The alternative to 'feeling like crap from C treatment' is less acceptable.
During my 3 + yrs of almost weekly chemo, I constantly had to face the 'Feeling like absolute Crap". thing, and that 'in spite of doing this, will I still succumb?" thing...
A quick slap upside the head made me realize I was still 'here', and what we have is NOW, everything else is still unknown...
so, I became happier every ride, every walk, every moment I realized I was still here.
I appreciate 'NOW" very much...
You did your B-day ride - awesome !
be joyful, now...
look forward with anticipation.
It's OK and often good to not be satisfied with yourself, now. There's always 'better' to hope and work for.
But appreciate Now, as much as you are able
... it feels good, it works... it's all any of us have
Ride On
Yuri

Now you are making me feel really old. I was told by some 40 YOs that they hoped to be as fit as I am when they are my age. That compliment felt better.

At 65, the number of randonneurs older than me is shrinking; there's one outlier in our club over 80. We all hope we'll be that guy. I'm just going to focus on enjoying every ride.

Fun thing on the 80 y/o. We had a 100k this summer with an out and back segment halfway. I was on the return and here he came still outbound. Something looked funny as he approached, and as he went by i saw he had no left crankarm - left leg hanging. I looked back and he just kept riding away. Weird. Days later I got the story. His left crankarm came off in the first half, and he finished the ride on one leg. Yeah, we all want to grow up to be that guy.

^^^^^ no that was stupid. ^^^^^
As in,...not a smart thing to do. Heroics and stupidics are not the same.
Hopefully, I will be smarter than that in a very few years.

edit: Bad judgement and careless mistakes are also a sign of aging.

I remember seeing a one legged bicycle messenger in NYC. That one leg was massive.

Feh. Riding one-legged -- it only seems stupid to someone who can't do it.

It's not dangerous, and certainly not hard, unless you have to climb some steep stuff.

I saw a one legged cyclist at Paris Brest Paris. Humbling.

One does what one can....

He's a tough dude who knows his capabilities, which are still formidable. Randonneurs tend to be driven to finish. Otherwise nobody would finish anything longer than 200k.

I had one of those compliments that made me feel old on a ride up Mount Mitchell in North Carolina a few years back when I was 69. A couple miles from the summit, I connected with a young rider in his late 20's and we were chatting away. It was going well until he said "I can't imagine my father being able to do this ride" . He meant well

It's instructive to do that on a trainer or, as I do, on rollers. 2 minutes each leg, enough resistance so that you're crying for your mommy the last few seconds. No slack chain allowed. Made quite a difference to my climbing. Totally not hard aerobically. Say, 10 reps each leg, right leg then left, etc., say a set at 50 rpm and one at 85. It is possible to make it hard enough to be worth doing. I used to do that on group rides which were too slow for me after dropping back to last rider. I'm hoping to get back to that by summer.

I lived in Pine Mountain Club when I turned 40 and for my birthday my wife had a party with BBQ and a softball game at the field there. A friend slid into 2nd base and dislodged something in an old knee injury. He and I planned to do the loop you know as the Heartbreak Hundred the next day and he went anyway with the sore knee.

We drove out to start at Lockwood Valley road and we got all the way around to the center of Lockwood Valley when his knee just locked up. He couldn't move it either way. I was really tired but set out to get the car and pick him up. I guess he got tired of waiting because when I came back in the car he was pedaling with one leg hanging out in the air.

He had surgery that week and came back strong.