Treadmill Blues

I completed my fourth cardio rehab session late on Friday and knew you would be thrilled to pieces to read about my travels so I thought I'd take a few minutes to log my progress. My training now is on a treadmill with three electrodes attached to my body. One of the electrodes goes under my right collar bone, the other two are attached to my right and left rib cage. I stick on the three electrode connectors, snap each connector to a wire that leads to a little box which transmits my heart signals to a monitor screeen that the cardio technicians look at while I'm doing my thing. Aren't you glad to know that? I realize this isn't quite as exciting as telling you about a grueling 20 mile long run in the heat and humidity with biting horse flies nipping at my heels, but this is the best I can do at this point.

Anyway, back to the treadmill workouts and for any late comers to this blog site you need to know that I had a heart attack in early August during a training run, died for a few minutes, received CPR from my running friends, ended up in a hospital, had double by-pass surgery and have been recovering. The recovery is slow and basically a son-of-a-bitch! But, I'm alive.

The treadmill workouts last 40 minutes, five minutes warmup and cooldown and 30 minutes of walking. Hopefully I'll soon be running. The cardio girl started me a week ago at 2.5 mph, no incline which got my heart to 85 bpm. They keep bumping up the speed and incline because what I'm doing now requires almost no effort since I had been running 20-30 miles per week before my attack and also was doing at least one yoga and pilates class per week. So, on the surface I was in shape but my two main arteries feeding my heart obviously weren't in shape, one was totally blocked and the other 95 percent blocked, which is why I almost died. No one can tell me how I could run with that kind of blockage. So, I'm a freak.

Anyhoo, late Friday we jumped the walking speed to 3.8 mph which is around 15 min per mile pace and if we go faster than that I really need to run because I don't like speed walking. I have short legs and just a low tolerance for walking. I boosted the incline to 2 Friday, up from .5. I'm assuming the .5 is a half inch incline and the 2 is two inches. I need to ask someone about it but you treadmill experts will know what I'm talking about. The combination of 3.8 mph and 2 incline got my heart rate in the 105-110 bpm range. This is all very clinical and boring for me. The cardio girl asked me the effort level and I told her it was easy to somewhat difficult, whatever that may mean. In my runners mind somewhat difficult is the stretch between 15-20 miles and after that the effort level goes off the chart.

I've noticed that no one has asked me if I'm having fun, so we'll have to put fun on the backburner for awhile. Personally, I think the cardio people in charge of monitoring me have an even more boring job than I, so I'm pretty friendly and cooperative. I've noticed they switch shifts a lot and I'm looking forward to seeing the one who was on duty Wednesday because she's the one who told me she'd have me running in 3-4 weeks. "The breast bone needs to completely heal," she said. Sounds like a good idea.

I've healed to the point where I take only about a half dozen tylenol per day and I don't think I'd need those now, but I may as well screw up my life with a damned addiction to pain killers too, right?:) Just kidding.

On a very positive note, I spent a few hours per day in the busy Reuters newsroom this week and it was great to get back with my fellow commodities journalists. The markets keep hopping and early Monday I am set to return to full time duty. My energy level continues to improve so I think I'll be able to handle a full schedule now and easily work in my treadmill sessions each Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon.

Life is short, enjoy!