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.