A Long and Interesting Week

Of all the things I am doing as part of the CVE\lululemon race team I am finding that one of the hardest things for me is keeping up with the social media part of things. I mean I share some stuff via Facebook but I really don't take advantage of the other tools I created to help document my experience. When all this started I created a Twitter account as well as this blog but when I look back at them I find I haven't used them as I hoped. I guess I could say that it is all new to me but that is just an excuse. I mean this training program is all new to me but outside of a week recently where I was forced to miss I have yet to miss a training and actually find myself eagerly awaiting the updates to my Training Peaks schedule. Yet it appears I can't find a moment or two once a week to share a little information about this wonderful journey I am so lucky to be a part of. That needs to change and I am hoping it changes with this blog as I need to really let everyone see what this experience has meant to me.

As I mentioned above I was recently sidelined for a week. I had been having some difficulties catching my wind following a cold a few weeks back and thought I might still have some lingering effects and decided to go see the doctor. Long story short she did some tests, took some blood and x-rays, as well as an EKG. That EKG is where things got interesting, apparently I had one 2 years ago when I had walking pneumonia and the one from this visit looked remarkably different. She told me my resting heart rate pretty low which could be accounted for by all the running/training I had been doing but it appears my T-Waves were inverted and as such such she wanted me to stop my training and see a cardiologist. Needless to say I wasn't happy about this for a variety of reasons, I mean no one wants to hear they have to go see a cardiologist but I think I was more upset about missing my training and working with my teammates. So I scheduled my visit and after talking with the doc and her looking at all the tests she decided that I needed to have a nuclear stress test and an echocardiogram which I scheduled over the next couple of days.

The nuclear stress test was actually pretty neat other than having to get stuck and getting an IV setup. After the IV was setup and I was injected with the dye or whatever I had to wait awhile before being placed on a table where I had to remain still as this machine took pictures of my heart and such for 15 minutes (ended up a little longer as the tech bumped the machine and we had to start over). After that it was off to the treadmill where the goal was to get me to 85% of my max heart rate (220-your age) by having me walk/run on it and then every 3 minutes the incline and speed would increase. For a while the tech and the doc wondered aloud if I would actually reach my max before the program reset (it is a 21 minute program) which made me feel somewhat good about things but about the 17 minute mark I reached the goal and was injected with my second dose of the dye. After a brief rest period during which I was told my T Waves were doing odd things once again it was back to the table for another 15 minutes of pictures. The next day I was back bright and early for my echocardiogram. Basically this is just an ultrasound of the heart which was pretty cool to see but I had no idea if what I was seeing was good or bad and this tech wasn't giving any indication one way or the other. Needless to say I left there happy that I had all the tests behind me but anxious to hear the results. I had been telling everyone everything would be fine but I knew me saying it wasn't what my wife wanted to hear. She wanted the tests and the doctor to say it.

Finally after waiting what felt like forever I got the call from the doc saying that while my EKG's continued to be irregular both the stress test and the echocardiogram showed my heart to be functioning normally. Basically the only thing they saw was some pulmonary regurgitation in an area but she said that I had probably been living with that all my life that said she figured that for at least awhile I should have a yearly follow up. I asked her if that meant I could go back to training for my race and she informed me I was good to go which while I always thought I was going to be it also felt good to have it confirmed.

While all this was going on I told very few people as I didn't want to alarm anyone but I did tell my coaches and teammates as for the last couple of months they have been there for me rooting and cheering me and this time was no different. I think the first thing I did after getting the news from the doctor and relaying said info to my wife was to message the coaches and post on the team page to let all know I was cleared and would be training with them once again. This is a special group of people who I have been fortunate enough to meet, many of whom have made impressions on me that will last well after this training session has ended.

Now that all that is behind me it is time to get back at it o as Ruthie said "Game on!"