Change is the only Constant
After the National Senior Games in the Bay Area, I was ready and eager to start my CX training. But, never take things for granted. Especially your family, your body and your health. Coming home from an easy ride on the gravel roads around our acreage and then uploading the information from my Power Tap onto my account with TrainingPeaks, the heart "red line" on the graph was pretty astounding. For 50+ min. of the 1.5 hour ride my heart was registered in the 189 - 225 range. Drastic up and down changes like a yo-yo. Whoa!!! What in the world was going on? For a 67 year old lady on an easy ride, this was way off the charts. A quick search on the internet, gave me information on "exercise induced arrhythmia". In the next few days, a talk with my doctor, 5 hours of testing at the hospital, more bike riding and recording keeping showed that any exercise that put my heart rate above 120-125 would cause my heart to become irregular and or go into arterial fibulation. It did not hurt, I was not light headed and did not pass out. There was just a butterfly in my chest trying to get out. For those of you that love to ride and really love to compete, you will understand my devastation. It was several days, maybe even a couple of weeks worth of grief over the loss of this part of my life before I was ready to be "content" to spend the rest of my life just doing "granny" rides. I was unable to write about it, thus my absence from this blog.
However, always being one to try to fix things and make everything right and OK, I was thinking that all my heart really needed was a rest from training, good nutrition and some vitamins, minerals and herbs. So, a week ago I started a strict regimen of vitamins, minerals and herbs purchased from a multi-level marketing company based in Idaho. I take a large handful in the morning and a large handful at night plus one full aspirin. I have an appointment with my doctor this coming Friday morning to discuss my stress test. In the meantime I am putting the Saris Power Tape to excellent use. I cannot thank Saris enough for the opportunity they gave me to have such a fantastic device to keep a record of my work outs. Did y'all know that you can set the PT in such a way that you can use it at the gym to keep a record of your heart rate? Now if I could just find a way to strap the CPU to my wrist, I would really be livin' high on the hog, so to speak. In conclusion, I have been steadily increasing my time on the bike and my heart rate to see if my heart is getting better. Last night I reached a HR of 132. I had a good long warm up and a long cool down. My heart did not go "postal" on me later in the evening or in the night. I am thrilled this morning!!!, because just a few days before one of those two things would and did happen. Even though my doctor says that my condition can not heal it self (it is really an "electrical" problem )I am praying that God will completely heal my heart and so far HE
has been very gracious to me. I am so blessed! I will update my progress in later posts. In the next few days I will be riding my bike and teaching my spin classes and keeping a very close eye on my HR and taking those supplements!!! However, National CX at Bend is probably not going to happen for my this year.
Keep riding!!! (Yes, I do ride with my cell phone and a Road I.D. on my shoe. If someone finds me lying along the side of the road, they will know who to call! "LOL")
