More good news

I thought I'd take some liberties with my work time and write a quick post. I went to the cardiologist again today for a follow up appointment after my abortive cardioversion two months back and a month of amiodarone.

It was more of the same with an ECG and echo, I didn't even see the ECG but I assume it was fine, the echo concluded that my heart was of a normal size and my Ejection Fraction was 50% which is fantastic! So now it seems that my only real problem is my heart rythm which misbehaves from time to time, and still doesn't allow me to have full capacity while exerting myself.

I was however able to get hold of the report for the cardioablation that my previous cardiologist performed in 2004. Dr Guerra is going to contact an electrophysiologist and we will consider another ablation as the technology has improved greatly in the passed few years, but only if the other doctor thinks its worth the effort.

So perhaps there is some more hospital time in my near future, but if it is successful then I will feel a lot better ALL the time!

As for my MSc, it's pogressing slowly, but progressing, I had to take a bit of a break to catch up on the reading that I should have done, thats pretty much done now and I should be able to continue writing, and hopefully be finished by the end of the year latest.

All said the news is encouraging, I'm not going to say I'll write more often again, cause I probably won't but I'll try :)

Somewhat wasted day

I got to Dr Guerra's rooms at 7:20 this morning, the expected traffic did not materialise. It was a day of waiting. Good thing I took my book, and a new one just incase I finished that one! Had an early ECG that showed I was in arrythmia, so we went ahead and I was admitted for the day. This time instead of spending hours waiting in the reception while they found me a bed I was sent straight up to the ward... it looked like this might be a quick one.

I got my own room which was and wasn't cool, atleast when there are nurses rushing around you feel like you can't be forgotten. Every now and then someone would traipse in and do and ECG or take blood or put a drip in. But mostly I lay back and read my book, napped, read some more. Finished my book, started the new one. I watched 10 o'clock go by then 11, then 12 at 1pm I got up and went to find out what was going on.

Apparently i was in a general ward and for the procedure I needed to be in the high care ward, but there weren't any beds there currently so I waited and waited while they juggled patients around to find me a bed. Finally at about 2:30 I walked into the high care ward, much to the disgust of the other patients who were variously wired up or being beaten by physio's. I was soon to be wired up myself, but mercifully there was no physio to beat me... or perhaps...

Anyway as I lay there on the monitors one of the sisters came and asked what the problem was, I dutifully answered the usual questions, and then she said, "But you're in sinus rhythm", which was kindof what I though from my appointment on Wednesday morning. Anyway they were most puzzled and said you couldn't cardiovert someone in sinus rhythm blah blah blah. Eventually the doctor came and was a little puzzled himself, but a few minutes he returned and concurred that he thought I was in sinus and could go home. At first I thought he was joking, but apparently not!

Seems the amiodarone has done the trick for now, and I should keep taking 1 of these nasty tablets for the next month! But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and I will only know for certain whether his call is right once I go for a test drive so to speak. I'm gonna give the drug some more time to do it's work and only go for a walk on Monday, then I should know the true verdict.

Another visit to the doc

The past few weeks haven't seen me improve much, infact nothing has changed, I can't run and when I walk fast uphill my heart goes ballistic. I decided perhaps it was time to go see the doctor again. So I phoned up early on Monday morning and had an appointment for just an ECG this morning. The ordinary ECG didn't show much, just that I had an eptopic (unusual/unexpected) beat every now and then, well probably every 5 beats actually.

Fact is, day to day I feel fine, it's just when I exert myself that I feel shody. So they put the ECG cables back on and put me on a treadmill. After 3/4mins I was walking fast at a relatively steep gradient and I could see the ECG measuring between 180 and 210 beats per minute. My heart should never go that fast! Anyway, I think what happens then is my blood pressure drops and I start to feel terrible. So once I'd cooled off I went to speak to the doc again and he said he thinks the bad signals are originating in one of my pulmonary veins and that I should go see an electrophysiologist (I think) to talk about a possible PVI (Pulmonary Vein Isolation). Another option however is a drug which I mentioned in an earlier post which modifies heart rythm but is only available in SA towards the end of the year, not too long to wait I guess...BUT if I'm on those drugs I'm on them for life, if I have a successful PVI then I won't need those specific drugs.

Decisions decisions. Whats happening in the meantime is I am already preparing for ANOTHER cardioversion on Friday. I'm taking amiodarone which is the nasty brother of the other drug coming onto the market. So hopefully things will be better again by the weekend. Whats more I seem to have picked up another cold which is getting me down a bit. Oh well, I think I'll get into bed and try write some software, or some thesis.

Mixed Feelings

I went for an "unscheduled" run this passed Saturday, a friend is going to be in Europe while the local branch of his company does a fun run, so he's got a bee in his bonnet that he needs to get fit. Anyway I went for the run on Saturday evening and well my heartrate jumped up to 180+ and refused to stay down if I ran at all! I still ran intervals, but from then it was clear that my heart was no longer in sinus rythm. Once again I can't identify one cause but I know what the joint causes probably are. This time I'm not sure it's worth going for a cardioversion, but if nothing changes by this coming Monday I'll give the doctor a call. So thats got me feeling pretty bleak, I had kindof gotten used to the idea of having a heart that beats regularly and I was really looking forward to getting off Warfarin. Believe it or not I think perhaps part of it is the lack of regular exercise recently so maybe if I build myself up again gently things will fall into place again.

The other side of the coin is that my masters is going really well, it feels like I'm making very good regular progress and the light at the end of the tunnel is definitely shining brighter. There are a few wrinkles that still need to be ironed out but it seems like the learning curve is getting gentler. As for my writeup well thats stagnated for a few days, but my supervisor has promised to add to the incentive by hounding me for a chapter every week. Whats more he discussed with my boss that I should get half of my day to writeup, so there will really be no excuse! I think I might still need to do a lot of work at home tho, cause that feels right and I'd really like to have this done sooner than later.

Really good day

I went for a really nice 5km run today, not very fast, about 39 mins which is pretty pedestrian, anyway I was chatting about where I am with my project at the moment, and I realised just how close I really am to finishing this project! I mean I've known I'm almost there for some time and there are certainly a few niggly things that I need to sort out, but on the whole, most of the problems are solved. The only major task that needs to be completed now is the software. It just sortof struck me properly this time.

It's about time! So with renewed vigour I came home showere, had a quick bite to eat and then sat down to tackle the software again! Ofcourse a vnc connection over wireless and through vpn is REALLY frustrating and I gave that up as a bad job, to be completed in work time! Then i thought I'd start preparing some of the illustrations! Which require a drawing package, but who knew that this would also be dead slow!? So I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll have to do text only writing at home, and all the other niggly little things will need to be done at work. Which sucks a bit, but oh well such is life.

All in all I think my writeup is coming along slowly but surely. I think I'm almost done with a first draft of one of my chapters. Without drawings it's only 7 pages long, which is perhaps a bit sparse but i'll ask my supervisor to give it a read anyway. Much of the most difficult chapter that I need to write has already been written, as a sortof article I started to write, so I'm almost 2 chapters down! But still, the clock is ticking, I haven't worked out the days left lately, but I know I'll be alarmed!

A bad week

This week has been rather bad for both running and for my new mission. I only got two 5km runs in and there appears to be a problem with my polar getting interference from Melodie's monitor, which effects my results and makes me a little nervous at times. Showing me a heart rate of aroung 160bpm, when I'm pretty sure it's only around 110. We'll have to work something out, but I don't understand why it's happening now, when I had no trouble at the 2 Oceans.

I spent much of last weekend preparing for a presentation i needed to do on Wednesday and my first session with a new student I will be tutoring. I've been considering tutoring as an extra income, because lets face it, we can all do with a few extra bucks. Then I went away with work for Wednesday and Thursday. Pure laziness prevented me from doing much on Friday or Saturday. So all this adds up to not a lot of work happening on the new mission. I plan to get a few pages written today, but I have to watch the Formula 1.

Two Oceans Finish

I bought some of the digital prints taken by the ActionPhoto guys at the Two Oceans. These are the best two I think. The first one shows my discomfort,
the second shows my relief. That's Melodie, my regular running partner, who puts up with all my running issues.Hopefully the next pics will be grad photo's... hehehe

In the beginning... there was Word... but I prefer LaTex

I've officially started my writeup! Well actually I wrote the very first words a few weeks ago. My supervisor suggested I put together a Table of Contents to get my thoughts into order. I know theres a better way to do this... write up as you go! If I ever do ANOTHER degree thats definitely what I will do.

