Training and Fitness Trackers

So after a little bit of catching up, I"m back onto the training schedule so far. Things are going okay.  Thankfully there hasn't been snow on the ground which has made running outside "easier", but the wind can be a bit of a pain when its blowing and it's cold. 

The gym thing is going okay.  I've only been there twice to run on the treadmill, both times to do LT runs.  I also managed to get a swim in last weekend. First time I've swam in at least 5 years. DOMS is settling into the arms now which I suppose is good. Water there is too warm I find though. I guess the pool temperature is setup for aqua-aerobics which is a class they offer and the casual swimmer. For any serious swim workout, it makes you want to throw-up. 

I got a fitbit charge HR.  I bought it last week cause with the tanking CDN dollar, it is actually cheaper to buy it here in Canada then to buy it in the US with the exchange rate. That tells me that they'll probably raise the price of it pretty soon.  Garmin is apparently raising the prices of their devices here on February 1, so I figure now is a good time to buy stuff before the prices start going through the roof. The device is a fitness tracker that also measures HR, but does so without a chest strap.  I wasn't too sure how well the device would work and googling around, most people say that the HR is a bit hit or miss.  I've only had it for a week, but I find the accuracy to be bang on so far. I"ve done a few runs outside and the HR seems to match what my polar HR monitor gives.  But then again, it was being used in cold conditions, with no sweat being generated and buried under multiple layers of clothing so there was no possibility of light interference. I wore it to the gym this morning in the hopes of seeing how it worked inside on a treadmill during an LT run, but I forgot to start the workout tracking mode where it records more detailed data.  The only HR data I had then was the daily HR monitor which only reports average HR every 5 minutes so I can't compare data for that.

I'm liking it so far. I'll post something more detailed once I've gotten a few more weeks of usage under my belt.  

Another fail

So the second week of training last week was also a bit of a fail. Only managed 18 miles total which included 9.5 miles  at the gym Thursday morning where it was freezing cold and windy. This was the first time I've ever gone to the gym before work.  Was there and running at 6:15 in the morning. This included 4 miles at LT pace, which was split into two parts because of HR issues. Yeah, that's happening again. Afterwards went straight to work. I have to work out the logistics a bit better since I forgot a bunch of stuff, like a hair brush and conditioner for my hair so I was walking around all day with frizzy hair.

My shins and ankles were quite sore in the days following. I'm not sure if it was the LT run or the fact that it was my first run on a treadmill in several years that caused the soreness. It was so achy that I only managed a 3 mile recovery run for the rest of the week and decided to skip the long run to let the legs recover.  I did do 9 miles on Monday outside and the legs seem to be okay. I did another 9 miles today with 4 LT miles at the gym so I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if any leg parts get achy again. I'm hoping to get to 40 miles this week which should hopefully put me back on track.

Gym Rat Wannabe

Happy 2015! First week of marathon training has been a fail. Squeezed in 8 miles on Tuesday, 6 miles on Saturday and 12 miles yesterday. Was supposed to do an LT somewhere in there, but I've been recovering from a bit of a cold so held off.  It hasn't even been that cold or that there's snow on the ground and am having difficulty trying to get the runs in. Not a good sign which caused me to realize that I probably need to sign up for a gym membership. Whenever I've done winter training before, I've always had the safety net of a gym membership even if I still did most of my runs outside.

The problem being in the past, I hate signing one year contracts since I know that come April, I won't set foot inside the gym until the following December.  Signing up for a membership is kinda like buying a car.  The sales guy is trying to size you up and figure out how much money they can extract from you and you're in there trying to get a fair deal. LA fitness opened up a new place close by to where I live and the good thing is they do month to month, provided you pay an initiation fee.  I went  to visit last week to try and get the sales pitch.

