Overdue Update

Greetings all! It is near the end of 2011 - over a year since I last posted - and my radio silence is due to a persistent lack of drama coming from the four chambers. Thanks to all the people who wrote me over that time, and wondered whatever became of me. Three years out from my last round of ablations and the status quo is pretty much as I described in my last post.

In that time I've become somewhat overly-employed, a good development in my chosen career of architecture, which is generally on the skids in the current economy. As a result, my training regime is less than I'd like, but more than most 50-60 hour a week workers. My heart has shown no ill effects, though I notice several consistent trends, what I call cardiac "noise". These have always existed, since my surgeries, but they come and go.

The first:

Low level angina (chest discomfort), mostly when I have either done too much exercise with too little ramp up, or have spent too much time sedentary - say more than 2 or 3 days. In the first instance, if I go out for , say, a 4 hour ride, and have not ridden or ran in the last few days, I sometimes feel a dull discomfort late in the ride and some time after. This is sometimes accompanied by PVCs, but nothing more.

The second:

Random and capricious PVCs. At no particular time for no particular reason. They are rarely persistent and I have not been able to connect them to diet, drink, or stress. They just happen. But they are far, far less than what I used to experience before my surgeries. When I am consistent with an exercise regime the PVCs pretty much disappear.

The third:

End of day/evening PVCs. Particularly on my bike commute home. These I attribute to hunger, and going from 10 hours behind a desk to a brisk, slightly uphill ride home.

That is about it.

My exercise program is this:

1 to 2 early morning weekday bike rides before work. Usually an hour long, fairly up tempo because they are short. I only live two miles from my workplace, so I head out to the 'burbs on the bike and do the commute I'd have to do if I lived there.

1 to 2 early morning weekday indoor roller rides, 1 hr each. These are done fairly easily. My rollers don't have much resistance so this is mostly about form and spinning.

1 to 2 short runs. Most of the time this is only the two-and-change miles to work, occasionally more.

Some weeks the run replaces the roller ride and vis versa, weather generally decides. If its raining I run. If its super cold I roller.

Weekends are more involved, mostly a minimum 2.5 to 3 hr ride each day.

To give you some sense of the overall load, my Garmin tells me I will have ridden just shy of 5,000 miles this year, at an average speed of 18.2mph, not including indoor riding, of which I've done about 63hrs this year thus far. Running-wise I will be at a mere 150 miles by the end of the year (I stopped running in the summer), at an average 8 min. mile (yes, we cyclists are weak on foot!)

All this is to let you know that there is life after cardiac ablation, even multiple ones, from all sides. And there is life with an ICD. Mine sits there, beneath my collarbone, neglected. I haven't even "checked-in" with my electrophysiologist in nearly a year. I wonder about it long-term, and the fact that it will need to be replaced, and the fact that it presumably saved my life once, and will it ever again?

My competitive athletic career is well behind me, but keeping active is a vital part of life, and seems to be the best thing I can do for my particular, unique, heart problem. And so I press on...

Until the next update!

Craig