An additional challenge

We put off as long as we could today our last training run -- 2 miles. A nice, easy run, which we had to keep to a slow pace. We decided to bring Piper along.

One thing I haven't mentioned on here is that I have tachycardia. Having two bad knees isn't quite enough for me. Nope, I have to throw a heart condition into the mix.

We had gone just over a mile when Piper made it clear she needed to stop. K took her leash, and I leaned over to clean up. Just then, my pulse started going.

I've seen a doctor about my tachycardia before, obviously. It's nothing life-threatening, just a huge pain in the a$$. Basically, what happens is that from time to time, my pulse starts going really quickly. Like over 200 beats a minute. Sometimes it lasts a couple seconds; one time it lasted a couple hours. If an episode lasts long enough, it makes me feel tired, and it can even make my arm hurt. I have to take deep breaths. But as soon as it's done, I'm fine. Completely back to normal.

My doctor gave me the option to take beta blockers for it, but that would mean my pulse would never raise, not even during workouts, and I'd get fatigued more quickly. Something about that sounded like not living, so I chose not to take them. What that means is that if my pulse starts going, I have to immediately halt any physical activity.

My doctor knew I intended to run a marathon someday and that I was active with cycling, running, and working out at the time. "You mean to tell me that if you have an episode in the middle of a marathon, you're just going to stop running?"

"Yes."

What can be good is that these "episodes" typically come in spurts. What's bad is that I haven't had one in a while ... until today. Luckily, today's only lasted a couple minutes.

See that 237? That's my maximum heart rate during the run, thanks to my tachycardia.

If you don't mind, please keep an extra set of fingers crossed for me that if my pulse decides to mess around with me tomorrow, it waits until the afternoon.