I managed to write about 2 pages tonight, and to add a few more things to my contents page. I also started adding people to my acknowledgements and adding items to my Appendices. I wrote my undergrad thesis in Word and I found it a nightmare and vowed that if I ever did it again I'd use LaTex. Ok, so I didn't but I did know before starting this degree that I would!

I really dig it, it's more of a programming language than a word processor. You need to tell it explicitly what you want it to do, which may sound rather daunting to anyone who hasn't programmed before, but it's not that difficult to learn. What do you get for the extra bit of effort? EFFORTLESS compiling of your document, no worrying about getting things to look right, or fonts changing mysteriously. If you need to insert a figure, everything below your figure doesn't change it's formatting. Whats better, if at the last minute you were to decide that you really DO need that introduction, theres no going through your document checking that all the numbering changed correctly or that the figure references are correct. LaTex does that all for you.

Anyway, thats my 2 cents worth about LaTex, perhaps I won't be as happy with it after 100 pages! Nevertheless it feels good to have made a start... anyone think I'm wasting time blogging about this? Should I rather be writing up?

My first run back

I went for a slow run this afternoon. It actually turned out to mostly be a walk, which was fine with me, I'm still nursing my chest and runny nose, but it was nice to do a little bit of exercise after lazing around for so long. It was just 4km, nothing too strenuous. It was also fantastic that it is winter! I much prefer running in winter, I feel like I can breathe so much easier! Only problem is that by the time you are finished with your run it's pitch dark outside!!

Ok so tonight is the first official night of my new mission. I'll get to it! Hopefully I can squeeze out 2 or 3 pages before I fall asleep.

The new Mission

It's not what you think. I'm not going to stop running, but for now I'm not going to have a running mission. I'm busy completing my Master of Science Degree in Mechatronics Engineering through the University of KwaZulu-Natal. My thesis has always been something over the horizon, but I would have liked to have it complete by June/July, but if I'm honest, the passed month has done me no good! Most of my efforts were concentrated on being certain of completing the race on 11 April. Then I got home and got sick, what it adds up to is almost an entire month of very little work.

I did a little mental arithmetic earlier and if I write a modest length thesis of say 150 pages and say that I have 94 days till the end of July, that means, modestly, that I need to write 1.6 pages a day if I work every day and there are no interruptions. But you can probably count on not being able to write for at least a quarter of those days, so I can comfortably say I need to be writing 2 pages a day and probably more like 3 or 4 a day.

Thats quite a Mission!! As you'll have noticed I've changed the blog a bit to recognise this change in direction. I won't be blogging content as that presents serious intellectual property issues, but I will try to describe my progress without going into detail. I guess this may change some of the readership, but I promise I'll get back to my exercise goals as soon as I've done this.

What now?

I've spent the last two years working towards agoal that I completed last Saturday, now I'm trying to get my mind around the fact that I got there... I actually got there! Also I'm trying to decide what to do next. The obvious thing is that I should continue running, so why haven't I? Well actually I'm sick at the moment and have been since I've got back from Cape Town. I've had a niggling cold that doesn't want to properly lay me flat, but also doesn't seem to get better. So I've been miserable for the passed week really.

But maybe it's a good thing, I'm giving my knee a good rest and perhaps by the time I feel healthy enough to go for a run again I'll have thought of another goal that makes sense. I've thought about doing the 94.7, or the Argus again, but maybe I should just work on running a better 21km?

D day

I considered another title for this post but that would mean you didn't have to read any further, so I'll try to build the suspense.

I slept very badly last night, obviously I was a lot more nervous than I'd first thought! I tossed and turned, got too hot and too cold, looked at my watch regularly, received late good luck sms's and finally it was 4:30 and time to get up. I hate getting up before the sun, it seems so unnatural. After an apple for breakfast we were driving to the start, picking up Melodie on the way. Next thing, we are bunched up amongst a thousand other runners waiting for the start... 20 minutes... 10 minutes ... 5 minutes... 1 minute... 10 seconds... the start gun goes off and nothing happens! Not for a good minute and then another minute to cross the start line!

Then it was a fast walk for the first 10 minutes, which didn't quite work because I had terrible shin splints, so I ran a bit anyway, but my knee wasn't bothering me at all. Had a Gu at the first refreshment station outside Wynberg Girls and found that the little, but rather steep uphill at Carr Hill hardly bothered me at all. About 2km down the road on Constantia road my knee started bothering me mildly, but go progressively worse, I don't know how, but I managed to keep running my intervals which were 55/65 seconds run and rest respectively. My heart behaved well and I had a lot of energy, it was just really a question of controlling my gait to prevent hurting my knee. I managed to continue up Southern Cross drive at about 8min/km but running downhill proved pretty difficult and I didn't pick up any time as I normally would.

We got to the 15km mark in just under 2 hours which was exactly what happened last weekend and my knee was probably in the same shape. Thereafter I could steadily feel my legs getting more and more stiff as my altered gait took it's toll. I was convinced they were going to cramp up. Once again the little hill onto the M3 felt fine, but the little uphill coming into UCT seemed to hurt more than any other hill yet. Managed to run most of the way to the finish, but even the crowds looking on couldn't keep me from taking a few meters walk down the home stretch.

In the end my time was just over 2hours 48 minutes, considering everything I think thats fantastic and I can hardly believe that I did it... all the hard work, the bitching and moaning on my part and the early mornings where I really would have prefered to continue sleeping. They all paid off and I finished!

Now whats next?

The night before

I had a relatively chilled day, went out for lunch with some friends and avoided eating a very big or salty meal, also didn't drink anything and then had a simple pasta dinner for supper. To be honest, my heart is doing a funny skip every now and then, it's like it takes a quick beat, but then takes a long time on the next beat, so I'm not really sure whats going on. I'll just take it as it comes tomorrow.

I don't think I'm particularly nervous, but I am worried about being kicked off the course for not finishing in 3 hours, apparently they clear the course for the front marathon runners, so if you are too slow you aren't allowed to finish! My knee is ok at the moment but I'll only know how much it has healed tomorrow. I'm going to start by walking the first 10 minutes and then I'll only start my intervals. Hopefully that will allow my knee to warm up nicely. I'll also try to stretch as much as possible before hand.

Otherwise I'm pretty excited and upbeat about it and I'm pretty sure I can do it in the necessary time, however someone also pointed out that there are a good few minutes that are wasted just getting out of the starting area! Anyway theres not much point in speculating now, I'm gonna get out there and just do it! :P

6 days to go

This morning's run was both encouraging and dissapointing. It was a really cold morning to the east of Pretoria and I rode there on my motorcycle, this made me really cold for the start and I didn't stretch at all, which was probably not a good idea. Nevertheless it took me about 6/7km to really start feeling my knee badly. We did the first 6km in 45 minutes which is a comfy 7:30min/km, and then I had to walk some to stop hurting my knee. About 3 km later when my muscles start complaining about the fast walking I tried a slightly different gait, to stop my knee hurting. I mostly kept my left leg straigh and did a lot of the work with my right leg.

The result was that I finished the 15km in 1:56min which isn't that fast but it will get me to the finish line in under 3 hrs, 6km in 60 minutes is not too difficult. I'm definitely going to start the race, but what I'm also going to do is to rest my knee as much as possible. At the moment I'm sitting with a hotpack on it because it was actually really sore today, but thats probably because I've been sitting most of the time after the race. I flew down to Cape Town this afternoon on a very cramped 1time flight. I know what some people are thinking... that I'm doing damage, and you are probably right, but I've come too far to give up now.

This week I won't do much more than a few gentle walks. I don't think I can get any fitter now, and I'm pretty sure that the prep I've done will get me to the finish. Once I've done the race, I promise I'll let my knee heal!!

9 days

I had hoped to go for an 8km run this afternoon, it was time trial which meant I could conveniently drop out after every 2km lap if my knee started to hurt. However I'm not sure what was wrong, perhaps I ran too fast, or perhaps it was something to do with lunch, which was the healthiest thing I could see on the menu, other than a salad, which would have had even less street cred. Whatever it was I wasn't feeling 100% and struggled to run most of the way. In the end I chickened out after 6km, which was ok, because my knee was starting to hurt. Whats more it was actually quite a good pace (for me) at 7:12km/min!
From my heartrate data, it doesn't really appear that I was taking strain. So thats why I thought it was a blood sugar/pressure thing. Anyway hopefully I can prevent that in the race. I'm thinking of not doing anything on Friday and just doing the 15km on Saturday. Next week I'm going to do very little running, as I'd prefer to stay off my knee.

