{"id":130,"date":"2013-04-22T19:45:24","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T00:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/?p=130"},"modified":"2015-03-20T09:31:50","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T14:31:50","slug":"i-hit-the-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/22\/i-hit-the-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"I Hit the Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In endurance sports like cycling or running, hitting the wall or bonking refers to sudden loss of energy and the feeling of extreme fatigue, caused by using up all your glycogen. I didn&#8217;t hit the wall in that sense, I literally hit the wall. The wall I&#8217;m talking about is a rock wall along the road going up to Fort Roots from the bike trail in North Little Rock. The wall separates the road from a steep gully. Maybe it was a good thing that the wall was there&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>On March 15 I was about half way through a 30-mile ride when I became slightly dizzy for a few seconds riding up the Fort Roots hill. The dizziness caught me off guard and before I realized what was happening, I ran into the wall.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_132\" style=\"width: 213px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/leg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-132\" class=\" wp-image-132 \" src=\"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/leg-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"The Injury!\" width=\"203\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/leg-225x300.jpg 225w, http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/leg-768x1024.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 203px) 100vw, 203px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-132\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Injury!<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Fortunately, I was going less than 10 miles per hour because of the steep uphill grade. I didn&#8217;t fall down or\u00a0fall off my bike, I just scraped the wall and came to a stop. I got a pretty good abrasion on my leg; I lost a little skin but didn&#8217;t even get any bruises. \u00a0After stopping, I didn&#8217;t feel dizzy at all and continued to the top of the Fort Roots hill and back home.<\/p>\n<p>The next day, and for about a week afterwards, I felt crappy\u2014like I was coming down with a cold or something. I also felt a little light-headed. I was bummed out from hitting the wall and decided not to ride until I felt a lot better. I didn&#8217;t ride for a week and a half.<\/p>\n<p>The day after I hit the wall, I went to the Family Clinic. The nurse seems concerned that my pulse rate was 47, but that didn&#8217;t bother me, because my pulse is sometimes in the low 50&#8217;s. I had some blood tests. All the results were normal except I had high Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (THS). High THS can sometimes be associated with low levels of thyroid hormones. So, I had another test to check that, but the results showed that my thyroid hormone levels were normal.<\/p>\n<p>The Doctor also wanted me to wear a heart monitor for a day. So, I had electrodes glued to my chest for 24 hours with wires running from the electrodes to a small recording device about the size of my cell phone; it was like having a EKG all the time. After that test I had a follow-up visit with my Doctor to hear about the results. The heart monitor test was not completely normal. It showed that for a few seconds I had \u201cepisodes of ectopic atrial rhythm\u201d. That seems to be a irregular heartbeat as if your heart skips a beat or beats at the wrong time. The Doctor didn&#8217;t explain this very well, but he didn&#8217;t seem too concerned. He said he would send the results to an expert for advice. During the 24-hour test, my average heart rate was 52; the low was 42 and the high was 95. I didn&#8217;t do anything that day, so I didn&#8217;t expect my heart rate would be very high. My heart rate probably got up to 95 when I walked down to the street to get the mail and back up the 38 steps to the house.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, the specialist thought some follow-up tests were needed, because the nurse called to say that I would be scheduled to have another heart monitor test\u2014this one for 30 days\u2014and a treadmill test. I had a echo stress test on a treadmill a year ago, and that test was normal. Wearing a heart monitor for 30 days will certainly cramp my style. The nurse said I can take it off to shower, but I don&#8217;t know if I can ride my bike with it on. During the previous 24-hour test, the technician said I should not ride, because I would get sweaty and the electrodes might come off.<\/p>\n<p>I will probably have the test in about 3 weeks, but the date has not been confirmed yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In endurance sports like cycling or running, hitting the wall or bonking refers to sudden loss of energy and the feeling of extreme fatigue, caused by using up all your glycogen. I didn&#8217;t hit the wall in that sense, I literally hit the wall. The wall I&#8217;m talking about is a rock wall along the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,2,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking","category-bob","category-health"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3qUzP-26","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":918,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}