Since I've had a lot of time on my hands waiting for the medical system to respond, I've been pondering whether or not I should have surgery. After all, there is always the risk of complication and surgeries aren't always successful (ask me about my shoulder that I've had operated on 3 times). I feel like I should at least consider alternatives so bear with me while I do.
As background, I started having back problems on brevets in 2014 and have DNF'd several since then. I've also not started several since then because my back was hurting due to either cycling or non-cycling activities. What I've noticed though is that both the incidence and severity is increasing. Up until this year, pain has always been exclusively in my back and has resolved within 2-3 weeks, at most.
This year I've had two episodes involving the sciatic nerve and this most recent go round has been both my back and sciatic nerve. As I write this six weeks after the onset, my left foot is numb, my left calf is burning and my back really hurts.
So given that the level of pain is something I don't want to have for the rest of my life, I'm willing to do just about anything to resolve it, including surgery.
But what about other alternatives?
Suppose if you will that I just give up on riding longer distances and/or riding a diamond frame? What if from now on, my riding is 20-40 miles at relaxed pace 3-5 times a week and that's all I ever do. It seems unlikely that back troubles would recur from that alone and I'd be able to continue riding.
At some point I'll not be able to do longer brevets anyway (euphemistically known as "aging out" of the sport), tempus fugit and all that. So why don't I just cop to it now and give up on the longer rides?
Well, in truth I'm not ready to do that yet. My heuristic for giving up the long rides has always been when I'm no longer fast enough to the point that I'm not getting 4 hours or so of sleep a night. I got 7+ hours a night at PBP 2019 which a lot of people say was one of the harder ones in a while so I can't use that as a justification to quit.
Plus, and much more importantly to me, giving up on long rides would mean not seeing friends I've made around the world. This year has really been tough not only physically but also because I've really missed spending time with the small, but deeply disturbed, set of friends that I've made over the years doing Grandes Randonnées. From a "quality of life" point of view, I would really feel like I'd lost something should I never see and/or ride with them again.
And finally, I still enjoy the challenge of doing long rides. It motivates me to get out the door which, given my slothful nature, is valuable in and of itself.
But, and this is a big one, is all that worth the surgical risk, the pain involved, the recovery time, slowly whipping my sorry butt back into shape, etc?
All things considered, I'd have to say the answer is "yes". But I say that not knowing what the surgery might entail, what the prognosis is, what the probability of success might be, etc. So, being the analytical sort that I am, there are too many unknowns in the equation to solve it right now.
But the partial solution is that I'll have the surgery and go on doing the silly shit called randonneuring.
Note that I'm ruling out the possibility of more conservative treatments e.g., rest, ice, acupuncture, chiropractic, etc., mostly because the trend line has been so strongly negative. I'm assuming that, at best, conservative treatments will get me to less than I was before and, as I've said previously, I never want to have an episode like I did six weeks ago. Never.
So the choices are do nothing with a high risk of recurrence or surgery.
Stay tuned!
