My only salvation would be a series of good, hardy farts.
The secret to farting on the bikes is not to push too hard. Should anyone force the issue, perching low on a narrow saddle and bumping along a dirt road in tight cycling shorts is a disaster just waiting to happen. The last thing I wanted to do was stand on the side of the road, deep in the woods and wash my shorts out in a mountain stream.
From miles forty-five to sixty, I divided my energy between pushing down on the pedals and praying for relief. Absolutely nothing budged, though. I continued to sip on water and consume energy gels. Thinking that once the dam did finally break my body would quickly make good use of the energy sitting in the reserviour of my stomach.
Had there been a bloat-curing Saint to pray to, I would have immediately stopped and gone inside to light a candle.
As I stood on the pedals and continued to climb, I felt the flutter of sweet relief. Suddenly, there was a long and puttering escape of wind from my backside. I made a couple more hard pedal stokes and, then, to my elation, there was another sweet breeze that erupted from my rear. I stopped, dismounted and took in the view.
Great views make the farts even better.
Had I been cured? Could I race the last 40 miles back to the finish? There was no way.
I pointed the bike downhill to start descending. The fast bumpy ride down the hill jostled loose more bottom biscuits and so I let the bike and my bottom rip down the hill. My bike and body were like a fine-tuned wind instrument.
There was still a short but painful climb left before me. My belly may have been a little lighter, but I was still residing in the hurt locker. I struggled onward, using standing efforts to free more of the barking spiders out from within the murky bowels of my body.
I felt a certain amount of airiness come over me. My legs felt fresher and my bib shorts weren’t nearly as restrictive as before. Most importantly, I was having fun again.
By the third aid station, I realized I’d become a celebrity of sorts with the middles schoolers who were volunteering. A chorus of “Hey, it’s Unicorn Guy!” greeted me. They were referring to the crocheted unicorn that I’d zip tied to my handlebar and my matching unicorn Bikes Kill Cancer jersey and stickers that I had passed out at prior rest stops.
I’m sort of a big deal with my pet unicorn.
My spirits were buoyed by the enthusiastic greetings and the ice cold water they’d supplied for us. With newly found enthusiasm, I prepared to tap out the last 23 miles to the finish.
I was just shy of cresting the final climb when I was caught by the last remaining pro rider. The pro field started 90 minutes after us average slobs. My disregard for things like braking allowed me to catch her on the downhill.
Without any words spoken, we adjusted our pace and began a hard but steady rotation. Hitting the pavement that made up the five mile run in to the finish we grunted a few words at each other and took turns dropping the hammer at the front.
I was excited to feel so good but also bummed that it had taken so late in the race to feel that way. I pushed the pace on each slight rise in the road. I’d adjusted my goals a long time ago, somewhere back around Mile 52, and finishing in under eight hours was going to feel like a win.
I still felt a bit gassy. I made sure not to let loose any more of my flavorful vapors until I’d had my turn at the front, though. I’d been born and raised in the south. I was taught that a true gentleman never passes gas in front of a lady, much less right in her face when she’s inches from my back wheel.
7 hour 45 minutes all things considered, I could live with that.
Each tough ride brings some realizations. Reflecting back on the ride the next morning after a healthy poop, I realized…
Nothing lasts forever, not even stomach bloat.
Farting is not overrated.
Your worst day in the saddle will still have moments of fun and joy.
You’re never as young as you used to be. At some point, your body is going to remind you of that in a very big way.
The miles were ticking by under the steady systematic whir of bike gears and the cereal like crunch of Kansas’s flint gravel. My body was on cruise control and even though I was only 70 miles in of the 200 mile Dirty Kanza I was confident that I would finish before the sunset at 8:45pm of what was turning into a perfect summer day. The wind was at my back and I had dodged the early mechanical problems that befell many riders in the first muddy 20 miles. I was dancing on the pedals as I passed other riders on the steep punchy hills.
And then the wheels came off the wagon, more specifically my pedal came off. An overlooked regular maintenance of my pedals had caused the body of my pedal to come detached from the spindle. The pedal body was still attached to the metal cleat on the bottom my cycling shoe and after removing it was I unable to reattach it to the spindle. I stood road side and watch riders I had passed a short while ago zip by offering words of encouragement.