Quite nice place, everything's completely new, plenty of treadmills, classes, squash courts, a basketball/volleyball court and a swimming pool.  I had done some googling around and it seemed the price that everyone has been getting is $100 initiation fee and $40/month which I consider to be fair.  So when I sit down with the sales guy, he shows me the "regular" rate which is $100 initial fee and $70 a month or $200 fee and $60 a month, but because of a sale that have, they are offering it for $100/$50 or $200/$40.  This is a higher initiation fee than what everyone else was getting so I told him I'd think about it.  I kinda realized afterwards, that you have to play hard to get. The first thing they ask you is what are your fitness goals. If you go in and say that you're there everyday and use all the machines and play squash and basketball and swim, they will try to charge you more because they perceive that you think there's value to joining the club and are willing to pay for it.  I had mentioned that I would probably swim and do spin classes and weights and use the treadmill. To be honest, I would have signed up for the $100/$50 option that he offered if I didn't know better since I had decided I was willing to buy 4 months of treadmill access for $300.  In the end, I ended up visiting another LA fitness and went through the same pitch, but said that I only used the treadmill (which is true) and that I had no intention of doing classes or using the pool (maybe not so true) and ended up getting the $100/$40 price which I was looking for so I signed up. The membership is good at all the clubs in the Toronto area so I can still use it at the original club I wanted to.

I haven't actually tried the gym out yet, but it's looking like I may get that chance soon.  The temperatures are dropping down now and though I'm going to try and do the outside running thing ( i even bought some more winter gear), it's nice to have the option of running inside once again. Also it's been a while since I've swam so that'll be something I can look forward to.

Week 1 of Marathon Training

So here I go again.  Week 1 of an 18 week training plan starts this week to prep for a first week of May marathon. Some updates. I've been building up the mileage for a bit and should be okay starting the trianing though I haven't done any extensive LT work so the first run which is supposed to include 4 miles at LT pace might be a bit of a wake-up call.  Have been pretty good with the build-up of mileage until this week where I've been eating nothing but turkey leftovers for the past 4 days.  Finally done and now I can get back to some normal food. 

I still haven't gone in for a follow-up to do my ECG, because it's quite weird as I haven't had the HR problem crop up for the past few weeks until yesterday.  I'm starting to think there's a mental component to this since when I don't seem to care whether the HR spikes, it doesn't, but when I start to think about it, it does.  It could also be because I'm getting more sleep these days, so that's something new.  In fact, these past two weeks, I think have been the longest I've gone in the past year without the HR spiking issues which is a good sign.

I've been giving some serious thoughts to buying a new GPS watch.  While my current one is fine,  I've really been eyeing the Polar M400 which is currently 20% and is just over $200 and comes with a HR monitor strap.  It now has lap pace and will display the HR when it's paused which are two things that my current watch doesn't do and annoys me to no end.  As an additional benefit, it also functions as a fitness tracker if you're willing to wear it all day and sleep with it.  It also syncs wirelessly with your phone.   I'm sort of on the fence about buying it since it appears that's it's still a bit buggy and the GPS performance isn't getting good reviews and it doesn't work with android phones yet. They say that updates to the firmware and software are coming, but I've been fooled by the "Give us your money now and we'll fix it later" line from some tech companies when they don't ever both fixing anything so I'll wait and see. The fitness tracker thing is interesting, but I'm more inclined to wait for the Fitbit Charge HR which looks like it's going to be launced towards the end of January where it will track HR all day long. I'm certainly looking at buying one of those.

30 Days 30 Posts, kinda

Made it through to the end, with a few days of cheating, but hey I've posted more in the past 30 days than I have in the past 4 years so you take the good with the bad.   I won't be as prolific now that it's over, but at least there won't be any more cat videos.

I've spent some time trying to decide what races I want to do next year.  Think I will stay local and either do the Mississauga or Toronto marathon next year (May 3).  Learning towards doing Around the Bay 30k (March 29) and may do Harry's 8k, but that's the week after ATB so may not be in shape to do that.  Also looking at the Chilly Half (March 1), but I think that will be a week before decision depending on the weather.  There's also an MEC race on April 12 which I will probably do as well cause it's cheap. 

All this of course means that training starts the last week of December so I have to try and get my mileage built up prior to then and find a gym hopefully to get me through parts of the winter.  It's on!

Getting More Zzzzz.

