I'm hoping to take early retirement early next year and my ambition for a while has been to return to cycling. Not the competitive cycling I've done in the past, but to get out and about and spend hours riding.
One of my strongest symptoms of PA was extreme fatigue and even now I have the odd day where I am like a zombie. This has made me think my retirement goal of cycling day in day out is unrealistic and I won't be able to do this. I have ridden a few days of not more than 25 miles and I physically drained.
I was wondering if there are any articles on endurance athlete and PA B12 deficiencies?
Written by
MontyW
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I can only advise you to buy an electric bike . I bought one 6 months ago to get back into cycling . Buy one that has gears .I only use the motor when needed . Mostly use it as a normal bike . Has helped enormously . I was a bit worried about traffic as I live in a town .So I used to get up really early at 5.30 before the traffic got going , to get back into it . I bought a Raleigh Motus for £1400 . But there are many different models to choose from .
I think you will find extra tiredness as you start riding more. Your body will naturally consume more B12 and if your gut no longer recycles B12 to the liver and the blood stream, you will find that your injections do not last as long as they did before. I used methyl sublinguals to supplement daily between my weekly cyano injections.
Keep a logbook of all your symptoms and try to make a daily assessment of the severity of each symptom. Also keep track of your food, drink and meds. You may find new food issues arising. Gluten and dairy along with soya were my problem areas.
The muscle pain may seem to get worse as nerve repair strengthens the nerves and the signals get to the brain get faster and stronger. The getting started is always the hardest but you will find that if you stick to a daily regime of exercises, things will get better. The stimulations to the nerves helps the body identify the areas of damage and causes the repair to occur. The pain disappears as if by magic and if you pace yourself you can go all day.
Healing of muscle tissue by metabolism and cell replication is slower due to B12D but stick with exercises.
Gentle range of motion exercises is what you are looking for rather than strength building. But as your nerve damage is repaired, you will naturally do more and more unconsciously. So use the logbook to monitor progress and look back months and years to see how you have progressed as nerve repair is very slow.
You may find no further progress for some nerves as the nerve damage is permanent.
You will need to supplement with folic acid and a daily multivitamin to replace the folate, metals and minerals used up by the cells.
Stick with the bike riding but take it easy and don’t get discouraged when things do not progress as fast as you would like. Stick to a daily regime and don’t get disheartened and you will surprise yourself one day and realize that a symptom or symptoms have disappeared.
The key is to build up carefully and slowly, always keeping yourself below the level at which you’re taking too much out of yourself.
If 25 miles was too draining next time do 10. If that’s ok do 10 twice a week, maybe building up to 3 or 4 times. Or, if it suits you better, stay with cycling 2 or 3 times a week maximum but then start building up your mileage. Try one longer ride once a week of 15 miles, but keep your speed lower on that longer ride. Always follow your longer ride with a rest day.
Cycling every day may be unrealistic, even top athletes have rest days.
You may also need to establish the optimum injection frequency for you. For example, I think I’m ok for every day life injecting once every week to 10 days. However, throw in a hard bike ride or two and a couple of glasses of wine (and by that I do mean only 2 once a week) and I need injections twice a week to cycle as I want to.
I’ve cycled for many years but four or 5 years ago when I was first diagnosed (and on bi monthly injections) I remember having to turn around 8 miles into a ride and go home to spend the rest of the day in bed which shocked me. Rebuilding fitness slowly and increasing my injection frequency since that day and so far this year I’ve cycled over 5,000 miles (mostly on 2 rides a week) and got my best time ever in a 100 mile event.
It’s tricky as each person with B12 deficiency reacts so differently. I don’t have an instant reaction with my B12. This means that the effect of injections is cumulative, and at the other end of the scale, I don’t know I’ve overdone it with exercise until it’s too late. I’m currently trying to recover from starting a second Pilates class per week (although still can’t be sure this time that it wasn’t a reaction to taking ginseng, as in a previous post). I’m pretty exhausted now even with three weeks rest. It’s scary because I don’t know when or if I will pick up & frustrating because I’d been well for months.
So I’d proceed with extreme caution with the cycling, but I really hope you can build up to where you want to be.
Wishing you all the very best for your retirement 😊
As an ex-endurance athlete, I'd say the advice here is good based on my experience.
I've always cycled a lot (many 100 mile plus days, for weeks at a time) - but these days am wary of doing any. I went sailing a couple of years ago (shortly after PA diagnosis) and found I needed 2 jabs a week instead of the previous one per 6 weeks - and sailing is largely sedentary (I blame fresh air 24 x 7 and also 4 hours on 4 hours off taking turns on watch).
Let us know how it goes -- I would love to retire and cycle but now think it will never be... I suspect it is true that one would slowly wear out rather than building up strength
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