An adventure in Cushing's and stroke

Today, I went for the last long ride I’ll do before leaving Sydney. I started at 6:30am and cycled 86km. I’ve done this route before twice, and what impressed me today was that I didn’t need to walk any of it. There are a few very long hills, and a couple of quite steep hills, that in the past I’d just got off the bike and walked. Today, every last centimetre of the ride was on the bike. I also didn’t feel like dying at the end. I felt incredibly sweaty and a bit tired, but not the “I think I might just lie down for a week” feeling I had the other two times.

I can only conclude one thing from this: If I can get fit, anyone can. I was the most unfit person on the planet before I started training for this, andd now I think I can say that I’m fit. Not super fit, and there are still many people out there fitter than me, but I think I’m fit enough to do this cycle. I hope so, anyway.

There are now two more pilates classes, two cycle classes, two weights sessions, and then I’m out of here.

Pilates is awesome. Really, it is. It’s even more awesome when you don’t have Cushing’s! I first started doing it in May 2007, and continued doing it until October 2008. I really loved it, and I would feel more flexible and stronger, but I never noticed a huge difference in appearance. In around June 2008, when all the Cushing’s symptoms appeared alarmingly, there was no difference at all. The Cushing’s belly remained no matter how much Pilates or exercise I did.

In October, my endo told me to stop Pilates, and only do really mild kinds of exercise, until Cushing’s was sorted. So I sorted out Cushing’s, but then had a stroke and couldn’t do anything. Even when I was at a point where I could do it, I couldn’t drive to Pilates, and my gym didn’t have classes. My gym now has Pilates classes with a great instructor, and I’ve been going for about a month now.

And this time, I can totally see the difference. It’s awesome and I love it. I feel taller, stronger, firmer and more flexible after every class. Twice a week at the gym there is a cycle class followed by a Pilates class and that is such a fantastic combination. I am enjoying exercising so much right now, it’s like a drug.

There are a few different instructors at my gym who do the cycle class. I went to my first ever one on the 30th of July 2008, and that was with Steve. I didn’t go again after the first time, and instead did other sorts of training. About a month ago I started going to them again, this time with Mel. And tonight, I did one with Steve.

Between the first time I did a cycle class and tonight, I think I got a lot fitter. I remember after the first class feeling like I was about to explode from exhaustion (Is that even possible?) I felt incredibly unfit, even though I suppose I was fit enough to keep up. Tonight, I left the class not feeling like I was about to die, but feeling awesome and thinking, “I love cycle class”. I still sweated profusely, but that’s half the fun.

There are now exactly three weeks before I leave Sydney, and that means there are still thirteen cycle classes and about four or five days with cycling on a real bike before I do the Vietnam cycle. My goal is still to just be able to complete it.

About two weekends ago, I went for a 52km cycle, and it was really hard. There were parts that I walked up and I suspect the reason that a previously easy ride turned into something quite difficult was because I hadn’t done a lot of exercise for the three weeks prior. After that day, I’d been back at the gym and back to regular exercise, and last weekend I did a 24km ride which was easy. Today I went a bit further. I started at 7am with a friend, and we went on a 44km ride, which was easy. (I’m judging how easy a ride is by whether I walk the last long hill or cycle the last long hill; today I cycled it).

There are about four and a half weeks left in Sydney before I go, and I’m planning my life around cycling on weekends, cycle classes at the gym, pilates classes at the gym, and other cardio and weights training. I figure the more I do, the more likely it will be that I’ll actually complete the Vietnam cycle.

I went for a bike ride today, and it was one of the hardest cycles I’ve done. Not because it was long – it was 52km in total, and today was the third time I did it. The second time I did this it was easy.

It was hard because it was the first major exercise I had done for three weeks. I did an 83km cycle on Christmas Day, and since then had been to the gym twice and done a normal amount of walking, but that was about it. And I discovered that three weeks is enough to lose fitness.

So, in the 45 days I have before I leave Sydney, it’s going to be back to exercise five times a week.

For the past five days, I’ve been in Parkes, a town in country NSW about five or six hours west of Sydney (five or six depending on how you travel and how fast you drive). I was there for the Parkes Elvis Festival, a completely insane and massively fun festival that is held annually on the second weekend in January.

During the weekend, I ate far too much “bad” food, and did too little exercise. I did, however, sweat a lot. I think the average temperature for central NSW in the middle of summer is about 40 degrees, so I still sweated as much as I would during a good gym session. I wonder if that counts?