But first, the milestones.

The SHARQ

There’s a machine at the therapy clinic called the Torture Machine SHARQ.

A picture of the SHARQ, stolen from the manufacturer’s website at www.sharqcts.com.

The SHARQ is a bench with a side structure attached. You sit on the bench and stick your arm through a pivot, and then clamp your arm and shoulder. Using a wheel attached to a pulley system, you can, with your other arm, cause the clamped arm to move up and down. You can torture yourself to your heart’s content.

Another stolen picture showing in detail how the arm is clamped in.

There are two types of rotation possible on this machine. With the top of your arm (shoulder to elbow) sticking out straight, external rotation occurs when you rotate your arm clockwise, your hand moving upwards. Internal rotation occurs the other way, downwards.

Since your non-clamped arm is the one providing the force to cause rotation, via the pulley system, the rotations on the clamped arm are said to be passive. If you were to use the clamped-in arm by itself, the rotations would be active.

Really crude illustration of external rotation, (moving your arm upwards, with arm straight out to the side, and elbow bent at 90 degrees.)

SHARQs Like Arms

With a sore shoulder, the SHARQ is no picnic. At least for you. For the SHARQ, well, it likes to eat arms and spit out the remains. I grimace whenever I have to get on the SHARQ. I laugh, with empathy, when I see others do likewise.

Milestone #1

Last week I got to vertical on the SHARQ – in both directions. A major accomplishment.

When I first tried using the SHARQ last November, I couldn’t even put my arm in the blasted thing without a lot of grimacing – let alone rotate my arm. As the weeks passed, I tested myself on the SHARQ every now and then, and by the end of March, just before my second surgery, I was getting 40 degrees external rotation (arm up) – if I struggled hard and grimaced a lot – and 60 degrees internal (arm down).

After recovering from Surgery #2, one day, on a fine Wednesday afternoon, I finally achieved vertical in both directions.

Woo hoo!

I had actually gotten to vertical downwards (internal rotation) the week before, but getting vertical with external rotation proved a bigger challenge. It took an extra week.

After reaching vertical, somewhat in disbelief, I used my other hand to quickly point out this achievement to my therapist, who was watching nearby.

Yeah, uh-huh. That’s me. I’m the man!

I only lasted a few seconds before having to back off and lower my arm. But to be there at all, after many months of trying, was amazing.

The Stick

Another exercise I do is lay on a bench, face up, and hold a stick with both arms extended straight. The idea is to move my arms up and over, as far back as possible. This movement is called flexion, and in this case, it’s another example of passive motion, as the non-injured arm does most of the work. The injured side is just along for the ride.

Passive flexion stretching on a bench with a stick

When I first tried doing this kind of passive flexion, last October, I couldn’t do it at all. Even seemingly easy 90 degrees (straight up) was out of the question. By March, I was in 120-135 degree territory.

The ceiling at the therapy clinic is tiled, and I often use those tiles as landmarks – goals to reach when viewing upwards with my line of sight towards the stick. First I could only get to the tile overhead, and then as the weeks passed, to the next tile, then the fluorescent light fixture, then the air conditioning vent. But I was not able to “reach” the corner of the ceiling and wall, (as viewed with my line of sight.)

And I really wanted to reach that corner.

Milestone #2

During the same fine Wednesday afternoon that had me achieving a milestone on the SHARQ, I finally “reached” the corner, at 150 degrees flexion.

Woo hoo!

Since that time, I’ve gone further down the wall, to the windows, all the way to 160-165 degrees. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn good.

Active vs Passive Motion

The problem is – and it’s a big problem – I’m only able to achieve these milestones when using passive motion. As hinted at earlier, passive motion is when you have someone else (such as a therapist) move your arm, or to have your other arm aid in the motion. With passive motion, you only prove that the movement, the range, is possible. It’s quite another thing to get the same range with active motion, when your arm does the moving all by itself.

Active motion has been a big challenge for me – and a big puzzle. The therapists have been puzzled too, as well as my surgeon. Why passive motion, but not active, even with lots of strength training? So on to the second surgery, where a lot of scar tissue could get cleared away.