So I've decided to try and do some experimentation on this HR thing and the first thing I"m going to try is to make a concerted effort to  get more sleep.  I'm already off to a bad start today since it's just before midnight, but I'll start tomorrow, I swear.  Going to aim for at least 7 hours and maybe 8. Going to try for a week and see if the HR thing improves.  Again, it's a bit random, so I have no idea if there's a one to one correlation, but I suppose that's what the experimentation is for. 

As a footnote on the fitness trackers, most are able to keep track of how well you sleep and try and estimate how much deep sleep and REM sleep you get which would be helpful I suppose.  I don't have a fitness tracker yet, but I found an app for my phone which does something similar.  You turn it on and put it beside you as you sleep and it uses the accelerometer in the phone to detect movement and the phone tries to wake you up when you're in the lightest phase of sleep.  It has a two week trial before you have to pay so I guess that should be enough time to get a feel for how well it works.  It seems to have gotten pretty good reviews so I'm hoping for the best.

Fitness Band

It seems that fitness bands are all the rage these days.  With Apple coming out with their watch, I suppose it's becoming the new next big thing, being able to monitor your daily physical activity.  These things are little bands you wear on you wrist that have motion sensors in them and monitor your  physical activity and sleep patterns. Lately, they've been coming out with newer ones that can track your heart rate as well, but don't require a chest strap.  They have a little optical sensor and light that detects minor changes in your skin which represent your pulse.   Looks interesting. I'd love to know how well they work though.  Fitbit who I guess are probably the leaders in this area have the new FitBit charge HR which I'd like to try, but it seems it won't be out till the new year.  Bad marketing as I'm sure they'll be missing out on the big sales prior to Christmas.

Getting heavier

Stepped on the scale this morning. 149.5 pounds. A month ago, prior to race day I was hovering around 144. Yikes. Need to go on a diet, or at least run more or at least stop buying Costco packs of snacks.

I think I pulled a muscle in my hamstring on Wednesday. It was right after a run and I bent down to pick up a branch that was on the sidewalk and my left hamstring just sort of tightening up or cramped or something. It's a bit sore now.  I think it has something to do with weak hamstrings.  It kinda feels the sames as it did in New York last year which at the time I attributed to not running and the muscles starting to detrain a bit.  With the reduced mileage and only 3 days of running a week, I think I may be suffering the same problems.  Hopefully, it won't get worse and I can baby it for the next few weeks.

Polar Running Index

Yippe, a non-back dated post!

I'm going to get a bit technical now.  I run with the Polar RC3 GPS running watch.  When I finish my run and hit stop, it reports something called a Running Index.  This is supposed to estimate your level of fitness based on the pace and HR during the course of the run.  Over time, the number gradually increases as you get fitter, so I thought it would be interested to see how well it is able to judge running performance based on my training.  

For some basic info and a cheesy youtube video, you can find more about the Index at Polar's site.

Basically the Running Index is supposed to be able to predict your level of fitness and race times. From what I'm able to gather, it takes your max HR that you enter and uses your HR data and pace data from a run, figures out where on the sliding scale of your HR that you are at and then tries to extrapolate what pace you would be able to run at a percentage of your HR max that is indicative of various race distances.  Sounds good in theory.  The polar website I linked to has a table of estimated race times for a given Index.

So what Running Index am I at? Well that's hard to say.  See, the HR issue I occasional have really screws up the Running Index calculation since my regular maximum heart rate is probably around 187 I'm guessing which is what my watch uses to calculate the number.  The problem is when my HR spikes it sometimes gets to that number even when I'm running relatively slow and sometimes goes even higher than that.  For an example, the marathon I ran where I encountered the HR spiking issue for almost half the race, calculated an index of  46 which according to the above table means I should have run the marathon in 4:24, but the run that was used to calculate that number was actually a marathon itself that I did in 3:25. So runs with the HR spiking can't be used.

Also, relatively short runs also don't estimate the Running Index accurately. For example, the 5k race I did back in September where I ran 3.18 miles in 20:46 gave me an Index of 54 (even though my HR didn't spike) which means I should have run the distance in 23:20, again not correct.  This I can kinda forgive though.  From what I understand, the watch doesn't start analyzing your data until the 12 minute mark of the run. I guess it's to allow a warm up so the watch only had about 8-9 minutes of data to work with. It doesn't know that I already ran 12 minutes at a faster pace so it assumes that since I'm at or near my max and that I only ran at that pace for 8-9 minutes that I couldn't sustain that for another 10 so it underestimates my performance.

