Big News...

Alright so I've been putting off writing about this for awhile (I don't like to reveal my weaknesses), but here it goes:
This Wednesday I will be trading in my bicycle for this shiny new pair of crutches (the carbon fibre ones are still on order) in order to get surgery on my legs. I will be getting a relatively simple and somewhat gruesome outpatient procedure aimed to fix a reoccurring problem I've had on the bike for nearly a year and a half.
Ok, so imagine this delectable sausage is my calf muscle. The muscle, like the sausage, is made up of a meaty inside surrounded by a thin casing, in this case a connective tissue called fascia instead of pig intestine. Now image what happens if you put that sausage on the grill on boil it. If you heat it up enough, the insides expand and puts pressure against the casing, and this pressure is released when the sausage cracks and juices drain out. The same thing happens to my legs under high levels of exertion, say a time trial or breakaway, except for the fact that there is no way for the pressure to release as fascia doesn't easily expand and having it burst open like a cheddar wurst would be bad. As a result, I experience a numbness sensation that starts at my feet and intensifies to the point that a can barely pedal. The surgery I'm getting will be the equivalent of slicing the sausage casing right down the middle in order to allow the muscle to expand and allow better blood flow and nerve conduction. The medical term for this is Chronic Compartment Syndrome, and I will be undergoing a bilateral compartment release.
So how do I know I have this condition, and why is this surgery even necessary? True, I was able to win a national title while experiencing symptoms and I don't feel the usual amount of pain associated with compartment syndrome. Plus I have been riding pretty strong this season, having already finished top ten in a few Pro 1/2 fields. The fact is that I'm a time trialist, and my ability to win races relies on me being able to ride at high levels of exertion and wattage for long periods of time, something that simply cannot be done with legs that become, well, big sausages ten minutes into a 30k time trial. Sure, I could sit in for field sprints or ride kilo's on the track all day long, but that simply isn't where my true strength lies. And as I continue to grow the amount of power I produce will only increase, putting more pressure on my already constrained fascia tissues and making my symptoms more ins tense and quicker to onset. Sure, at Nationals last year I was able to pace myself and keep the numbness from overcoming my legs until the last few kilometers, but I was 10-15 pounds lighter then and required less of my calves to push my skinny butt down the road. Nowadays I'm heavier and my opponents have gotten faster, leaving me with few options unless I can fix this condition.
As for the diagnosis of compartment syndrome, it was quick and painful. After almost a year of MRI's, bike fits and shoe changes, my doctors finally got around to giving me compartment testing. This involves inserting a needle into the each of the 4 compartments in the lower leg in order to gauge the pressure between it and the surrounding tissue. Despite nearly passing out due to needle phobia, I was able to perform this test and the reading showed that my compartment pressures went from 10-15 mm Hg to nearly 40 mm Hg after doing spending 10 or minutes at 300 watts. As far as I know there is nothing that causes elevated compartment pressures besides compartment syndrome, so getting this surgery should be a good bet at curing my problems.

A fun afternoon at sports medicine

Anyways I'll be off the bike for 6 weeks or so, so I'll probably have plenty of time for future posts (I haven't decided if I'm going to write while on painkillers).

~Mike