11 days, I think my knee might hold

I went for a 6km run this afternoon and although I actually found it quite tough, probably once again because I wasn't strict enough about what I ate and how much fluid i drank. Oh well Wednesday will be better. My knee behaved much better today although by about the 5.5km mark it was letting me know it was there, but nothing near the pain of before.

I think resting it over the weekend was wise. I'll try run a 7km on Wednesday and then walk 4km on Friday and then see how I manage the Zoom Zoom Mazda 15km. It will really give me an idea how my fitness and my knee will hold up. If my knee gives trouble I will not train on it until race day, but will rather try to do comparatively length of time training on a bike. Hopefully then a full weeks rest will have helped it, because it seems like the orthotics are working, but perhaps there's just some left over swelling that gets in the way when I run now.

I had a gut wrenching moment this afternoon, I was approaching the 3km turn around mark when I looked down at my monitor and it said 210bpm!! Which can only mean one thing ofcourse, for about 30 seconds my heart (in the other sense) sank and I imagined going back for another shock, but then I noticed that the indicator that the signal is coded, a little line around the beating heart, was missing! I asked Melodie to step away so that I was certain to be picking up only my heart rate, and to my immense relief it dropped to a very respectabel 100 bpm. It remained within reasonable limits for the rest of the run... atleast my heart is happy with me :)

Not long now!!

13 days to go!!

Two weeks today is race day!! How time flies!! I got my new orthotic inserts yesterday and I think they helped. I went for a 5km run yesterday, which I completed in 36minutes, which is well withing my target range, and I was using reasonable intervals. Whats more it was a relatively hilly route. In about the last 500m I could start to feel my knee again, but MUCH less than before, so it leads me to believe there is some improvement due to these inserts.

My heartrate is still good, following my effort, as it should. I've attached the heartrate data from Friday to prove it.
I then went for about a 3hr cycle this morning, as promised. It seems to be really difficult to find safe places to cycle in Pretoria with verges that allow you to get out of the maniacal drivers way! But we got home safely so it's all good. Ended up doing about 60km, which is also pretty good considering it's almost a year since I touched a bike seriously.

16 days!! Saturday will be two weeks!!

I can hardly believe how close it is now! In just over a week i fly down to Cape Town and then it's a week till the race!

I went for a run today, it was Premier (formerly "Hell on tar") but not nearly as bad as the Sunrise Monster. I decided to try out a knee support, one of those sleeves that has a hole over your knee cap. It seemed to help at first but I still started to feel the pain in about the last 500m, so I did about 4.5km without pain... better than Monday. I also held an icepack to it last night and I'm sitting with one on it right now, perhaps it'll help, even if it's not really that sore when I'm not running.

Someone at the running club suggested that I do some form of exercise that gets me off my knee while keeping me fit, so I'm probably going to go for a 3 hour ride on Saturday. I'll keep doing 4s and 5s in the week to keep my running muscles going until I get used to the orthotics, which I should get tomorrow or on Friday. It's really strange that all the people I know who are running the 2 Oceans, who are in their late 20s and early 30s all have knee trouble at the moment. I guess its just when you start running more than you are used to.

Between my heart and my knee, the program I was trying to follow is pretty well stuffed, but I still think all the time I spent on the road before should put me in good stead for the race.

And for those of you who don't know what I do, I (try to) design robotic systems for a living, and my first system came properly alive today, which is really cool, and very satisfying :) There's still a lot of work to be done, but it is moving around all on it's own. Lots of fun :)

18 days...and a visit to the orthotist

So I went to the orthotist today and he had me walk on one of those sensor boards, which displayed plainly that I had VERY broad flat feet, that I pronate badly and that the bones of my third and fourth toes in my left foot, take a pounding every time I walk. These in combination all probably add up to me having a bad gait which can cause my knee to move in a way that can cause serious pain.

Solution... more orthotics, with more instep support and a little goodie pushing my toe bones up on my left foot. I should get it by the end of the week. BUT... it could take some time for my feet to get used to them and in the mean time it could be quite painful for my feet and my knees. So the question is, how do I stay fit enough to complete this race?

I did 6km this afternoon... add in the walk there then I did 7km, but by 4km my knee was bugging me. I managed to finish the run in a respectable 44min, which is 7:20min/km and under my target pace of 7:30 so mostly a good run. I'd hoped that perhaps running in my old shoes would help as I can't remember having major knee issues in them, but it's obviously an overuse thing. You probably find I've worn some cushioning out or something and it'll take some time to heal, but I don't have the time. So the chances are I'm gonna run this race anyway, with a sore knee and either stop halfway through, or push myself and do some serious damage!! :(

Anyway, I'll see what happens later this week when I get my new orthotics. As a side issue I thought I'd mention that my heartrate is still slow and regular indicating that I'm still in sinus rythm, which is ofcourse a really good thing, and the fantastic outcome of this whole effort, so if I can't run, I've still won :)

20 days... the irony of it!!

I went for a nice run yesterday morning, because my running partner was not going to be here yesterday afternoon. It was a good run, 5km, just over 35 min, which is just over 7min/km. I set the intervals to 1min running and 1:15 recovery, which seemed to work quite well.

This morning I started a 10km race...the Right to Run in Arcadia...it was a flat course and I thought it would be a breeze, but alas, by the three km mark I could already feel my knee and by 4km it was really bothering me, I stayed on the course till 5km and then decided to get back to the finish as soon as possible. So I walked back about 2.5-3km and finished (the 7.5/8km) in 60mins, which isn't too bad I guess considering.

So if you haven't noticed the irony yet then I'll point it out to you. I train for 2 years aiming to finish the 2 Oceans half marathon, I think I am fit enough, cardiovascularly, to complete the race, but now, with 20 days to go, its my knees that are causing me trouble!! From here it's supposed to be plain sailing, money in the ank and all those cliche's. Maybe deep down, subconsciously, I don't want to do this thing?

Well I think next week I'm going to try using my old shoes again. I can't remember feeling this knee problem before I got my most recent pair of new shoes. But I will also make an appointment with a podiatrist, hopefully he/she doesn't tell me to rest it for too long.

22 days - I thought I'd have a rant :P

Spending a lot of time running, driving and motorcycling on the roads of Pretoria I think I have a fair view of motorists behaviour and attitudes. I'm not even going near taxi's because thats a whole different discussion altogether, but I will say this, don't dice a taxi, they have no shame and will knock you over even if you are on a pedestrian crossing!

I'd like to rant about the general car driving public to which I belong. You would swear that many drivers live in their cars and never get out of them, because the minute they do get out of them, they become... yes... PEDESTRIANS!!! Or perhaps they feel the need to get back at the world when they are in their cars because other people treat them badly when they are pedestrians? I don't understand it, the number of people who will miss a runner by 20cm when there is no oncoming traffic! Why? If there is oncoming traffic I will move off the road, but if the whole road is open, it is the easiest thing in the world to give a runner a wide berth!

I heard from a friend that one of her friends was targeted one morning, the driver, in a Landcruiser! went straight for her! She had to dive out of the way to avoid being hit! What is wrong with people? Do people not understand that in actual fact in the suburbs, the pedestrian is supposed to be king?!! If a driver hits a pedestrian it is the drivers fault immediately!!? The looks one gets for daring to step infront of a car when they are about to stop at a stop street anyway! I would swear I had no right to cross the road! I don't understand people's attitudes. Is it because I am out there exercising and they feel so guilty that they don't exercise themselves? I think this will remain one of my pet hates until South African traffic laws start being adhered to, but I don't see that happening any time soon... and probably not in my lifetime!

Another pet hate is that of people parking on the pavement, or perhaps sideWALK is the better word here! Especially when there is a parking space already between the road and the sidewalk, but drivers decide they must park as close to the house they are visiting as possible, forcing me to run in the road when I'm trying to avoid maniacal drivers! I am seriously considering printing out a little piece of paper asking the driver to have some consideration and to leave the sidewalk open for pedestrian use only! I will politely leave these in the drivers side window, perhaps some people will change their attitudes?

Anyone have any suggestions? Or is this just a silly minor problem in a country beset with so many bigger problems that this is insignificant?