On the other hand, slow recovery runs tend to overestimate the Index. The highest index I saw this training cycle was 66 which was obtained on a 5.1 mile recovery run two days before the marathon where I averaged 8:52 min/mile pace.  On a longer run back in September, I was able to get a 65 on an 11 mile run where I averaged 9:00 min/mile. These predict a 3:05 marathon. Yeah, not happening.

So the best combination is to find a moderately long run at a slightly fastish pace and see what Index was calculated from that.  Marathon pace long runs would have been perfect for that, but all of my marathon pace runs suffered from HR spiking issues (foreshadowing of race day, I suppose) and so the Index predicted from those is fairly low. The best run I could find that fit the bill was an LT run that was done as part of a 14 miler. This was done back on August 20th where I averaged 7:57 min/mile pace for the whole run with 7 miles done at 7 min/mile pace. This resulted in an index of 60 which predicted a marathon time of 3:20.  Now considering that this was done two months before race day, it's probably about right as I felt I could have done at least 3:20 if not for the HR issues on race day and of course I was aiming for 3:15 which I think was doable.

My runs lately have me at a running index of  55 which is probably due to the fact that I donated blood a few weeks ago, have put on a few pounds and am doing low mileage.  I think I'm going to try tracking this a bit more closely going forward.  At least I'll now have a point of reference for future training.

NaBloPoMo Cat Video

I'm running on empty here so here's a cat video. Warning. It's 25 minutes long.

Pan Am Games

So in a little under 8 months, Toronto will be hosting the Pan Am Games.  Today, they announced they would convert some of the lanes of the highways into High Occupancy Lanes reserved for only a select few.  As much as I would love to see the games run smoothly, I think it's going to end up being a major clusterfu?k for traffic and getting around.  Traffic is bad enough as it is now. Can't wait till they start closing down streets downtown. 

I thought about getting some tickets to events, but I have a high suspicion that tickets will become cheaper as the events grow nearer.  The truth is that Toronto is very much an apathetic town when it comes to sports. There are people that will support the Leafs, but will support the other sports teams only when they are winning. I suspect that in an effort to fill half empty buildings, the tickets prices will have to come down eventually. Not that the tickets are that expensive, but it's hard to get an idea of what tickets will be good to have.  It's not like deciding you want to watch the gold medal hockey game at the Olympics.

They put out a commercial trying to excite the local populace about the event.  Nice production values.  Song is kinda catchy, but it does get annoying after awhile.

HR issue revisited

So getting back to the tachycardia HR issue. I've spent some time googling around trying to see if anyone else has had these types of problems. Salty is a fastish runner who has blogged about the matter with her and went so far as having the ablation procedure performed as did the Vegan Heart Doctor. There is also a tumblr thread on the issue. Other discussion threads I've found that talk about the issue are at:

http://www.patient.co.uk/forums/discuss/supraventricular-tachycardia-and-exercise--216514, http://www.firehouse.com/forums/t85631/,
http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/forum/health--injury/paroxysmal-supra-ventricular-tachycardia-svt/140810.html.
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Heart-Disease/Bradycardia-and-exercise-induced-Tachycardia/show/254634,
http://forums.bicycling.com/topic/54635607120706496
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=2819298 
http://www.steadyhealth.com/Exercise_and_SVT_t124733.html
http://www.coolrunning.com.au/forums/?showtopic=32248

So it seems that this happens to a lot of people.  As for my trip to the GP, I have to wait for some blood tests before I get a referral and I have to wait a bit to do that in light of the blood donation a few weeks ago.  I ended up trying a new GP. My previous one moved his practice out of the city so I'm trying a new family doctor. I'm not so confident of the guy. He's about 50 and new to the city and country and is originally from Iran and only received his Canadian license in the past year, but has been a doctor in Iran for over 20 years. He's at least got some experience so I don't really have an issue with that. What kinda bothered me was the clinic he was working in is computerized and while typing my history into the computer, he would do the one finger pecking thing on the keyboard.  In this day and age, a part of me doesn't quite trust someone with today's modern medical technology who can't type without looking at the keyboard.

