The Good Ol' Ticker

Last September after a sub par season, I set my sights on qualifying for ITU Draft Legal World Championships in November. I knew I was going to have to really work to pull this one off coming out of a hard place in training. My preparation was spot on and I was beyond thrilled with a 7th place finish that qualified me for Cozumel 2016!!

Moving into 2016, I had very high expectations for myself. I really wanted to perform well at the World Championships. I knew I needed to make my bike stronger to help me have a better run. I set up my race schedule accordingly. Draft Legal racing is a different animal for sure! I have loved coaching it for the past 4 years and it was even better racing one!

My optimistic outlook was in place and was lined up with my training plan. In February, I started having some really odd and irregular high heart rate in training. My max on the bike is 162 and on the run is 174. I was easily seeing numbers in the high 180-190 and even into 210-220. This is frightening when you seriously feel like you're going to blow up and you are working below a zone 1 pace!

Not to bore you with ins and outs and ups and downs; by the beginning of July, I decided to pull the plug on my season. I just was not getting anywhere with heavy fatigue after mediocre efforts and not being able to do any speed. At this point, I also felt like I should maybe go get things checked out to make sure there wasn't anything serious I should be ignoring. Up to this point, I had just attributed it to "stress". 

At the end of July, I was out on a run, which was typically ... run until the HR got too high, then walk until it came down then repeat". This day I was finishing my run downhill at the Bluffs and my HR sky rocketed to 242 and I felt pressure under my breast bone. This scared me beyond anything previously. I got into my doctor immediately, she ran an EKG and nothing; it all checked out to be normal. She scheduled further testing and told me to really be very careful with things and to not push at all. I agreed.

On the way out of town to USAT Age Group Nationals, I had an echo stress test done and then was to wear a holter monitor for 48 hours. I was so upset to not be able to race at Nationals, but even more so, I was missing my training the way it used to be. I missed being outdoors and enjoying nature.

A couple weeks ago, we got things sorted out and I decided after 2 weeks that if the HR would hold during training, I would consider racing Worlds since I was already going. Once I made that decision, the excitement of racing in the World Championships that I worked so hard to qualify for is flooding back into me! I am now at 3 weeks of normal HR and as long as nothing changes, I will feel comfortable swimming in open water again and being able to at least participate!! I will not have any sort of result but 90% of the journey is getting to the World level and now I can play on the stage once again!!