23 days

While I certainly don't have as much power as I did before I'm defititely feeling better than on Monday. I think it must have been too much salt, I'll have to be very careful indeed going forward. I ran 6km on a route that included some long, mild hills, which I found relatively challenging, especially when compared to running hills a few weeks ago, but I guess I must admit I was in hospital last week, and I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of power is due to the effects of amiodarone, which has a 50 day average half life in your body. That means it takes 50 days to halve the amount stored in my tissue, so in 100 days I will still have a quarter of the 1000mg I took in my body!! This is good for my heart rythm, I guess, because it'll probably stop me from getting out of sinus for a while, but the other effect is that my heart rate is REALLY slow and I assume consequently i have quite low blood pressure. You would think then I should eat more salt...but that is obviously also very bad for me!My knee did bother me a bit today, which is bad news! I thought perhaps running with the orthotics would help, but by the 5th km it was starting to niggle and was noticeable all the way home. I think I'll leave it till after my long run this weekend to see how it feels, then I'll make an appointment to see a doctor about it.

24 days...MUCH better

I made some time for a run this afternoon, I thought it was necessary after yesterday's dismal performance. Did 5km in 39 min which is still too slow and I'm still not 100% but I'm getting there fast, I think a 5 or 6 tomorrow will have me back to 7:30 and I think i'm gonna stay there this time and not try to go any faster! I've learned my lesson... perhaps Marli will take heart from that :)
I wore my orthotic inserts today and I must say the mild shin pain (I'm not sure that it's shinspplints) that I normally have when I start running didn't appear. Perhaps this means that they also sort out my knees? We ran a relatively flat course today...certainly when compared to Saturdays Monster! So any knee pain was unlikely to start. But I'm very aware of it now and will be careful.

So now for something a little more amusing, being a bachelor I sometimes don't have everything in the house to make a decent supper, and even though I keep pretty healthy stuff in the house, (brown rice, wholewheat pasta, beans, frozen veggies, lean chicken, lean beef mince... blah blah) I sometimes don't seem to have everything that goes together to make anything really good. So tonight I decided I wanted to eat brown rice, but really didn't have much to go with it. Anyway this is what I ended up making and it was actually REALLY good... and I think quite healthy:
1 cup uncooked brown rice, precooked according to instructions :P
2 cups frozen thai stirfry mix
1 onion, finely shopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tin mussels
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp fish sauce, or to taste (very salty!)
1 tbsp olive oil
black pepper to taste - lots for me :)

Cook garlic and onion in olive oil till transluscent, add stirfry mix and pepper, cook for 2/3mins till defrosted. Add rice and fish sauce and stir thoroughly. Add mussels with cottonseed oil and all, stir in thouroughly. Stir in egg, keep stirring until it's dissappeared :P
Munch away :)

Basically, lots of brown rice, a little bit of oil, some veggies and some protien, what more could you want from supper, and you can eat it out of a bowl :)

25 days

I went for what was supposed to be a run today, to check out my knee, but it ended up being mostly a pretty slow walk, so I won't show a graph, my heart is still in sinus rythm.

Unfortunately I think I've been a little too relaxed on my salt intake the passed few days, or perhaps theres a side effect of amiodarone that I'm not aware of. When I try and exert myself it feels a little like I've been punched in the stomach, which is usually how I feel when I'm retaining water due to salt intake, except this time I can't really remember when I've eaten food that was too salty.

I'll take an extra diuretic this evening and hopefully it will be better tomorrow. I might go for a run tomorrow if i get the time, to catch up and properly check my knee out.

26 Days... knee trouble :(

I've been reading up a little about runners knee and there are many sites with information. It's a very common problem and there are a number of listed causes that I think apply to me!

First - flat feet, I do have flat feet and a few years I went to a podiatrist (or was it an othopeadic surgeon?) to get orthotics because I often get shin splints if I walk fast, however I stopped wearing them as the problem seemed to stop bothering me as much, probably since I began running regularly. Well atleast it stopped bothering me in my daily life, shin splints definitely do bother me from time to time while running, and perhaps this has something to do with my sore knee.

Second - related to the first is overpronation (foot rotating too fat inward on impact), but I already have shoes that help with this problem, they have a large instep, and my last shoes did well to prevent this. I have exactly the same type of shoe as my last pair.

Thirdly - overtraining, or atleast a sudden increase in training. Over the passed few weeks I have been running 30-40km a week, which is 25-50% up from what my body is used to, but it's strange that its happening now, because I started training like that about 2 months ago, and I would imagine the running that I did the past year would condition me to some extent for such an increase.

Fourthly - inadequate stretching, here I have to admit I am guilty! Especially of the quads and hamstrings. I don't stretch a lot and recently at the club they have given up stretching for mild strength exercises before a run. I think I will try to remedy this immediately.

Another cause they mention is an imbalance between the strength of you quads, hamstrings and iliotibial band (ITB). Perhaps this is a cause but I have no idea how I can find that out.

So the question now is what to do about it? It was definitely pronounced yesterday due to the hilly terrain, but the 2 Oceans is hilly terrain and if I end up with knee pain like yesterday on the big run I will be very disappointed! Do I go straight to a podiatrist or go to my GP? Do I try make some changes myself first? Start streching more, start wearing my 4 year old orthotics while running? Perhaps those could now cause more damage? Stop running downhill!? Downhills are where I can gain the most time because they apply the least effort to my heart... I really would prefer not to stop running downhill.

Then adding to my woes are that I have serious deadlines looming at the end of this month and every day I take off means less time to work on work. So I'm reluctant to go see a doctor again after last weeks full day off. Oh well I'll think about it a bit more today, see how I feel after tomorrow's run and then make a call.

27 days... if it's not one thing then it's another!!

To be perfectly honest I was a bit worried on Thursday night that, although the procedure had worked, I had again slipped out of sinus rythm later the same day. I could have sworn there were irregular beats as I was lying in bed going to sleep. However last night and this morning proved me wrong. I'm back to having a slow regular beat that responds perfectly to effort, so my heart rate is once again an indication of speed or steepness of the hill.

The graph is of the 10 I did this morning which was aptly named the Sunrise Monster. The start was scheduled for 6:08, sunrise and the terrain was monstrous. The hills around Pretoria are pretty scary when you don't have a motor vehicle!! On the steepest hill, which rivals the roads on the side of Signal Hill in Cape Town, one woman had passed out and soon after an ambulance came passed to help her out!

I erred on the side of caution this time, walking up most of the hills and jogging the downhills, we were going along at a nice pace, when something else that has been bothering me very mildly for the passed few weeks, but in comparison was too small to mention here really came to the fore! My left knee started complaining to me! I think it was all the downhills, because it really was very hilly terrain.

So now my heart is happy again, and I intend to keep it that way for a long time, but my knee is unhappy! Think the universe is trying to tell me something!!?

29 days... and back in business i think

Before I go have a badly needed nap, I thought I'd get some thoughts down. Or rather a description of how this morning went.

I woke up this morning with a really slow seemingly regular heartbeat and I thought perhaps I wouldn't need to go for a cardioversion. However when I went for my ecg later it was apparent that although my arrythmia was slower, it was still there. If you look at a normal ecg nothing much happens between the big peaks, well mine had a whole lot of little blips inbetween indicating atrial fibrillation, so unfortunately the cardioversion was on.

So I walked down to the hospital admissions where I waited for a bed to be freed for me in one of the cardiac wards. I don't think it was where he wanted me but I ended up in the cardiothoracic (pronounced thorasick) ward, with people recovering from bypass surgery, but thats beside the point. I then had an ecg done, they use the conductive pads with the goo that takes days to remove. I also had a set of bloods taken, I have no idea why, and a failed attempt to put a drip into the back of my right hand, which was rather painful and will nodoubt result in a huge bruise. When the second attempt was successful they finally got me all tubed up and wired up. It was about 10:30 and I was starving, having not eaten since supper the night before.

Anyway Dr Guerra arrived and put some huge electrodes on my right shoulder and low down on my right side. Then they administered the anaesthetic and I was gone, waking up a few minutes later a lot more alert than I ever remember after being under. No dry mouth no nausea, no wanting to ask the nurse for water but not quite getting your tongue to behave enough to get a syllable out. As operations go it was quite pleasant! :P The nurse, Ude, informed me that everything went well and I only got one shock! Straight back into that magical sinus rythm!! :D

I sat there for 30mins before they brought me the tastiest plate of toasted cheese, tomato and ham sarmies I've had in a long time. It was only when I got out of bed that I noticed how sore my shoulder and side were, no doubt from the masses of energy that had flowed through them not an hour earlier. Nothing a good nights rest wont fix.

