to run a Half Marathon!
My cardiologist appt got pulled in a day, so I met with my Doctor yesterday at 11am.
Before going to the appt, I did a lot of praying. Praying to accept and be ok with whatever he was going to say. I had to put racing in perspective and not let it be tied to my worth. I had to fight the thoughts to just give up running if I couldn't race....what's the point then. I had to ask myself why I liked to run? Why was this the first time that exercise has really excited me?
I came to the conclusion that I just really like running. It is quiet time away from the kids and I can think without being interrupted. It is an awesome stress reliever. I get all those nice endorphins. :0) I'm proud of myself when I'm done. And I am just competing with myself to be quicker or run longer. I don't need to race to get these benefits.
My feeling is that my doctor will be supportive of me running recreationally shorter distances (3-5miles) and will probably ask me to stay away from the endurance runs/races. I don't really know what I will do if he doesn't want me to run. I have to believe that God has other plans for me if that happens.
So going to the Doctor's appt I felt good and prepared for whatever he was going to say.
He blew me away by immediately saying you can run and you can race as much as you want. I was like, "What???" After looking at the data that I have been keeping about my heart rate while running and not, he feels that my body just needs time to get use to not being drugged up anymore. My heart doesn't know how to act normally because it is use to being on beta blockers. It is hyper sensitive to adrenaline and so then over reacts. Otherwise my heart rate and EKG look perfectly normal.
I'm pretty much speechless at this point.
He even went so far as to say that he doesn't want me to keep track of my heart rate while I'm running. He would much rather that I run to how my body was feeling instead of to a heart rate number. I had to ask him a couple of times if he really didn't want me to track my heart rate. It was just so opposite of what I had prepared myself to hear.
So I'm tapering my beta blockers off in the next week and then we'll see what happens. Hopefully my heart rate will slowly works its way back down to the 160-170 range or lower. At the end of August I'm going to go in and he is going to do a stress test just to make sure my heart is really working the way it should and if that turns out ok, then there is nothing stopping me. :0)
I've decided that I am going to wear my heart rate monitor while running, but I just won't check my heart rate during my run. I just got the new Polar/Nike + monitor so all the info will up load from my iPod and chart and graph everything - so cool!
So I'll be running a Half Marathon October 17th in Vancouver, WA!
There is still time for you to train and join me!!
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