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By Ray Glier
Mike Adsit, 75, lived in a forbidding universe that intruded on his home and work. This gloaming included a doctor’s office, a doctor’s exam room, a hospital room, a hospital operating room. For 12-13 years Mike dealt with the tyranny of cancer, which comes and goes.
Then came the chest pains, which resulted in triple bypass heart surgery and more doctor this and more doctor that.
To escape his run of calamity and try and get healthy, Mike took up cycling.
Of course, he rammed into an Audi, which had suddenly rolled across the well-marked bike path Adsit was on. Mike's helmet cracked and he was injured as he fell.
This farmer’s son never asked, “Why me?” This farmer’s son squared the circle and bent the rock and kissed the hot iron.
He got back on the bike.
Mike, who lives in Plymouth, Mich., was in Des Moines, Iowa a few weeks ago for The National Senior Games and finished 6th in the 5k time trial, 7th in the 10k, and 9th in the 20k road race (M75-79).
“My grandfather was still involved in our farm and they'd been doing it for a lot of years so that my grandfather had mules on the farm before they had tractors,” Adsit said. “Which is to say there's kind of a gritty mentality needed to be in a farm family.
“It was an environment that when the crop is not good, you tighten your belt and grit your teeth and just kind of keep going. You're kind of steeped in that kind of mindset.”
We will get to Mike’s cycling in a moment, but it is important for Geezer Jocks to know Adsit's mindset included taking ownership for his health crisis. He didn’t consider it random (except for crashing into the Audi).
When he was diagnosed with lymphoma 24 years ago, Mike was overweight at 285 pounds. He worked 12 hours a day running a construction firm.
“There's a lot of research today that when you're in a high-stress situation and if you're continually dousing your body in high-stress endorphins, it enables some chronic diseases, like diabetes, heart issues, cancer, the list is pretty long,” Adsit said.
“You're in this bath of stress every day and then, if you're not eating correctly, if you're not sleeping correctly, and you're not exercising, it becomes cumulative.”
The pestilence started in 2001 when Mike was 51. He was found with stage 3 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. That ordeal was an apprenticeship for what was to come.
Treatment calmed the cancer until 2003 when it roared back. That meant more hospital visits. The disease lurked and returned potentially more deadly in 2011. It was time for stem cell treatments and Adsit was bottled up in a room for four days at a time for that toxic therapy.
Mike had begun cycling after his first bout with cancer in 2001 and recovered and participated in the 2015 National Senior Games. He was healthier and on his way through the lymphoma and then whacked again.
Adsit was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2019. Done? Not yet. Mike felt pain in his chest in 2020. All those years of cancer treatment had worn on his heart. Triple bypass came and then recovery, which eventually included bike rides.
Adsit was on his way back to full health and planning a ride in the 2023 National Senior Games in Pittsburgh when the Audi, backing fast out of a driveway, came across a pedestrian/bike lane and Mike slammed into it. His hip swelled to the size of a grapefruit, but he managed to ride in Pittsburgh, though not 100 percent.
And you thought Pete Best was unlucky, or unfortunate.
Only Adsit didn’t consider himself unlucky for the cancer, or heart ailment. He blamed himself.
“I couldn’t walk a mile,” Mike said. “I couldn’t bike a mile.”
In 2001, during his first bout with cancer, he was on his couch one day watching the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong. Adsit was inspired by Armstrong’s cancer battle (it was not yet publicly known of Armstrong’s illegal use of drugs to win the Tour de France seven times).
Mike was living in Dingmans Ferry, Pa., and hauled out a little-used mountain bike. Motivated by Armstrong and the Livestrong Foundation he started riding…and riding. Then Adsit got coaching and joined BaseCamp and its 300-member mission of “train where you belong.”
When the cancer returned in 2003 and in 2011, and a new brand of the disease struck in 2019, Mike stood a better chance of surviving because of that bike. The heart issue came up (likely from all the damage done by chemo), but Mike was healthier. He has dropped 85 pounds.
“People make a decision fairly early on whether they're going to let the disease run them, or they're going to run their disease,” he said “People bite their tongue and double down. There's an old farm term called ‘making a silk purse out of a sow's ear’.
“That’s what I did.”
Mike got a cycling coach through BaseCamp, which is key for Geezer Jocks. Pay attention to this tip.
“If you're later in life, but you really want to adopt this, you know the game of sport, whether it's pickleball, or bicycling, or running, or whatever, make the investment and hire a coach," Adsit said.
“It will give you the goal setting and I call ‘the guilt complex’ because all of a sudden you kind of granted somebody supervision over your training and you don't want to disappoint them.”
Off the bike, Adsit is showing his gratefulness by participating in Imerman Angels, a one-on-one support network for cancer fighters.
Mike is also using his marketing skills in green technology to aid organic fruit farmers who are too small to easily access markets. Adsit started a company Michigan Organic Fruit.
“When we start becoming these senior citizens we all of a sudden become invisible in society,” Adsit said. “We're at this bargaining thing that goes on in the world of, ‘oh well, you need to relax, and you need to go play golf, you need to buy a place in the senior citizens community' and we fundamentally become disconnected in terms of being a contributor.
“I find the whole thing very repulsive.”
Full retirement is heresy for Mike, so he works at Michigan Organic Fruit two days a week. Five days a week Mike is on the bike looking forward, as always.
“Cancer is one of those things that kind of makes you stop and look backwards
and you look at your lifestyle and what you had done to your body,” he said. “Watching that race kind of ignited something in me and made me look forward.”
Mike readies for a time trial in Des Moines. Photo courtesy National Senior Games.
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