Ude insisted that I take a wheelchair back to Dr Guerra's rooms where he informed me that all had gone well and that I was in sinus rythm. That I should take my old dosage of meds and no mention was made of the amiodarone... I wasn't quite alert enough to ask him about it but his silence implies I don't have to take any more. So thats that, no worse for wear, except for a few missing chest hairs, a sore hand, shoulder and side. I'll be back at work tomorrow and I think I'll go for a walk in the afternoon and maybe a 10km on Saturday!

I said it would be some interesting data!

Today's run was interesting, although I didn't feel as bad as Monday or as good as a few weeks ago, I did feel a little better. I was 400mg of Amiodarone up, so I assume it is taking some effect. You can see from the graph that my heart was behaving even more unpredicatably! Hopefully by tomorrow it will have taken enough effect to either have slipped me back into sinus rythm or help the cardioversion force me into sinus rythm


It was hills again, this time run by the whole club. It was sobering knowing that a few weeks ago I was running up that hill as fast if not faster than everyone and now I couldn't keep running for the 200m hill. Anyway I ran 45 seconds of the hill and then walked the rest, resulting in the uphill taking me 2min instead of just over 1min. Amazing what the rythm of the heart does! It's a huge difference. In all we did 6km with 6 hills, which was more than I intended to do, but I'll sleep well tonight and be ready for tomorrow's procedure.

I've been thinking about what might happen after tomorrow. I think, whether I'm in sinus or not, Dr Guerra will probably suggest that I stay on the amiodarone for a few more days and perhaps try another cardioversion. Whatever happens I'm still not convinced that I should shift this goal out yet. I want to do the 2 Oceans in a month and if I'm feeling well enought to continue training I will. I think whatever happens tomorrow I'll take it a little more easy than before. I'll concentrate on getting the distance done and anything faster than 7:30 per km will be too fast. Afterall the goal was alway just to finish! I got so caught up with this new found strength that I forgot that. I have a bad heart, I should never let myself forget that, I think for the most part I have learned to live well within that, but the passed few months just allowed me to forget for a while. I won't make that mistake again.

30 days and a little ray of hope

I phoned my cardiologist at 7:30 this morning and after talking to me for a minute he suggested I come in for and ecg immediately, which I did after a bite to eat. As I suspected the ecg showed atrial fibriallation, the reason for me feeling so lousy while exercising the passed few days.

He has put me on amiodarone immediately, which is a heart rythm modifying drug. It's quite nasty, if it's used chronically and thats why I'm not on it, but for acute use I guess it can be quite handy. Search in google images for amiodarone and you'll see some of the side effects. He just wants me on a high dose until tomorrow morning, perhaps it just helps my heart slip back into rythm. If not he will try a cardioversion, which entails a mild anaesthetic and a high voltage shock to the chest. Fun :P

If that doesn't work then he has told me that there is a new drug recently released on the US market that has the same rythm modifying effects as amiodarone, but none of the nasty side effects. In a year or two it should be available in SA and I could take it as a chronic medication to keep my heart in rythm.

What he said about the 2 Oceans is that if I'm feeling good about it I should do it. If not then I shouldn't. Well at the moment I'm not feeling that good about it, but I'll keep training gently and see what tomorrow holds. I'm still gonna go for a run this evening and it'll be interesting to see what my HR monitor does.

32 days to go

I tried to get hold of my cardiologist today, unfortunately I was too late to get him on the phone and will have to wait till Wednesday. Although it's urgent I don't think it's life threatening, only goal threatening. Hopefully I can speak to him on Wednesday and perhaps get an emergency appointment. Maybe he'll agree to give me a cardioversion.

I still ran today but it really does feel like I'm worse off at the moment than I was before New Year. I just have less capacity to go faster, especially uphill, even up mild hills. Compared to a few weeks earlier, it really makes me sad.

This is what my heart rate looks like, as you can see there are times when my heart rate jumps to 220 bpm. I don't think it's as bad as it looks, and I've gotten used to this kind of thing happening every now and then. However in this new mode it happens more and more often. Marli left me a comment suggesting that I rest a bit, perhaps that is good advice but I'm so close!! I've booked the tickets entered the race, I'll have gotten the T-Shirt! And I'll be able to say I ENTERED the 2 Oceans in 2009! :(

For now, until I have a proffesional opinion to the contrary, I'm going to keep training gently. Hopefully things come right before the race.

34 days and I must admit I'm feeling rather despondent

I skipped Wednesday's run and tried to rest as much as possible in the hope that maybe my heart rythm would fix itself. Afterall I haven't really changed what I've been doing that seemed to encourage it to do this in the first place. I'm still trying to watch my diet, exercising regularly, trying to sleep lots. So physically/mechanically I can't see that there is much of a difference in my heart from last week to this week. Perhaps a rest would have helped it get back to where it should be.

Last night's run proved otherwise, whats worse, it seems to me that whatever mode my heart is in now, it gives me less capacity to exert myself than I had last year! Yesterday the chosen route for the club was Premier which is very tough, so we decided to do an easier route, Lynwood. It is a gentle downhill and then the same gentle uphill back. I was mostly fin on the way down but my monitor kept registering 220+ on the way back at the end of my running interval. In the end I gave it up as a bad job and walked home.

It is really soul destroying to have something this fantastic dangled in front of you for a few weeks and then just as quickly removed! I'm pretty upset about it, I'm angry with the world, angry with the person I blame for me being in this position in the first place and I guess if I believed in a benevolent god, I'd be angry with he/she/it too. Lucky for me I don't really... but thats a discussion for another day.

For a few days I allowed myself to start believing that I was on the way, if not to a full recovery, then to a state a lot closer to having a normal heart. A place where I wouldn't have to be quite so hard on myself about eating, sleeping, drinking, exercising. But now it feels like I'm not back to square one, I'm back to square -10! Enough lamenting.

I'll just have to work with this again and see what can be done with more regular training. I did go for my long run this morning. 13km in 1hr47, that is too slow 8:20 gets me to 21 in 175 mins which is 2hr55. Thats cutting it a bit fine, and considering this run was on a relatively flat route, I doubt I could keep it up anyway! None-the-less this mornings run wasn't as bad as yesterday's. I guess I'm already adjusting to this new setup and it will just take a little more time to get fully used to it and to see how far I can push myself. You can see from the graph below that i am back to running set intervals, where the times are 45 seconds running and 1:30 walking.

What is curious though is that there were times when I saw my hr go to 220 on my watch, but there is no record of it in the data. Perhaps this is a good sign, but who knows, until I've spoken to the cardiologist on Monday I won't really know what to think. Hopefully he can fit me in somewhere for an emergency appointment. What might really get me down is if he says that he now thinks I SHOULDN'T do the 2 Oceans. That would be heart breaking, excuse the pun. I should stop second guessing, it clearly gets me into trouble!

I suppose for those of you who read my blog, it was becoming a bit of a monotonous happy fest. Nothing like some arythmia to keep the drama going :P Hey look, it seems like I haven't completely lost my sense of humour!

36 days - I think I'll just have to settle back into the old idea

As I said I would I have rested this week. After Monday's dissapointing run, I thought it a good idea to take the week off. So I'll go for a slow run tomorrow and then see how I do on longer run on Saturday. Probably 13/14km. I'll have to go back to running intervals, because as Monday's graph shows I'm back to have very little variability in my heartrate, which is very disappointing.

All this has made me think long and hard about whats been going on in my heart. When it comes to hearts I only have my common sense and a little bit of reading up to count on, but as I lay in bed this morning in that state inbetween waking and sleeping I started thinking of electrical circuits. More than half of my undergrad studies were devoted to electical and electronics engineering, so it is something I know quite well. I also know that a heart is basically an electromechanical system. There are neural pathways which transport electrical signals around the heart causing muscle tissue to contract or relax in time with an electrical pulse generated by the sinus node in the right atrium (top right chamber of the heart).

The atria and the ventricals are electrically isolated from one another except for the AV (atrioventricular) node, which in a normal heart delays the pulse long enough for the atria to complete there contraction, and then conducts the electrical pulse to the ventricals. It's a fantastically clever system and works very well when things are going right.