New Therapist to the Rescue

After three weeks of recovery from the second surgery, I was getting bummed. Even though my shoulder was looser (before, it felt like it was being squeezed in a vise), and passive motion had improved a lot, my active motion was poor. It hadn’t improved at all.

Was the surgery a failure?

During this time period, I was put under the care of a new therapist, a recent college graduate. She’s turned out to be a blessing! She quickly diagnosed what had been puzzling all of us. She conjectured that my problem was I had simply forgotten how to move my shoulder properly. After nine months of being screwed up, I did not have a sense of where my shoulder was. It was hiked up most of the time, jamming the joint, making it hard to get any range with my arm. I needed exercises specifically tailored to correct this.

I related this to my surgeon during a checkup, and after he saw that I did indeed have decent passive motion, but poor active motion, he fully agreed with my therapist’s new training plan.

Now I’m off to the races. I can clearly see the path to success. I think I’ve turned the corner.

Mirror, Mirror

One of my new training regimens is to do exercises in front of a mirror, where I can see how my injured shoulder is positioned compared to the other. Seeing how the good one moves is a big help. And it seems to be working.

The only problem is, I have to look in the mirror and see myself as I truly am, all twenty-five extra pounds of belly fat, double chin, and everything.

Yikes.

I’m a mere donut of my former self.

It’s motivated me to start exercising again, to start riding my bike. So out I went last Saturday, on my first ride in five weeks.

Broken Spoke Ranch

I hooked up with the Los Freeloaders group, riding east through Gainey Ranch and beyond. I figured I’d do 20-30 miles. It’s still a bit difficult on the bike, but not like before the second surgery. There was no need to slowly ramp up the miles, using multiple baby-step rides. Nope, I just plunged in and rode.

But 15 miles in, at a stoplight, the light turned green, and I proceeded to stand and pedal, only to hear and feel something snap — a spoke on the front wheel.

So much for my day!

Good thing I was stopped when the spoke broke. Good thing we were right next to AJ’s, the place where we often loop back for snacks. Being so close to AJ’s, I walked my bike over and waited for the others to return, and in the meantime called my wife for a ride home.

I said on the phone, “Could you come get me? I broke a spoke on my bike.”

Now, all she heard was, “Blah blah blah …? I broke … blah blah blah.”

I almost gave her a heart attack, she said later. Guess maybe I should have said, “My bicycle is broke …” instead of “I broke my ….”

Ha!

On the drive home, I thought about that broken spoke, how it broke off at the nipple. Why now? Why this way? Why on the front wheel? That’s not the where spokes usually break. Usually, it’s the back wheel that has the problem – the wheel that takes more weight, more abuse.

Then it dawned on me. The break was most likely due to the crash, way back last August, when I had slammed into a knee-high pile of gravel, head on. Mostly likely, the spoke nipple was stressed during that crash, or perhaps afterwards when I had the wheel re-trued. And after the measly 200 miles or so I’ve ridden since then, the nipple finally gave up the ghost.

Makes me wonder if there aren’t other stressed spokes or nipples on that wheel. Makes me wonder if instead of just replacing that one spoke, I should get all new ones and have the wheel completely rebuilt.

You see, I really don’t want more spokes to break, which might cause the front brakes to rub and the front wheel to lock up. Having that happen while zooming down a hill at high speed could send me over the handlebars again.

And I don’t really want to do that.

Looking Forward

In the meantime, I’ll ride on a spare wheel, and keep working on my shoulder, looking forward to the day when everything’s fine, and I can return to writing about all the fabulous rides I’ve been on.

This post is in honor of “The Chair”, my constant companion and torture device the past four weeks, after having a second surgery on my shoulder.

This chair is technically called a CPM, a continuous passive motion device. Its purpose in life is to move an arm up and down, (in this case my right arm) – both in abduction (out to the side and then up), and external rotation (rotating clockwise from the elbow) – and to do this over and over.

Now the fact that I can say abduction and external rotation tells you a lot about how long I’ve been in therapy. I know all the buzz words. I’m approaching almost nine months of having my shoulder worked on by others, and could almost pass the test to become a physical therapist. I’ve seen all their tricks.

