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Heart Attack to 10K (part 1) - That fateful day.

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THAT FATEFUL DAY. (Phase I – heart attack) Being at a bit of a loose end and with nothing better to do during that dull period between Christmas and New Year (or the Plymouth Argyle & Cheltenham Town matches as my fellow Chairboys & girls would remember it), I decided to go for a walk in the local countryside around the rolling Chiltern hills. Overnight it had frozen, but the bright winter sunshine turned the early frost into a mist persuading me that it might make for some good atmospheric photographs. So, on Wednesday 28 th December 2016 (a date now etched into my memory) I drove out to Bledlow Ridge, parked the car in a side road just after mid-day and set out with my camera on a 6.8 mile walk that by the time I returned to the car would become an adventure I wouldn't forget in a hurry and ultimately have a dramatic change on my priorities and the way I live my life. I had been meaning to walk the Radnage area for some time and with the afternoon bright sun...

Heart Attack to 10K (part 4.26) - Persisting with parkrun - part 2

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Part 4.26 - PERSISTING WITH PARKRUN - PART 2 (Phase VI - sustaining a healthy life-style) "Nothings going to happ en unless you ma ke it happen." It's nearly 3 years since I published part. 1 of my 'Persisting with parkrun' blog [ part 4.20 ], soon after completing my 150th parkrun and as I'm now fast approaching my 250th - a shirt at times I never thought I would get my hands on, it just seemed a good time to recap on what has happened parkrun & health wise within my life since part 1 and consider how  parkrun and I can go forward together from here. With four runs still to go, I've decided to publish this blog before attempting my 250th parkrun to help mark the actual occasion and hopefully muster some support and encouragement (and boy do I need it!). This could possibly be my 'swansong parkrun'  for reasons I hope become apparent below, and l et's face it, I'm not going to get my 500 parkrun shirt in a decade  (let alone a month)  ...

Heart Attack to 10K (part 4.25) - Life changes

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Part 4.25 - LIFE CHANGES (Phase VI - sustaining a healthy life-style) "Nothings going to happ en unless you ma ke it happen." I last published a blog way back in June 2023 and fair bit has changed within my life both 'on-field' and 'off-field' since then, and as my blog is regularly mentioned to me and I'm always being asked 'how you doing now?', which is not a answer you can easily wrap up in few words while chatting, so I thought an update to this series might be a little overdue. When I left off I had just been diagnosed with ' Chronotropic Incompetence ' (CI), an exercise intolerance. I'm still not totally sure what this really means or how it will impact my life, but what is very apparent is that my parkrun times have suffered a lot since then. Since returning back to parkrun post Covid, during which time my (intermittent) paroxysmal AFib episodes had become more regular and longer causing some worry and concern, I could never ma...

Heart Attack to 10K (part 4.24) - What I can, when I can

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Part 4.24 - WHAT I CAN, WHEN I CAN (Phase VI - sustaining a healthy life-style) "Nothings going to happ en unless you ma ke it happen." As covered over my last few blogs, since returning from the Covid I have never really got back to where was hoping to be, becoming less active, slower and as of result together with my diet slipping, a bit more podgy. Before Boris separated and isolated all of us I was enjoying some excellent support on group runs of varying distances with many of the 'Your Pace or Mine (YPOM)' ( photos ) members which kept me progressing and pushing further with my fitness plan, achieving beyond anything I could have dreamt or hope to achieve when I first started out in 2017, improving my weight loss and generally feeling better than I had in years. Your Pace or Mine and me at Parkrun The YPOM group sessions was of a great benefit to me pre-Covid at a time when post heart attack I was still re-building my fitness, stamina & increasing my runnin...