By Kevin Kolodziejski
Most of the East coast’s been blistering hot, so if you live there, the last thing I expect you’ll do anytime soon is take part in a Civil War reenactment. To put on a 100-percent woolen uniform, a forage cap, and a pair of straight-last boots, and walk about with a musket while role-playing whatever happened to your character more than 160 years ago in a field outside of Fredericksburg or Gettysburg or wherever. Which, considering the carnage of that war, could very well mean playing dead for a good part of the afternoon.
Then again, I might be wrong. You just might be willing to endure the itching, chafing, and sweating that’s in store for any summertime Civil War reenactor because experiencing what war was like appeals to you. If that’s so, that’s fine — and a fine example of a credo that serves us all well to follow: “To each his own.”
Though you might be finding this opening hard to follow. After all, this is not CivilWarReenactor.com.
Yet the intro’s apropos because there’s been a not-so Civil War of sorts raging in my body for nearly 20 years that’s a direct result of doing what we both enjoy and regularly do: ride a bicycle. And because of that, I have a question for you.
Is There a Not-So Civil War Being Fought in Your Body?
But even if your answer’s no, there’s something you need to know. I’ve been taking a supplement for about seven weeks that has seemingly negotiated a ceasefire: BruiseMD’s Bromelain Quercetin Duo. But before you learn about the terms of the agreement and the battles fought before it, something needs to be said about the phrase “To each his own.”
It’s an acknowledgment that different people like different things, which is a sentiment that needs to be stressed here because I like to do something that doesn’t make sense to many people, a few who are committed cyclists. To ride hard, really hard, and for a considerable distance twice a week. Every week. An easy week for me just means fewer easy miles.
It’s a pleasure of mine that, in light of my age of 65 and the residual effects of a half dozen or so serious bike crashes, I’m sometimes told I should forsake. I tend to receive that advice, however, only after the advice-giver hears about everything I need to do in order to get my body to ride hard twice a week and how my body feels the day after.
But my body’s been feeling much better “the day after” about a week after I started taking the aforementioned supplement. And the hard rides are going better, too.
A Ride to Remember
I only started taking BruiseMD’s Bromelain Quercetin Duo because it was pitched to me by Chloe Licht, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice-President of the Light Years Ahead public relations agency. As a result, I agreed to have my brother and me use it for 30 days and to write about it in my weekly health and fitness newspaper column if our experimentations proved successful. They certainly did, and so much so that it only makes sense to write about them again, and I’ll start with the seventh day I took the stuff.
On that Saturday, I rode 10 miles to meet my buddy and then do our typical two and a half hours or so together. It wound up, though, being longer and hillier than normal. Yet I felt much better than normal for just about all of our 52 miles together — and especially peppy doing the additional 10 miles needed to get home. By that time on a typical Saturday, I’m usually empty and aching and praying for it all to end.
On that day, however, I said no prayers, for I felt as if I could keep going. The only reason I didn’t was because of what had been going on on recent Sunday rides.
The Recent Sunday Rides
They’re supposed to be easy three hour spins, yet the last few had been anything but. I had been experiencing a good deal of discomfort in the areas adversely affected from the aforementioned crashes — my hips, glutes, and hamstrings — during the first hour and last half hour of the rides. But not this time.
While at the start it did feel as if I had ridden hard the day before, the injured areas felt fine from the first pedal stroke. In addition, that sluggish feeling abated in about 20 minutes.
And I’m pleased to report that the weekend rides since then have been just as pleasant and productive — which is a pretty solid reason for why you may want to try using the supplement I bought once my free samples ran out. Just as solid a reason is found in the tale my brother tells.
The Tale My Brother Tells
Probably because he’s 60 and throws about 250 batting-practice pitches two to four times a week eight months a year, for about six months he had been experiencing a dull ache in his right shoulder upon waking up. It would continue off and on throughout the day and would sometimes escalate into extreme pain when he warmed up to pitch or lift weights, which he still does mightily aggressively. At 5’9” and 215, for instance, he recently deadlifted 300 pounds for 8 reps — and then bitched about not doing 10. Two weeks into his experimenting with BruiseMD’s Bromelain Quercetin Duo, however, the extreme pain had gone away.
Plus, the dull ache “for the most part” had done the same, he said. The off-and-on discomfort he had pegged at a 6 on a scale from 1 to 10 was now never more than a 2 or a 3.
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.
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