Screw encouragement, what I need was a new set of pedals. Standing in the middle of the tall grass prairie of Kansas it didn’t seem very likely that a pedal was going to drop out of the sky. I was in fact up the proverbial shit creek without a paddle. To take it one step further I was now the one legged man in an ass kicking contest.
It was time to HTFU. I could do this. Only 30 miles to the 100 mile check point
Need more guidance on the rules of cycling for the true hard men? Check out The Velominati.
If you made it this far in the blog, you are probably saying to yourself, “I though cycling was supposed to be fun.”
No doubt cycling is fun. If it wasn’t we would not have seen the boom in cycling this year during COVID. In fact according to an article in the LA Times urban bike use is up 21% in 2020, the Rails to Trails Conservancy has seen trail use skyrocket by 110% and swing into any bike shop and you will see quickly that there aren’t that many bikes for purchase due to the run on new bikes.
For the longest time I have belonged to the small tribe of people who know the freedom and joy a bike brings. I am happy to see that tribe grow. Within my tribe there is even a smaller tribe (though it is growing too) that gets a thrill out pushing themselves beyond what most would consider normal on the bike.
Interesting the tribes of cycling tend to embrace cliches as mantras and a way to identify each other. Whether it’s the ones I used above in my opening paragraphs or to embellish my stories post ride when I talk of “dropping the hammer” and “riding on the rivets” to bring back the break, the cliches exist. They act as a way for one fellow cyclist to identify another, to create a sense of cool and intended or not to alienate those who aren’t in our tribe.
This year I joined another tribe and quickly learned that we too have a whole host of cliches designed to motivate, give hope and encouragement. I always thought of myself and other cyclist in my tribe to be tough, but quickly learned no one hardens the fuck up like the cancer community.
Once the word is out that you’ve been diagnosed with cancer you are quickly labeled a warrior, a fighter and inspirational. For some this doesn’t sit so well and before I was diagnosed with cancer this year I often thought it felt a bit dramatic. Now, I am not so sure. Once I heard those words, “you have cancer”, I quickly found myself grabbing every cliche out there and attaching it to myself like a comfort blanket and suit of armor all rolled into one. This wasn’t a fucking pedal falling off my bike. This was my the cells in my neck and throat growing out of control and crowding out my healthy cells. For Pat Benatar Love is Battlefield for me my body was a battlefield and my tumor on my neck was literally the Battle of the Bulge.
So when do cliches help and when do they harm? For me and I think for many with cancer, they provide a bit of fantasy for us to hold on to in a time of uncertainty and uncontrollable fear. If a person can imagine themselves as some type of strong leather clad sword wielding warrior who despite tough odds is standing up to fight another day, then I say go with it if it makes getting through the chemo or another round of radiation a bit easier.
Let’s pull back and look at it from another point of view. Cliches like stereotypes can be, intended or not, hurtful and demeaning. That same person you call brave, a true warrior and an inspiration to others as they battle cancer may feel a ton of pressure an anxiety when you drop those labels on them. There is actual research that those cliches that we often think of as being supportive and encouraging are actually inappropriate and anxiety inducing.
I would like to think I am a fighter and a warrior but the reality is I can’t fight my cancer. Punching myself repeatedly in the neck is not going knock my cancer out.
In the end I’m glad I am inspiration and that you are rooting, praying and thinking about me and every other person who has cancer. I would ask that you take it one step further. Forgo the cliche statements and take action and help make a difference.
Donate to cancer research
“Let me know if you need anything.” act on that cliche. Most people are too proud to actually ask for help so instead do something for them without being asked.
Get your vaccines and make sure your family does too. The HPV vaccine greatly reduces the risk of cervical, anal, penile and oral cancer. Flu shots not only reduce your risk of the flu but keep people with compromised immune systems safe.
Wrapping this up and probably the only thing you can think about is, “Enough of this cancer shit. Did you finish the DK 200?”
Hell yeah I did. I reach deep into my “suitcase of courage”, rode 30 miles on one pedal, got a new set of pedals from my support crew at mile 100 and then engaged in a 100 mile sufferfest while “deep in the pain locker” in to a headwind. That shit was easy compared to cancer. The Dirty Kanza has a finish line. Cancer always has a what’s next.
That’s me on the right. I caught my buddy Chad at mile 160 and we rode in together.
Bikes Kill Cancer 