Perfect things and less perfect things

You know the day is going to be an interesting one when your Cardiologist's office makes an unprompted call to you first thing in the morning asking you to take it easy while doing exercise. Hmmmm...

That isn't ominous at all.

Actually, that is probably a bit of an overreaction, I am fairly sure he is just being conservative, but still, it was a little off putting.

Apparently the prompt for the call from Dr Stobie was that he had got the results from my Holter Monitor. I don't yet know what the results show, but I suspect it isn't particularly great news. I suspect the message is not 'Hey your heart is fine and in great health, but could you just take it easy during exercise?' Unlikely. I guess I will find out tomorrow.

Tomorrow? I thought the appointment was this afternoon.

I know yesterday I wrote a lot about my appointment being this afternoon, but unfortunately it has had to get moved to tomorrow morning. No big deal, in many ways tomorrow actually works better for me. I am definitely hanging out to find out what is going on and what can be done, but I think I am survive waiting until tomorrow.

Interesting times.

Still, not disastrous times. This morning, before the call from the Cardiologist, I did manage to get out for a ride and it was rather lovely.

What a sunrise!

While the ride was lovely, my heart was feeling a little unlovely, particularly compared to the rides I had earlier this week. I just wasn't feeling like I was getting enough air, which is a feeling I have unfortunately got used to over the last few weeks. When I feel like that it generally means that my heart is slipping into a wonky rhythm more often. I don't really know why it does it some sessions compared to others, but I suspect today might be fatigue related. Last week I wrote about finding my limit in terms of training intensity and volume. I now have a good feel on the intensity bit, but I am still learning about how much volume I can handle at the moment. Today might just be another lesson in that class. I have done a reasonable amount of training this week and today might just be my body letting me know to take it a bit easy.

Given how I was feeling on the bike this morning, the call from Dr Stobie may have been timely after all.

Whilst the riding this morning may have been a bit uncomfortable, the riding conditions were absolutely perfect. One of those lovely, mild Summer mornings. Beautiful sunrise, light winds, nice temperature. No matter how I was feeling this morning I wasn't going to miss it.

I have had a bunch of good training sessions of late and each one of them makes me more confident that things are going to be okay. However, after every few good sessions I have a iffy one that reminds me that things aren't alright as they are. Throughout the last few weeks I have been working hard to stay positive and tell myself that it will get sorted and I will back doing what I love in no time. But really I don't know that, and as I close in on my appointment tomorrow the possibility that things may not get sorted is feeling more and more real. I don't know what the appointment tomorrow will bring, but I am scared that it may bring the dreaded "sorry, but you really need to stop racing" statement, after all it has been raised as a possibility a couple of times already. I hope that isn't the case, and I really don't think it will be, but it is a thought that is lingering in the back of my mind and is proving hard to shake.

One way or another, I will know more tomorrow. Tune in then to find out what my triathlon future looks like.