Heart attack to 10K (or maybe that should be half marathon) - 'my story'

PART 4.8 - BLING, BLING, BLING - TWO 10K's AND A 5K. (Phase VI - sustaining a healthy life-style) "Nothings going to happen unless you make it happen." It's been a while since I last hit the keyboard and a torrent of water has passed under the bridge in that time and there's a fair bit to wade through, so I best crack on and not disappoint my reader ... Throughout Jan to May 2019 on parkrun I hit my most consistent form yet with the next 12 runs, excluding tail-walking duties, all within the 27-28 minute band (except one) including 3 consecutive PB's at 27:40, 27:30 and 27:02 - I was on fire!!, the one and only run outside this time-band during the run was 28:01, just 2 bloody seconds too slow to keep the run going but I was gobsmacked at just how similar my times were becoming no matter how I ran or what the weather threw at me, I can only put this down to the extra running I had started since Christmas. I had started to up my distance training in...

RUNNING THE RIDGE FOR HEARTS & SOULS: APPEAL PLEASE DONATE HERE :    https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/runtheridge-heartsandsouls    I’m again raising money in aid of HEARTS & SOULS having previously completed the London Bridges walk in 2017 and the Thames Valley Summer walk last summer, this time I will be running my first ever 10K race at the age of 61 ..... 25 years, 10 months and 1 day after my last race! Hearts & Souls are a local voluntary run charity based in Wycombe hospital that fund the excellent cardiac rehabilitation classes which help around a 1,000 patients to recover from cardiac events each year in South Bucks.    This part of the rehabilitation programme is not funded by the NHS and relies entirely on charitable and legacy donations to keep it free at the point of use at a cost of about £25,000 per year. This is not some high profile national organisation but a small local charity who rely mainly on a small p...

PART 4.7 - PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES (Phase VI - sustaining a healthy life-style) "Nothings going to happen unless you make it happen." As we approached the 2nd anniversary of my heart attack in December 2018, I'm back at Harefield hospital for my next cardiology outpatient appointment were this time I was seen by the top man himself, consultant cardiologist Dr Dalby rather than one of his registrars or clinical nurses. I had a few points I wanted to get clear in my mind and he was certainly the right man to ask.  The first was the issue of the beta-blocker [see part 4.6]. He sympathised with my GP and agreed it was probably better for me to remain on a low dose bisoprolol as my bradycardia (low heart rate) wasn't causing problems. But because I had shown signs of Afib during my previous surgery [see part 4.4] and some erratic heart rates on my Fitbit, he wanted to put me on a 7 day ECG holter monitor before restarting the bisoprolol to try and catch the AF, sayi...