Nine months! Who knew a silly little crash would cause so much commotion.

After my second surgery, I was prescribed to use The Chair four to six hours a day, as a way of keeping scar tissue from reforming in my shoulder. (The surgery’s purpose was to remove scar tissue that formed after the first surgery, way back last August).

Four to six hours day!

The arm goes up, the arm goes down. The arm goes up, the arm goes down. The arm goes … are we done yet?

If you think exercising on an indoor bike trainer is boring, (I can personally stand about an hour on an indoor trainer, and that’s it), you ain’t seen nothing. The Chair is boredom squared. Minutes seem like hours. There’s not much you can do while sitting in The Chair, so I watched a lot of TV – sports, movies, sitcoms, science channels, history channels, funny animal videos, and reality TV shows I will never admit watching …

I was even known to fall asleep:

While every one else was outside riding their bikes for real in the ideal spring weather of Phoenix, I got to sit in The Chair and become a mere donut of my former self, and watch all of the spring cycling classics, such as the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix, Flech-Wallone, Liege-Bastone-Liege, Tour of Romandie. Every time a cyclist would go down, I would wince, and my shoulder would feel the pain, in some sort of sympathetic reaction.

But my time with The Chair is almost up. Only a few more days, and we get to part ways.

And I’ll never complain again about an indoor bike trainer. Ha!

The Mountain View route — the only safe route from the Dreamy Draw to Paradise Valley: From the end of Dreamy Draw at 32nd St and Mountain View, take Mountain View all the way to 37th St. Turn north for a block to Via Estrella, then east to 39th St, south a block and then southeast on the diagonal street of Ocotilla Ln to Fanfol Rd, then east on Fanfol to 44th St. Turn north for a short block and then east on Mountain View Rd again, going over numerous speed bumps. This area is the Rancho Alta Vida neighborhood, and is shown up close later in this post. Turn right at 46th St, which joins Mountain View Rd. At 47th St, you have a choice of staying on Mountain View, crossing Tatum, and continuing on to Paradise Valley, or turning right on 47th St, and crossing Tatum via Berneil Dr.

Warning: Ignorant, whacked out judge

One incident in the Paradise Valley area involves a retired judge who thinks cyclists don’t belong on the roads in Paradise Valley, and was witnessed riding too close to several cyclists on purpose, even though the cyclists were riding in the bike lane on Mockingbird, and then the retired judge stops to harass them further, apparently completely ignorant of the state’s traffic laws concerning cyclists – “you people” he calls us. Apparently, he cares not a whit for our safety. This is from a retired municipal judge! Check out this first-hand story in www.azroadcyclist.com. To get to the story, click on the “current issue” link in the top left corner of that site.

Warning: Angry resident wishing us harm

Another incident involves a resident in the Ranch Alta Vida neighborhood, south of Shea Blvd and west of Tatum Blvd, as shown on the map above. This area is notable because it’s the only safe way for cyclists to get from the Dreamy Draw to the Paradise Valley area. Here is the neighborhood up close:

The street at issue is Mountain View Road west of Tatum, (it has speed bumps). Said resident has been harassing cyclists here, even threatening to “booby trap” the street to keep cyclists away. This street is apparently private, and the neighborhood association is apparently threatening to shut down the street to cyclists.

For more information, see this first hand story on the Bicycle Haus forums.

Now, I, like thousands of cyclists, use this street on a routine basis. I’ve ridden thousands of times through here over the last eight years. It’s the main route I use to get to most of the rides I do. It’s a main route for many cyclists. I never knew this street to be private. To have this street shut down would be a major inconvenience to the cycling community, as there are no safe alternatives to get from the Dreamy Draw to Paradise Valley. Some have suggested we use Gold Dust Ave (located just north of Rancho Alta Vida, near the top on the map), but that would require riding on Tatum Blvd for a block or two in order to get back to Mountain View Rd – and Tatum Blvd is no place for cyclists, not to mention having to make a left-hand turn from its center lane.

