Training for Life: When Cancer Changes the Race

The oncologist's office doesn't look anything like a start line. Still, I recognized the feeling immediately: that pre-race mixture of adrenaline, uncertainty, and the knowledge that everything is about to change.

"Squamous Cell Carcinoma" the doctor said, pointing to images I couldn't fully process. A tumor. Lymph nodes involved. Seven weeks of chemo-radiation treatment, followed by months of recovery.

I nodded, asked the necessary questions, and took notes. My wife Rita squeezed my hand. We'd been through hard things before—her near-fatal car accident, my own brush with death after being hit during a training ride forty-four years ago. We knew how to face difficult news together.

But this felt different.

The Irony of Timing

Just two months earlier, I'd been standing on a podium at the Michigan Senior Olympics, having sprinted to second place. A month later, I'd placed 19th among 60 competitors in the 40k road race at the National Senior Games in Des Moines. I'd lost 26 pounds, conquered Old Fall River Road—a ten-year dream realized—and qualified for nationals.

I was 65 years old and living proof that comebacks are possible, that patient work and smart training can rebuild what time has taken away.

I'd spent two years writing about resilience, about how George's death at 68 motivated me to reclaim my fitness while I still could. I wrote about mortality and motivation, about the heart-shaped scar from my accident that I saw as a sign of better things to come.

It turns out that the universe wasn't done teaching me about mortality.

The throat symptoms began with a minor sore throat and persistent discomfort, which I attributed to allergies. Nothing that would slow down a cyclist who'd spent the summer racing against guys half his age. I'm embarrassingly good at ignoring my body when it inconveniences my plans.

By the time I couldn't ignore it anymore, the tumor had established itself.

I spent forty years learning perspective from that 1981 accident. I eventually understood that I had nothing to complain about—I was alive, I could walk, I could ride.

But this? This feels like the universe saying, "You thought you understood perspective? Let's try this."

What Training for This Looks Like

Seven weeks of chemotherapy and radiation isn't like training for the Barry-Roubaix or climbing to 12,000 feet in Colorado. There's no power meter to track progress, no Strava segments, no age-group podium waiting at the end.

However, here's where the cycling comeback becomes unexpectedly relevant: my entire medical team—my primary care physician, ENT specialist, and oncology team—all told me the same thing. Keep riding.

Not despite the cancer. Because of it.

Aerobic exercise builds T cells and NK (Natural Killer) cells—the body's frontline defense against cancer. Every ride I take strengthens my immune system's ability to fight. The fitness I rebuilt over the past two years isn't just about climbing hills faster or sprinting for six-inch margins. It's ammunition.

I'm also grateful to friends who've lived through their own cancer experiences and reached out to share their insights and offer support. Their perspective—what actually matters, what to expect, how to navigate this—has been invaluable.

My doctors emphasized three critical components:

• • Keep cycling to support my immune system and manage mental stress.
  • Prioritize sleep because recovery and healing happen during rest.
  • Focus on nutrition to fuel the immune system and help the body tolerate treatment.

The irony isn't lost on me. I spent two years rebuilding fitness to chase age-group podiums. It turns out that I was training for something more important all along.

The side effects will build like fatigue on a long climb—manageable at first, then increasingly difficult, requiring constant adaptation and mental fortitude. My throat will hurt. Eating will become difficult. Some days will feel like being above treeline on Old Fall River Road, where every breath requires conscious effort.

But I know how to do this. I know how to follow a structured program, prioritize recovery, fuel properly, and trust the process even when results aren't immediately visible. I know how to show up consistently, day after day, regardless of how I feel.

Every lesson from the comeback applies. Every habit I rebuilt becomes a tool in this fight.

The Long Game (Again)

I've been here before, in a way. In 1981, a car struck me during a training ride—threw me 100 feet, crushed my left leg, and ended my racing career. The doctors said the nerve and muscle damage was permanent.

They were right about the racing. But forty years later, some of those nerves began regenerating. Feeling returned. Muscles strengthened. The body has its own timeline, its own capacity for repair that defies medical predictions.

I'm not naive enough to think cancer treatment follows the same trajectory. But I've learned to respect the body's unexpected resilience.

After I quit racing in 1983, I carried bitterness about what I'd lost. Then I read a letter in Velo-News from Jocelyn Lovell—written from a wheelchair by a quadriplegic cyclist who said life wasn't so bad because he could watch TV, drink beer, and eat steak through a straw. His perspective shattered my self-pity.

I literally had nothing to complain about. I had legs that worked. A bike I could ride. A girlfriend who would become my wife.

That accident gave me Rita. The morning I got hit, I was making plans to move to Switzerland to race. If I hadn't been struck, I would have moved away and never met her. Thirty-seven years of marriage. Two successful bike shops. New careers. A life I never would have lived.

The worst thing that happened to me gave me the best thing in my life. I still have a heart-shaped scar from that crash that I swear was a sign of better things to come.

I don't know yet what this diagnosis will give me. However, I know enough about life's complex mathematics to remain open to possibilities I can't currently imagine.

What Comes Next

The 2026 racing season is on hold. Races will happen without me. My friends will clip in and roll out, and I'll be in treatment rooms instead of on start lines.

But here's what I know about comebacks: they don't follow neat trajectories. Mine certainly hasn't. The strongest athletes are the ones who can pivot when conditions change, who can find meaning in suffering, who understand that progress sometimes means showing up for a different race than the one you trained for.

The treatment starts soon. Seven weeks of chemo-radiation, then months of recovery. Somewhere between the immediate and the infinite.

My friend George—the 68-year-old cycling, running, and Nordic skiing legend who inspired me—died suddenly. No warning. No chance to fight.

I get to fight. That's not nothing.

Training for Life

The bike is in the garage, but it won't stay there. The power meter will now track different metrics—not watts per kilogram for racing, but consistent movement to build the immune cells that fight cancer. The race wheels might gather dust, but the training wheels will keep turning.

I'm still training. Still building. Still showing up for the work.

The work just got more important.

When I wrote about returning to racing at 63, I said the most rewarding adventures begin when we're brave enough to admit we don't know everything, humble enough to start over, and curious enough to see what happens next.

Cancer treatment wasn't the adventure I had in mind. But the principle still holds.

At 65, I'm discovering what I'm capable of again—just not in the way I expected. The timeline is uncertain. The outcome isn't guaranteed. The suffering will be real.

But I learned something important during these past two years: showing up is what matters. Doing the work. Trusting the process. Being patient with progress.

Those lessons translate.

The journey continues. Just on a different course than I anticipated.

The work begins now.

To everyone who's followed along with my cycling comeback—thank you. Your support has meant more than you know. The next part of the journey won't include race reports, power analysis, or PRs on Strava segments. But it will include the same honesty, the same determination, and probably the same self-deprecating humor when things don't go according to plan.

If there's anything I've learned from forty-four years of dealing with setbacks, it's this: we're tougher than we think, life is stranger than we imagine, and sometimes the worst days contain the seeds of the best things we'll ever experience.

Time to find out what grows from these particular seeds.