In my heart there are some stray electrical signals which I believe cause my atria to beat faster than they should. My doctor attempted to burn some of the pathways a few years ago when I had an angiogram. I think they call it a cardioablation. He described them as little self sustaining circuits which send signals round and round in my atria. They get blocked at the AV node, and more so because of the medication I'm on.

So with all this in mind I was semidreaming this morning and thinking about all the electromagnetic radiation we are exposed to on a daily basis. I know that EM radiation induces voltage in wires that are near it... infact if you go put a coil of wire under a high power transmission line, you can steal power from the electrical company without touching the wires. I started thinking about what all this EM must be doing to a heart that already has a bias towards these stray electrical signals. A heart that is perhaps in every other way getting stronger and healthier because of frequent exercise and relatively healthy living. Well the conclusion I come to is that IF those stray electrical signals were perhaps tending towards fading away then all the EM radiation would just re-excite those signals everytime I used a cellphone or walked close to cellphone tower or under a high power line.

Ok I agree, it sounds a bit looney, but bare with me. The strange thing is that I have no doubt that this change over from arythmia to sinus rythm occured while I was on holiday over December. During that time I didn't do a lot of exercise, I didn't eat particularly healthy and I certainly didn't abstain from alcohol. So why did it happen then? Perhaps it was just ready and the rest I had allowed it to change pace. That may be, but I have a better idea! I spent 4 nights on the Orange river, I had no cellphone with me, no-one did. There are very few cellphone towers in range of that stretch of the river and I saw no lights so there was very little electrical power around.

So maybe my heart was ready because of the work I've done and being away allowed these stray signals to fade away without being re-excited. Sound nuts? I'll never know for certain, this is all supposition. I just know it was fantastic for a few weeks to have a heart that was beating in correct rythm. Maybe a few weeks as far away from civilisation every year wouldn't be a bad plan!

What I do plan to do though is to speak to my cardiologist next week (he said I should phone on Mon/Tues/Wed) and ask if he thinks its worth cardioverting me again considering that I was in sinus rythm last week. Anyway I'll keep posting, maybe it happens again.

The anatomy of a stuff up - 39 days

I kindof new that it was too good to be true. Anyone who knows about heart conditions knows that my arythmia just going away is no small thing. It's huge, it's like putting a V8 in Mini. The difference between the amount of energy and power I have is unbelievable. Well unfortunately last night I notice that my heart rate was fast and irregular, which it typical of my arythmia.

I was trying to deny it and went for a run this afternoon, but I could feel the difference immediately. Not to mention that I could see it im my heart rate. Where when I walked to the school the past few weeks my heart rate rarely went above 90bpm, it was jumping between about 95 and 110. Then on the run I could feel it in the back of my throat, I know that sounds strange, but I get a dryness in the back of my throat which has been completely absent the last few weeks. When I got on the hill, I'd run 100m and my heartrate was up to 220bpm so I stopped, walked to the 4km mark and walked back. Dejected.I wasn't gonna put this up but then I thought I'd better incase some people reading this were thinking I'm being dramatic. Actually the graph looks a lot worse than it should. My watch says my average heart rate was 118 where this graph says 180. It went briefly to 220 and then went back down to 115/116 so don't be alarmed, just see that it stayed pretty stable at 115/6 until I started running up the hill.

Whats more my heart was doing pretty strange things. It would DROP as I ran intervals on the way down. It would drop from about 118 to 112 as I ran. I haven't quite worked out what that means yet. But it doesn't seem right.

Why do I think this has happened? Well I think it's a number of things. Firstly I think it was a huge mistake for me to decrease my meds. I should just have managed my races and training better so that I wasn't running straight after taking meds. I remember when I was last in sinus rythm my cardiologist wanted me to be in that state for a year before he would allow me to come off warfarin. So even though my current cardiologist suggested that I come off some meds I think it was a mistake.

Secondly perhaps I'm training too hard, it's like someone gave me some extra pocket money and instead of putting it in the bank I went and spent it! As I felt better I pushed harder and harder and because my body stopped telling me to stop I went ahead and to a certain extent threw caution to the wind.

Add to that maybe too little rest, some strong coffee and a draft beer yesterday and viola, by early evening it was overs and I noticed how my heart was beating funny. I don't think I should stop living, I don't do anything in excess...except perhaps exercise. Every now and then, like maybe once a month I like to have a beer, I don't think anyone can fault me for that. Once in a while I like some good coffee, you also can't fault me for that. What I will do is to abstain from strong coffee and any alcohol until after the race.

I'm going to skip Wednesday's training session in the hope that a good rest will give my heart a chance to regain it's magic. Also i'm going to go back onto my old dosage of medication. Maybe, just maybe I'll get it back. Whether it does or not I'm going to train a lot easier in the future. I'm going to concentrate on completing the run and not try for any time. The excitement of getting better just made me get carried away. Sure I'm pretty bummed at the moment, I had something and I lost it, but this is nowhere near being 19 and your doctor telling you your heart is the size of a football and is only working 20%.

I'm still going to do this thing even if I take 2hrs59:59. I've been at this for too long to give up now.

41 days

We only did a 4mk walk yesterday in anticipation of the race this morning. So yesterday's graph is pretty boring, but I'll include Wednesday's graph which is a bit more interesting. Refer back to this post. You can see the three 800m intervals and that some of the way through the last one I chickened out for a minute before continueing. I think my muscles are conditioned to expect me to stop after about 1min and 4mins of continuous running is a stretch at the moment. So we'll see how this goes.

As for this mornings race/training run, it was pretty good, but I'm pretty tired now. We did 14, turning around at the 8km mark to run back to the 7km mark and again from the 9km mark to the 8km, much to the dismay of many of the other runners and walkers, by that stage. Everyone tried to tell us that we were running the wrong way, so I replied that I'd forgotten to take coke at the last water stop :P.

You can see that my heart rate varies quite well between the top and bottom values, however I'm finding this method of control quite frustrating as well. As I warm up, or get more tired, or walk up hills I have a hard time getting my heart rate to recover. It was originally set to restart the intervals when I got to 95bpm, but after 4km this proved REALLY annoying so I stopped and set it to 98bpm which worked a bit better, but especially when walking uphill it was difficult to get it down to that. I'll have to push it up to about 103bpm I think. On the upper end I found that setting the limit to 132bpm was still too low, and I think I'll want to set it to about 140 in future.

Another option I will consider is to run for longer intervals, say 4min, and then have a heart rate determined recovery period. That means I'll always run for 4min at a time and then walk till my heart rate has recovered. I'll experiment with this next week sometime I guess.

We also tried out using the Goo sachets, which seemed to have kept me in energy and weren't TOO disgusting. I don't really enjoy the texture of these gels in your mouth, but I think they may be worth using.

Looking at the pace today just under 7:30min per km, I think this could have been a sub 70min 10km especially considering that I didn't feel like I was pushing at any time. I stopped when I was tired and probably stopped for a lot longer than I needed to, trying to make my monitor happy. I think this could have been done a lot faster. I'm not sure about sub 70mins yet, but I think it's looking that way for the 10.

What is a little concerning is my heartrate at the end of the run. I wanted to gently run the last km, I now I can run 800m continuously, so I didn't see the harm. By this stage I was no longer following the monitor as it was too difficult to get my heartrate under 100bpm, so I was starting to run again once it was at about 105. Not to mention that the last km of this race is almost contunuously downhill and when it's not downhill it's the finishing lap on a cricket pitch. So I didn't see the harm, but my heart complained, and this time I can't blame it on my running partner's watch because she was a good 2m away, so obviously there are still a few issues inside, but on the whole I'm still feeling much stronger at the moment.

My legs are more sore than usual, but I think thats due to the longer duration of running at one stretch. It should go away as I start to try and run for longer and longer intervals. Have a lekker weekend, me I'm gonna take the next 48 hours till Mondays run to chill and do as little as possible!! :)

An unexpected scouting trip including Southern Cross Drive!!

I'm currently sitting at a restaurant in Simon's Town waiting for my meeting to start at 11am. I can see the marina in the foreground, fluttering flags and mast sticking up in the breeze. The naval harbour is behind that and in the background is False Bay, a really pretty sight and there is a cool sea breeze blowing in. What a hard life. It's great to come here everytime.