Be Vigilant, Be Respectful

Be on the lookout for the angry resident of Rancho Alta Vida, and for the retired judge on the streets of Paradise Valley. Be sure to report any incidents you encounter. But most important, be good cycling citizens when passing through private areas like this one. The general trend has been for cyclists to lose more and more access to streets, ala Hidden Hills in northeast Scottsdale. Let’s try to keep that from happening here.

If you wish to view old posts intact, visit www.veloasana.wordpress.com.

I’m doing this move so that I can provide better features, especially when it comes to showing route maps and profiles. In the future, I hope to make these dynamic, and allow you to zoom in on the courses. This is not possible while hosted at wordpress.com, as they don’t allow the necessary scripting in the pages. But by self hosting I can do all the scripting I want. It will still be a “wordpress” blog, in that I’ll be using the wordpress software, just on my own site.

From the north Usery Pass is 3.5 miles long, with approximately 660 feet of climbing.

After viewing statistics for my blog, I’ve noticed many readers are searching for information on Usery Pass, probably due to the upcoming Tour de Mesa, which includes this pass as part of its route. I just realized I’ve never put up a post for Usery Pass in my Mountain Poses section. Well, I’ve remedied that. Click here for more information.

Riders in the Bry. There are many. Some real, some imagined.

There’s Mr. Alpine Dreamer: Hill-climber extraordinaire, ready to leap tall mountains in a single pedal stroke. Spirit’s in the high places. Known to stay in mountain pose all day long.

There’s Mr. Pack Man: Social, against his nature. Goes with the flow, at one with the herd. Never misses a call-out for the pothole, the road glitter, the car back.

There’s Mr. Lurker: Hangs in the back. Doesn’t say much, kind of quiet and shy. Usually has a fiddle tune or two in his head.

There’s Mr. Free Spirit: Rides as free as the wind blowing down the road. The lucky one.

There’s Mr. Locomotive Breath: Over his head, determined to hang with the group no matter what. Rarely succeeds, keeps trying.

There’s Mr. Navigator: Knows the routes, all of them, even ones he’s never ridden before.

There’s Mr. Velo Asana: Cool, collected, in the moment. Lives and breathes the cycling pose. Never falters, never fails. Hills, flats, curves, straights, they’re all the same to Mr. Velo Asana. Loves being “out there,” endurance his calling card.

There’s Lt. Solo: Rides epic rides, the whole day, all by his lonesome, through city, farm, coast, desert. Perfectly at ease with his puppy mind.

And then there’s Mr. Weak and Slow: Sometimes seen riding an old mountain bike. A heavy old mountain bike. Rides at 4 mph, in granny low. Even on a lighter road bike, Mr. Weak and Slow’s nature holds firm. Somehow manages to make it to the top anyway, to go the distance.

Lately, it’s Mr. Weak and Slow that’s in charge. Eight months and a mere 180 miles will do that to a person.

I note this not only in support of my new site and book, but because the first posting on the new blog relates to yoga: Write it down dog. And the book, while not relating directly to cycling, has a main character that I call “The Dark-Haired White Mountain Bike Woman.”

See, I just had to get cycling in there somehow!

Be sure to check it out!