In any event, he wanted to do a normal ECG reading and if that didn't show anything, he wants to do a 24 hour monitor which I suppose is what I was actually hoping he would want to do in the end, so maybe he won't be that bad.

Warming up

Another back dated post.  I'll try to remain on schedule. There's only about a week to go.   You may get some youtube cat video posts though.  So after some winter, it's warmed up to about 10C which is normally shorts and a t-shirt weather, but I find that I get weird looks when I go out like that in the colder months, even if the temperature says it should be so.  Knee length shorts and a long-sleeved T. 

I've started to notice some little aches in my legs, probably due to me not stretching and the lack of core and leg strength work.  I'm going to have to start that back up again. I also have a Bosu Ball that I purchased about 7 years ago that has been sitting in the closet for a while.  Back then, it was all the rage and ridiculously expensive for what it was, half a stability ball on a plastic base.  Supposed to help you utilize your stabilizing muscles which makes you stronger.  The thing is I never actually knew how to use it.  I could do squats on it and push ups, but didn't really feel that it was doing much and wasn't sure what else I should use it for.  That's all changed with the advent of youtube.  Do a search on Youtube for Bosu Ball and there are a ton of hits for various exercises. In fact, you can do a search for any fitness related thing and you'll find something about it.   Handstand running? That's out there. Bellyflop diving? Yes. Triatholon Juggling? Yep. In fact, I thought about the craziest running related thing I could think of, putting lipstick on while running and guess what? That's out there too.  In fact, she puts on all her make-up while running.





Weird, eh?

Whopps

Whoops. I slipped off the NaBloPoMo bandwagon so I'm going to cheat and back date this post. So had the first few winter type runs this past week where it's was below zero and there was snow on the ground.  Wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. So maybe I won't need a gym membership.  But it's still early and we haven't received any of that -20C garbage that we got last year.  Also, we didn't get that 6 feet of snow that Buffalo appears to be digging out of. Even though we're farther north than they are, they seem to get far more snow than we do.  They call it lake effect snow where cold arctic air blows south over Lake Ontario and picks up moisture that gets dumped when it encounters land. 

In regards to running, I'm trying to get maintenance miles in and trying to decide what races to do next year. There are the usual suspects for spring marathons here in Toronto, Mississauga and the Toronto one.  I'm also thinking of Around the Bay 30k and Harry's 8k race. Also I'm intrigued by the MEC race series, which offers no frills chip timed races. No shirt, no medal, no high fees. Typical race fees are $15.  May try a few of these next year.

A loser again.

So didn't get in to the Berlin marathon.  That's three times a failure for New York, (getting automatically on the fourth), and one failure each for Berlin, London and Tokyo.  Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.  My luck's got to change eventually.  Now, the question is whether to try and go for a tour for either.

Cadence Revisited

Ran outside in what I would call the first winter run of the season. -8C, some snow and some ice on the ground. Wasn't too bad.  Noticed that my cadence rate was still above 90/min even though I was running relatively slow and more importantly not while I was thinking about it.  It could also be that the fact that I was counting the rates subconsciously forced me to increase my cadence. Not sure.  I'll try the footpod thing again and get some more info. 

In other news, I'm waiting on results from the Berlin marathon lottery.  I had applied for the Tokyo  one in February earlier and didn't get in and now applied for the Berlin one and the results are supposed to start coming out tomorrow.  I was hoping to find out about the Berlin results and then if I didn't get in, I was going to think about doing Tokyo through a tour group, but there appears to be a waiting list for that now so that's a no go. Maybe that's for the best though and I would probably should have already started training for that if that were going to happen.

Snowy Day Aborted

So first potential running day of winter was a fail.  It was too windy this morning and there was snow on the ground.  Had intended to do it in the evening, but it was still too windy and cold.  I know I just have to force myself out there eventually and deal with it.  Excuse I gave was that I got the flu shot on Monday and I need time to let my immune system do it's thing.  Maybe, (probably) tomorrow when there's expected to be more snow. 

