Mike Dietrich

So that is what my day was like today, my angiogram! yayyyy. What is an angiogram? Its when they put this unusually large needle into an artery (usually the groin) and put a catheter into the artery injecting all sorts of super healthy inks that feel warm. It ends up being 6 needles in the groin since they numb it (num num num num num, anyone know that joke?  JAKE DOES!). Actually it wasnt that bad, I was awake the whole time and was watching stuff on the monitors.

Whats really cool? Well about 45 minutes after the catheter was taking out my artery opened up and I was basically squirting blood out of my groin, luckily the nurses were right there. After the procedure you are supposed to lie down for like 6 hours or so, well after my blood squirting incident, I don’t think I even blinked. Seeing squirting blood once in plenty!

I am ebaying my blood stained sheets for anyone interested..

My groin feels like someone kicked it, with a steel toe boot.

At least that is over with! this is not the glorious side of pro cycling, dats fo sho!

We could have eaten yummy burritos together..

So Toona is probably my last race of the year so i can go and get my artery fixed, recovery time is 6 weeks of no riding. I will be psyched to be able to ride hard again pain free, cant wait! Surgery will hopefully be next week!
~mike D

So I have finally figured out what is going on with my leg.  I wrote back in december or something complaining about leg pain and joking that at least my right leg was in shape.  Well it turns out I have Iliac artery intimal fibrosis,  yea its a mouthful.. I am starting to think its contagious since Bobby Lea, Robbie King, and Hayden Godfrey have all had surgery for it this year!

Turns out, I have it in both legs too.  Basically when I go hard my iliac artery which is in the pelvis constricts blood so my leg feels weak and painful while my right leg feels great even though I have it in that leg too but not as bad.  So now I know why I havent ridden like i have when I was an amateur because most likely this affected me last year too.  So what do i do now?  I am pretty sure the only thing to do is have surgery but I still need to go to the docs a couple of more times to see exactly where the problem is occuring.  fun huh?

other than that, I have been biking yea, it feels pretty good to know that I have been riding so poorly for a reason!  I like to think of this whole season as super high altitude training for my left leg since its not getting enough blood, and not enough oxygen that would be like riding at 15k feet right?

So thats it, not a super funny entry just an update!

Havent updated in a while I think since around philly, well here is what I have done…  Tour de beauce, hung out in montreal for a few days and Rochester crit.

Here is what I think of Canada..  First of all, I didnt see one penguin or igloo, wtf?  I think they knew a real AMURICAN was near and the penguins hid in fear.  Roads in Canada are wicked bad, holes, cracks all that fun stuff.   Also did you know Quebec doesn’t sell mountain dew?  WHAT KIND OF BACKWARDS PLACE IS IT???  Apparently there is some law about putting caffeine in drinks that arent dark.  Sounds to me like coke is paying the government big bucks to keep dew off the market.

I forgot to mention hanging out in Montreal was affected by me gettin Raby’s.  My teammate Ben Raby got everyone sick on the team, whats funny about this is that he always says when he coughs “I’m not contagious!”  well from now on I am bringing a petri dish wherever I travel so I can actually check to see if he is contagious or not!

Rochester was awesome, that is a pretty sweet crit, good crowds, good course, decent money.  Kodak is in Rochester so its a pretty big race for us.  I have to thank all the families that put us up for a couple days, actually I should re word that to put up with us!