Health Update

Thought I might take the chance today to give a bit of a health update as it feels like it has been ages since I last did one.

Well the big news is that there still isn't really any news, well not in a formal sense anyway. My next doctor's appointment is in a few weeks time and really until then it is still just a case of wait and see. Even after the doctor's appointment I suspect it will be a case of wait and see, but at least I will have had a bit of a progress report. Whilst I don't have any formal news, I do have lots of observations to report.

So by my count it has been nearly three months since I did any proper exercise. Three months next week to be exact. ODoctor Stobie has asked me to detrain for 6 months, so I am not quite half way. Whilst I still have another three months of detraining I feel like I am fairly detrained, in fact I am not sure how much more fitness I have to lose. Tracking fitness (or the lack of it) is fairly difficult, but I have been giving it a go on TrainingPeaks. While I don't exercise much, I do put the exercise that I am doing in TrainingPeaks to try and track my fitness. TrainingPeaks uses a measure called CTL (which stands for Chronic Training Load) to estimate fitness. On TrainnigPeaks my CTL is down to 18, for context it was about 180 this time last year as I prepared for Ironman WA. So I have lost a lot of fitness. More interestingly I am not sure how much lower I can get it.

Whilst I have been told to detrain, I have also been told not to stop exercise entirely as they want me to maintain a healthy lifestyle. No point fixing my heart if I am going to become a couch potato and get one of the many diseases associated with being sedentary. Given this I am allowed to do the normal recommended amount of activity, which is 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 times a week. I have been endeavouring to do this recommended level of activity for the last few weeks and with that my fitness seems to have plateaued at a CTL of about 18. This makes me think that if I am going to maintain a healthy level of activity then I am probably not going to get much less fit than I am now. I am not sure Dr Stobie will see it that way, and I suspect he will instruct me to do the full 6 months, but I find it reassuring that I am not likely to get less fit than I am now. Rock bottom so to speak.

So what is it like at rock bottom? Well I have certainly noticed that I am less fit. Simple things like walking up several flights of stairs leaves me out of breath. I could still jog or ride my bike if I had to, but doing so at anything more than easy for a sustained period leaves me panting. I have also struggled with the weight. An athletes stopping exercise and stacking on the kgs is a cliche that I am very aware of so it is frustrating that I have fallen in the same hole as so many others. AT the moment I am sitting at about 84kg, so about 10kg above what used to be my normal weight during training, and about 12kg above race weight. I seem to have plateaued at 84kg, so hopefully this is as heavy as I go, however, I would love to get some of the weight off again. Frustratingly though I am struggling to move the weight without more exercise, which of course I can't do now. I tell myself that I will be able to exercise again in a few months and I can get the weight into a healthier range then, so hopefully that ends up being true.

So if I have lost so much fitness, have I noticed improvements with my heart? As always that is very hard to judge. I haven't done any testing and I am not doing intense exercise and so I don't have much to judge my progress by. However, based on my observations it does seem to be settling down. Generally I am getting less ectopic beats and I haven't noticed any incidence of tachycardia. I will leave those sorts of conclusions to Dr Stobie, but to me it feels like things are a bit better. I just hope it isn't my imagination.

Onwards and upwards from here.