So I came down to Cape Town, kindof expecting not to have any of my own time, so I didn't plan anything for last night. I also didn't expect to have my own transport, but my boss had a friend come fetch him from the hotel, so i had the use of the hire car.

I caught up with my uncle and cousins at my cousins place in Houtbay, but not before I drove up Southern Cross Drive!!! I know there are already reviews of the 2 Oceans half marathon route, but this is mine, read it, don't read it :P. I've driven all the parts of the route, even cycled most parts, except Southern Cross Drive, but I've never looked at it with running in mind. Truth be told until a few years ago i would have laughed if you said I'd be running this half marathon...any half marathon!

So here goes, Southern Cross Drive seems not to be TOO bad, it is about 3km long and it starts off pretty slowly, flattens out a few times and then comes to a crecendo in the last kilometer as it approaches Rhodes drive. So that was the first part of my scouting trip.

I then went for a fantastic braai and catchup session with my uncle Philip's family (I quite a few uncle's two of who'm I think are reading this). Always a hoot, but thats not really part of this discussion. After a pretty hairy drive down the mountain back onto houtbay's main road, I headed back onto Rhodes drive considering the route as I went.

After Southern Cross drive there is a pleasant little down hill and then a few ups and downs before the climb to the Kirstenbosch topgate, which could be rather tiring, especially as I think it's about 15km into the run! Once you are there it seems that the rest of the way in is pretty much easy going, or serious downhill, it must be a good 4 or 5 km to the turn onto the M3, where there is a little uphill and then mostly flat all the way to UCT.

So is the route tough? I think so. Is the route gonna be fun? Absolutely! Most of it is through forrested parts of Cape Town, so I think it's gonna be great! Pretty tough, but great. Now back to that training!!

44 days to go till the 2 Oceans Half Marathon!!

This mornings run was tougher than I had expected. I guess it had something to do with getting up in the morning to exercise, which I hate doing. But also that it took just over 4 mins to complete one 800m lap and I’m used to running for between 1 and 1,5 mins at a time, before taking a walk break. I guess I should work at that, but until recently I don’t feel like I’ve been able to run for longer.

What was supposed to be a 8km+ run turned into a 6km run. The warmup was 1.8km instead of 2, the actual workout bit I chickened out at 3 much to Melodie’s relief I think, and the warm down, which was just the walk back was only 1km so that makes 6km. Unfortunately I don’t have my watch here, but if I recall correctly it was 47mins, which isn’t too bad, if you consider that the last km was at 10min/km. The run there and the 3 800m took us 37min, just over 7min/km. Not to mention an 800m lap in 4:07 is just over 5min/km and is not too shabby for me.

I was thinking of running 8min walking 2min as suggested in the training program, but I think I’ll first try running 4min walking 2min for a while. It’ll give me a good idea of what kind of pace my heart can handle, and it will condition my legs better for longer running.

Something else I have noticed is that, from the more regular runs, especially the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday training my shins seem to take a lot more strain. I’ve always seemed to have a mild problem with my shins but today it was pretty sore. I guess a full days rest between runs also helps. I’ll see what happens. As of next week it’s only on Friday and Saturday that I have consecutive runs.

Like I said I don’t have the data here, as I’m in Cape Town overnight and I left my watch at home, I’ll post two sets of data next time I post… on Friday or Saturday after the “race”.

45 days and Thanks!!!

Thanks to everyone who sent me emails or left comments on the blog, your encouragement is greatly appreciated!!

Today was supposed to be 60mins of training, which would have been about 8km, but I'm flying to Cape Town tomorrow and won't be able to train in the evening, so I'll be doing tomorrow's training in the morning. I thought 8km tonight and then 8km tomorrow morning was pushing it a bit. So I rather decided to do a 5km run this evening, tomorrow morning will be interesting as it's the first time I'll be running the 800m stretches suggested by the program I've adapted.

Today's graph looks a little strange and I think it's due to interference from my running partner's new Polar watch. Mine is supposed to be a coded transmitter but it doesn't seem to work too well because there is definite interference!! So we had to make sure that we ran about 1.5m apart! Towards the end of my run I could see we were almost on time for a sub 35min 5km, but I just couldn't get the damned thing to drop below 96bpm!! When I asked that Melodie step away it dropped to 86bpm imediately!

I think we'll have to take more care about how we run or how we put the hr monitors on. But still a nice fast run. I can't wait to see about tomorrow morning though, this will almost be more challenging than running hills. The program suggests that the time you take to run 800m intervals here is an excerpt:

"Because of their simplicity, 800s have proven popular and useful for 21km,
marathoners and ultra-marathoners world-wide. Basically, if you want to run a
marathon in 2:45, 3:29 or 4:11, (half marathoners should multiply their 10km time
by 4.66 to get a projected marathon time), you should train to the point where you
can run 10 repeats of 800 meters in the same time i.e. 2:45, 3:29 or 4:11. The only
difference is that your marathon time is hours: minutes and your 800 time is
minutes: seconds. So from the third week of February you will do 800's once a week
on Thursday's as part of your training. Start with 4 x 800 and build up to 10 x 800.
Between the 800s, take a recovery jog that lasts as long as your 800s, approx. 400m
(Additional hint: 800s are a great workout for any runner. Because they are "strong
but controlled," they are basically a form of tempo training.)" - Reference here

So my fastest 10km time was actually 1:07 in 2005 which gives me an 800m time of 5:12 and means my projected marathon time is also 5:12 and maybe my half marathon time is closer to 2:30. However on a trial run of the 800m a few weeks ago in this post, I completed an 800m in 4:17 which probably puts me closer to a 2 hour half marathon... I doubt whether the maths works for someone with a heart condition but perhaps thinking that I can do it in about 2:20 isn't a bad assumption. Unfortunately I'm not going to be doing any 10km races any time soon because they would give a good indication of how I've improved. Anyway tomorrow I'll start doing the 800m reps and see what happens, we only do 4 of them initially and build them up as time goes by.

46 days

Today's run didn't look promising when I left work this afternoon. It rained most of the way home, which isn't that much fun on two wheels, but I got home safe. We drove to the school instead of walking the habitual kilometer there and back. It was still spitting when we got there and there were no other crazy people braving the weather...but we have a program to follow, so we ran the 2km down to the hill.

This week was 7 times up and down the hill and the times were pretty much the same as last week except we went another time up the hill. The 6.4km route took 53min (8:16min/km) this time as opposed to last weeks 49:45 for 6km (8:17min/km) so I'm getting better at this. Next week will be 8 hills for a 6.8km run.

It turned out to be a fantastic run with a light drizzle, I don't think you get better training weather.

47 days

Friday was a 5km run with a km to and from the school where I train so perhaps 7km was unwise before Saturdays long run. We'd measured out a 10km route around the eastern suburbs of Pretoria and I'm afraid to say that it seems to be impossible to find a flattish route. I don't suppose that is a bad thing as Southern Cross Drive is apparently a bit of a nightmare. Saturday morning's 2 hour run was less than pleasant. I think the 7km not more than 12hrs before and the meds that I'd taken in the morning made the run pretty tough.

I think now that my docs taken me off some of the meds I'll have to think of when to dose myself. I intend to take meds on Friday nights instead of Saturday morning, so that I haven't gone 24 hours without meds by the next morning, but also so that I am still slightly protected. Otherwise i'll continue taking them in the morning and training in the evening, this way they have worn off enough to allow me a good session.

Here is Friday's data I haven't quite worked out where the correct recovery level is and it's a bit frustrating on the uphills because my I struggle to get my heartrate down enough to start the interval again. So I'll be playing around with that.
For Saturday's run my monitor was giving trouble again so I don't have any data and simply trained according to 45sec vs 1:30 (workout/recovery) intervals. We did ran the 10km in 80min but decided we were both too tired to complete another 40min of running, so we decided to walk the last 40min, which I think was a good call.

I had a hard time this weekend deciding what to do about my faulty heartrate monitor. Mine is about 5 years old, and there are new Polar watches that do alsorts of other fancy functions, not to mention the Garmin watches that give you perfect route, speed and distance readings. However common sense prevailed :( and I settled for just getting another sensor to interface with my current watch which does the job as well as I could hope.

Anyway all counted this week was 39km! Not too shabby!

Go ahead!!!

I should be my own cardiologist :P ... everything that I thought about my current state was confirmed. My ejection fraction is up again from 42 - 46, theres no denying it now. My heart is in normal sinus rythm... explains the "normal" reaction to exercise. He thinks I'm now on too much medication because my heartrate when they took my ECG was 46bpm, so he's decreasing my dose of atenelol from 50mg bd to 50mg/d.

