It Just Keeps Hangin' On

Doing some podcasting at the Stone Castle Estates

One thing I appreciated about the past 2.5 years, and that is that I was not sick or even a little ill. Not even once. Obviously, I am grateful I did not contract COVID that I was ever aware of, but listen- not having a cold or flu for almost three years? Amazing! I got very used to that!

Now, I was extremely sick just before all the COVID madness. Back in January 2020 I got some real heavy-duty flu deal that made everything in my body hurt really badly. Then after that, I was great until now. 

And I hear upper respiratory stuff is kicking a lot of people's butts now, so I don't mean to be a whiner, and many have it worse than I do, but this head cold I have now is going into its forth week. 

It gets better- incrementally - every day. But it is such a drag and to be resting as much as possible for this long is really hard for me to deal with. But it's not like I have a ton of energy anyway! Again- it is getting better all the time. It's just really slowly coming along.

It all started right about the week of Thanksgiving, right as I was making plans to do that Virtual Turkey Burn. Well, that had to be cancelled- for myself, at any rate, and that was really disappointing. Then the next week it got worse. I haven't had a head cold like that in...... Decades? It was the worst on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and then it started to ease up and every day has been juuuuuust a little bit better. I feel like I am on the verge of kicking this thing, but it just seems to keep hanging on.

I made a delivery run last week which has been my longest ride in a while!

At first, when this thing hit me, I could ride down to work at the Cedar Valley Bicycle Collective which is about a mile, maybe a bit more, and I was dead in the water afterward. Just expended as if I had ridden five hours of gravel. 

Then that got easier. I did some walking too. I have a 3/4's mile circuit I do and I could maybe squeeze in a mile and a half, two miles and that would just exhaust me for a couple of hours. Then that got better. 

I risked a longer ride in fairly cold weather last Thursday when I went to pick up a delivery for the Collective of bicycle parts and then to drop those off at the Collective. That was about a six plus mile ride and it went well. I know.....only six miles. But I felt fine afterward, and that was the biggest "win" I have had in the last month. I'll take it.

And that is why I haven't had any country gravel ride reports lately. I just haven't been able to get out there and do those. But, ya know, I'll recover just in time for it to be too darn cold, icy, and windy to do country rides, if I know anything. It'll be a long while before I can do what I've been longing to do now for many weeks. 

But we'll see. One thing that has been a blessing is that I have all this "End of Year" stuff to do here on the blog anyway, so I am not lacking for content. That's been a bit of a relief, actually. And this sick time has presented a lot of spare time to research and write, which I would have less time to do if I was out gallivanting around the Iowa countryside. So, there's that. 

I sure hope this stupid sickness passes sooner than later though. I've got the feeling that it will. It's just going to take a little bit longer now......