I made my 3rd visit to the Urgent Care in the past week today. My hip is infected and oozing pus from a couple places. I looked up the images on google and it looks exactly like MRSA staph. I don’t know where that would have come from. Probably from one of my other previous hospital visits. Anyway, I go out on a bike ride this morning to see how I feel. I stopped to get some coffee and I noticed that I have another problem under my right underarm. Where there wasn’t a wound. So I figure I should go by the doctors again. Long story short, they took some samples of the pus and prescribed an antibiotic cocktail. I told the physician that I wasn’t much into taking antibiotics because it makes me feel and ride horrible. I asked him if I could wait until the culture was back to start and he advised not to. Isn’t that the whole reason MRSA started. Over prescribed antibiotics?

Even the pharmacist asked me if I had a bad infection because these were really strong antibiotics. I went ahead and bought the pills, but am hesitant to take them. I’m driving back to Kansas tomorrow to race The Tour of Kansas City this weekend. Just two criteriums. It’s supposed to be nearly 100 both days again. It hasn’t even been in the 80’s hardly here the last week. So, I’m going to call tomorrow and see if they have the lab work back. If so, and it turns out positive, then I might as well write off the next month or so.

The Tour of Kansas City, late summer addition, is today and tomorrow. Just two criteriums now. The best race, the Cliff Drive Circuit race couldn’t be included because of road construction.

I knew that it was going to be a stretch doing much tonight. I can’t think of a time when I had a combination of so many things wrong all at once. I got the bad call this morning. MRSA staff. But, I’d already started all the antibiotics because I received so many “convincing” emails telling me nicely that I was crazy. And, they were all correct. But, I decided to go ahead and race. I feel an obligation to racing locally. And, I can always add some sort of help one way or another.

There were around 60 starters on the .9 mile course. It is kind of hard for such a short course. One side is a hill with a technical corner at the bottom. It was nearly 100 degrees today. Not sure what the temperature was at the 8 pm start. It was windy though. Weird. The race started fast. Eventually a break of 13 got away. We had 3 guys in the move with Nick Coil, Bill Stolte and Brian Jensen. Brian has won the race the last two years, so 3 in a row was a goal.

It took most of the race for 9 of the guys to lap us. Only Brian and Bill were in that group. With a few laps to go, Brian got away with Joesph Schmaltz. I thought those were pretty good odds. I ended up leading Bill out the last lap. He jumped a little prematurely and Phil Mann beat him for 3rd. Brian won by a wheel, so 1st and 4th on the day.

Tomorrow is another 75 minutes at 1 pm. It’s going to be hot again. And windy. The antibiotics aren’t going over that good, but I don’t have much of a choice. Plus, it’s a new experience. It was not enjoyable racing tonight. That is putting it mildly But, not bad as sitting there watching from the curb. I don’t have much tolerance for that I’ve noticed.