Basically all is good and he is happy for me to do the 2 Oceans half marathon as long as I listen to my body and just aim to finish comfortably... nothing more. Which is exactly what I planned to do :) I have entered, now I've gotta complete the next 50 days with enough training and without injury :)

50 days... todays the deciding day!

I'm going to the cardiologist today, I'm pretty sure that he'll be happy for me to continue training. Yesterday was a 30min run, which was 4km on the route I previously dubbed Hell on Tar. Well I didn't go all the way to the top yesterday because I only wanted to do 4km, but it seemed a lot less hellish. I decided to push the last little bit to the turn around point and there were no complaints from my legs. Sure it was probably ill advised but it's really nice to be able to just go faster when I wanted to. Whats more is my heartrate didn't misbehave too badly.


I set the limits up by 10bpm to 130 for my running interval and that seemed to work fine, the problem was more getting it to drop from 95bpm to 93bpm on the recovery, especially when walking uphill so I'll probably increase that a bit aswell. This is all a learning curve for me and as long as my heart remains in it's current state, I suspect I'll be playing around with these values a lot.

51 days

I think yesterday's run was arguably the most enjoyable run I've had in years. It was 6km in 45 min which is about 7:30min/km which is pretty good for me. Whats more I think I've realised why I'm feeling so strong at the moment. I think my heart has gone into sinus rythm, which I think just means it's beating like a normal heart and that I don't have arythmia. Thats just my supposition but it feels very regular and slow, and responds very well to effort. Here's another heartrate graph from yesterday....
Whats also interesting is that at the last race my heartrate didn't go above 120bpm at all, but yesterday I managed to get it to the high 130's. I think the reason is that I took my meds not an hour earlier when I ran the night race, and I usually take my meds after my night training sessions. Maybe there's a case to decrease my medication dosage aswell. Whats more, if my heart is in sinus rythm and it stays there for a year or so, I'll be able to come off the most dangerous of my medications, warfarin. I'll have to wait till tomorrow to get answers to all these questions when I visit the cardiologist.

52 Days

Yesterday was hills again, and my heartrate monitor was working. The warmup was done between 120bpm and 92bpm, this seemed to work quite well, and as soon as I started to feel my legs complaining, my heartrate got above 120 and I could walk.

We did 6 hills yesterday as you can see in the graph below. I'm pretty sure we did them faster and the overall time, including the warmup and cool down, for the 6km was 49:45 whereas last weeks 5.6km took 50:45.

I've always said that I'd listen to my body and I think I do that pretty well, so yesterday on the last hill, when I decided that I wanted to go a little bit faster there were no complaints from my body. My heartrate didn't go up significantly compared to the other hills but I was able to do the 200m uphill in 1:04 whereas all the other hills were about 1:15. It felt great to go fast, and feel power in my legs... I think this hill training once a week is doing me some good!

Whats also very good is that in the 2 or so minutes it takes to walk back to the bottom of the hill my heartrate dropped normally to about 95bmp every time!

Actually it's only 4 days!

Unless I'm really reckless and decide to go against the doctors orders, the entire result of this blog hinges on the outcome of Thursday's appointment. I'm going to see my cardiologist. I have an idea that my improvements of last year have continued, but I'm not sure. I hope what he will say is that I should do it, but just take it easy and listen to my body. But if theres been any decrease in my ejection fraction since last time then I suspect he will tell me not to do it, in which case I will have a difficult decision to make.

54 days

I tried running using my heart rate as the control for my intervals and it worked pretty successfully. There are a few things that I need to change though. First being that I set the recovery heart rate limit too low at 90bpm. It could have been 92/93bpm instead as it was a challenge to get it to go that low. My running limit could possibly be a little higher as well, but I'll leave it at 120bpm at for now while I "experiment" with this. I think there could be a difference between the response with runs in the morning where I have just taken meds and runs in the afternoon where I haven't.
If you look at the graph you'll see my heart rate jumps quite hectically, it doesn't feel any different and I should perhaps have had the presence of mind to take it manually. I think it's just atrial beats being picked up by my monitor as I exert myself harder, but this happened while walking, not running, up a slight incline. Anyway I stopped at the 2km mark, rested till it dropped to a normal rate and then continued running. It's interesting to note that the curve of the "offset cycle" still follows a recovery pattern.

This was a 4km run completed in 30:40, i did stop the counter for while I was getting my heart rate back to an acceptable rate. I would just hate this to happen in a race when it isn't really necessary for me to rest, but we'll see.

I ran 5km on Saturday morning aswell unfortunately my monitor was misbehaving again so I had to use "normal" intervals again. It took 37 mins to complete.

In the first half on February I've completed 62km of training!

57 days

Last nights Lantern Race was quite fun. With a bit of thunder keeping you awake and some lightening intermittently illuminating the path. It had been threatening to rain and a light drizzle started about half way through which was also very nice. What I didn't like was the the 5km and 10km runners and walkers started together, and there were A LOT of us! So the first 2/3km were choas, with it being impossible to get any rythm.

But as far as the running goes it was alright, I was feeling pretty tired, and maybe I'm doing too much, afterall I did 13km on Saturday, hills on Monday and now a 10km yesterday. I think it calls for less work till next week Monday.

Good news is my heart rate monitor is working happily again, so I have some more data, and it still is of the "more normal" variety. I'm very interested to hear what the cardiologist has to say tomorrow!! Some of it is attached below.
I had a thought about it last night, and that is if it behaves itself like it has been then I can try i different mode of pacing myself. At the moment I just pick a running time and a recovery time, but as you can see if you expand the graph there I have a definite recovery, so if I set myself some heartrate limits I can run until my heartrate exceeds some limit and then walk till it drops below another one. This will mean that when I'm feeling good I can run for longer without worrying about puching too hard.

59 days

Unfortunately I have no more interesting heart rate dat. Seems my monitor's battery was flat, I've had trouble with the strap before, but this time it was definitely the battery. So tomorrow I'll be back at it.

My intention had been to do 6X200m hills yesterday, but in the end, without my Polar to make sure I wasn't damaging myself, we threw in the towel at 5. Which was 1 better than last week and whats more, they were much faster. Last weeks lap times, up and down the hill were, 3:45, 3:40, 3:45 and 3:35 respectively. Yesterdays times were 3:26, 3:26, 3:23 3:41 and 3:45. Ok so the last one was slow but by that stage, I was buggered!!

So today was meant to be a short walk, but I think I'm gonna skip it, cause tomorrow is a 10km night race, should be fun.

I changed my mind

I thought that Friday's heart rate data was pretty uninteresting because it was only a walk, but after looking at it closer it is very interesting, and proves my point about how well my heart is currently responding to output demands. The route was Boys High, which takes us on a gently downhill initially, then we get to the hill I do hill training on, which is 2/300m long. Then the 5km takes you straight back down a similair hill, at the bottome of which we turn around and come back up, down the first hill and back up the gentle slope towards the end of the route.


The amazing thing to me is that that is suddenly all reflected in my HR data (2 steep hills, 2 downhills, below average hr for the gentle down slope, slightly above average hr for the gentle upslope)... which is as it should be... but still, it was only a walk!

60 days!!!

Friday was a leasurely 5km walk in 48mins as I knew I had Saturday ahead of me. Saturday, the long run, was 100min on the road. Ok so it turned out to be 107min on the road and 13km which wasn't too shabby, it was at about 8:10min/km which was in the suggested target zone and if maintained would bring me in just under the 180min mark. So I'm quite happy with that. Unfortunately my polar was giving me trouble so I have no data to show for it.

Today is more hills! Sounds like fun. I can hardly believe that it's so close! I must admit that I still haven't entered the race... and I probably should, but I'm waiting to see what the cardiologist says. I'm encouraged, but also a little concerned by my heart's sudden slow rate. For illustration I've attached some data from October, which is generally what I'm used to seeing.


You can see that what my heart currently does is more like a normal heart should behave, which is encouraging, but it's not what I'm used to and thats worrying. So I'd really like to ask a doctor whats up. Obviously my silly bit of Polar data isn't particularly accurate and the ecg and echo data that I'll get from the doctor will let me know if this means I'm better or worse. But thats in 2 weeks time, for now, I'm gonna train like I'm going.