Whoopie ti yi yay
I’m on my way
Back in the saddle again

~~~

After riding 41 miles yesterday, I guess it’s safe to say I’m back in the saddle.

I’ve been slowly ramping up the miles. During the month of February, I’ve done rides of 1 mile, 4 miles, 10 miles, 21 miles, 30 miles, and 41 miles. These have gone from being very scary to almost normal.

I will say I’ve lost a ton of speed. My cardio-vasky has a long way to go. I was gassed at the end of the 20/30 mile rides, but a bit better on the 40 miler yesterday. I climbed Mohave last week (a piddly little climb, but with some 6% grade) and it felt like a big mountain. Climbed Desert Cove yesterday, (not quite as piddly, but still a mild climb) out Via Linda way, and I’m noticing the improvement.

It felt weird, riding my old training routes. I haven’t seen these roads in quite some time.

I doubt, though, that I could ride South Mountain. I don’t think I could make it to the top right now. And I’d be scared to death zooming back down.

And we’ll have fun, fun, fun

Yesterday’s ride was the first time I’ve had fun riding since coming back. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever enjoy riding again. It’s funny, I’d been so eager to start cycling, wistfully watching groups ride by when out walking the dogster, but then when I did start, it was like … meh! But yesterday, it was definitely enjoyable. It was fun seeing numerous riding acquaintances from various cycling groups – people I haven’t seen in a long time.

The Woolies

Can’t say enough about using a (merino) wool base layer this time of year. It’s absolutely the perfect material. It keeps you warm, yet it doesn’t hold moisture, so you don’t get the evaporative cooling effect that makes you feel cold after you take your jacket off – but you also don’t overheat, even after the temps warm up later in the morning.

I wish I’d known about this years ago – I learned this trick from the double century riders. So much for the fancy-dancy modern materials.

Riding probably short-lived

Shoulder is ever so slowly improving, though it’s likely I’ll have another surgery this month, which means being off the bike again – right when the weather will be at it’s finest here in Phoenix. Hopefully, (hey all you grammarians, I don’t care if using hopefully in this manner is grammatically incorrect … tough doodoo), having the surgery will be a short-term setback with long-term gains.

Hmm… maybe I should put off the surgery until summer, when it gets a wee bit hot here in the Phoenix valley.

On the yoga front

I can almost do plank pose. I’m so close. All those iso-strength exercises in therapy are paying off. Downward dog is still a ways off though. It’s frustrating not being able to do many of the poses I used to do. Power class is out of the question right now. It’s shocking how limited my range of motion is. I don’t notice that much anymore, for normal, everyday activities. But it’s the attempts at yoga that are convincing me maybe surgery would be worthwhile.

Yours truly in 2005, 2/3rds the way up Grand Mesa, near Grand Junction, Colorado, on the 2005 Ride the Rockies tour. If you look closely, you can see the road we cycled up way down below. This is a tough climb. And it was hot that day – 95 degrees on top, and in the 100s after we rode back down the other side.

Went on another bike ride today, my second of the year, and second in the last six months, a whole four miles – 1/50th of a double century. Woohoo!

I discovered that I could even ride out of the saddle, and it really wasn’t any more difficult than being seated. Not that I’d want to do it very long. Overall, four miles was enough for the day. But the good news is that being on the bike didn’t feel as scary as last time. I’m still awfully cautious, though.

No doubt about it, I’m making progress.

It can’t come soon enough. The weather here in Phoenix is starting to warm up — I think it was near 80 yesterday. And that makes me want to get out and ride. I’m starting to feel even more wistful about seeing groups of cyclists ride by.

What dreams may come

Lately, I’ve been having dreams about cycling, dreams of riding in the mountains. That’s where my spirit wants to be.

One of my dreams was confused, though. In the dream I was running, and I ran 66 miles! I was supposed to be on a metric century run (62 miles), but I sorta went past the 62nd loop (apparently the track I was running on — was it a race? — was one mile long) and I did an extra four laps for the hell of it. It felt effortless.

I hope this dream was really about upcoming cycling adventures – and there is some precedent for that. I’ve been known to have dreams about running that turn out to be about cycling. A particular dream from the past comes to mind. A long time ago, back in my early 30’s, I had a dream about running up mountains, racing, I guess — and besting all my peers. Yessiree, I was an athlete. Woohoo!

It was later, once I started cycling and found myself gravitating towards hill climbing and riding in the mountains, that I realized the dream was really about cycling, and that I could ride just as strong as anyone else. Not that I was besting my peers, per se, but at least staying with them.

As the above picture shows, I’m not exactly built to be a hill-climber, and now, after being off the bike for six months, my “little ol’ belly” ain’t so little any more. But with any luck, I can make that belly shrink as the miles accumulate. Here’s hoping!

It’s yoga time!

Oh, and in other news, I went to my first yoga class in six months. I can’t do many of the poses very well, and discovered that it’s the little things that will get ya – I found it hard to push up off the floor while seated, in order to sit on two blankets folded up for height. I had to stand up first, before I could sit back down on the blankets.

But I was there, in class. So woohoo again!