Snowy Day

Winter's a coming. It toyed with us a bit on Sunday dropping a few flakes that didn't stick. Today was a bit more and some of it covered the ground and partially melted.  It's supposed to get cold overnight so depending on how many people bothered to shovel their sidewalks, running tomorrow might be a bit dicey.  Guess the winter running's got to start sometime, even though it still won't be technically winter for another month. 

I've started giving some thought to gym memberships again with perhaps signing up but only if I can do so for the winter months.  I have no interest is signing a year contract, knowing full well that come April I will never set foot in the gym again till next winter.  My workplace has a gym that also requires a membership fee, but it's pretty cheap. I think it's about $15 a month and you can sign up by quarter.  It's not a big gym, but it has fitness classes and all the equipment you need. It's just that they don't have that many treadmills and there's a 30 minute limit.  Almost no one uses it after hours, even though it's technically open 24/7 so I suppose anyone can use it for however long you want assuming no one else is waiting in line.  It's just it's a bit far for me to go to do a long run there on a Sunday and I'm sure it would feel kinda weird going into work on Sunday, not to work. 

There are some no frill gyms around me so I may try and see what they're like rather than go to the more established, chain type gyms or I could just suck it up and force myself to run outside come hell, high water or the next ice age.

HR Issue

So I thought I would write a post about the HR issue in more detail in case people are googleing around finding similar symptoms.

The marathon has had me thinking a lot more about the HR issue now.  It's always been something I worried about, but it obviously hasn't caused me serious harm to date, but that's not to say that it won't.  I've read about Ryan Shay and Danny Kassap who were both high level professional marathoners who collapsed during races due to the heart issues and would later die. In fact, I heard that someone collapsed 10m from the finish line at the Hamilton half marathon and that the individual was an experienced runner who also died. Part of me worries that I might suffer the same fate.

The technical medical term for this phenomenon is a tachycardia and depending on what is causing it can mean it's extremely dangerous or just annoying.  

When it happens to me, I barely notice and most of the time, I only know because the HR display on my watch is telling me. The polar info I posted during my race report is one example, here's a better more clear example from a run.  This was from a  8 mile run that included 3x1600m interval session I did back in October.

It actually happened twice during this run.  It happened near the start, about 6 or so minutes in during the warmup when the HR (red line) jumps from a little over 125 to over 150, I ran with it like this for a few minutes and then started to walk when it then comes back down on it's own and then I continue with the warm up. I then get to the track when I immediately start into the intervals.  The first one is fine and the HR tops out at about 180 at the end of the interval, proceed with the recovery which involves a slow jog and as soon as start the second one, the HR jumps to over 200, after this interval, I start a walk recovery because I realize the HR is spiking, I think it actually recovers during the walk, but my pace dropped to 0 for a while and if I recall correctly, I think I did the squat maneuver just to make sure that it was low, I then proceed to walk the rest of the recovery and then do the third interval which is fine where the HR tops out at 185, and the HR issue doesn't return.  All three intervals are done at roughly the same pace so the drastic difference between interval 2 and the first and third isn't a result of pace difference.

While it happens randomly while I'm running, it most often  happens when I come to a stop after running and then restart suddenly (like with interval repeats), this makes stop light stops a pain in the behind because it will usually trigger an event.  I can usually get it to stop by doing the walking/squatting thing. This isn't a problem on long runs or intervals where I can throw in a walk recovery, but it becomes an issue when doing tempo runs where I like to do continuous running for between 4 and 7 miles. Breaking that into pieces to throw in a recovery isn't so great.  I was lucky enough this training cycle that I didn't have any HR issues when doing the tempo runs, but I did notice that the HR spikes seemed to be more frequent this training session during long runs. Other ways of getting it to stop involve what are known as vagal maneuvers which force the vagal nerve to send signals to slow down the heart, they involve holding one's breath or dipping the face into cold water or bearing down like you're having a bowel movement.  These are all difficult to do while running. I discovered the squat method while trying to do the bearing down thing. I'm not sure how one can pass a stool while standing up so the first couple of times I tried it, I would squat down, but I found the act of squatting was itself enough to get it to come down which I'm kinda thankful for.

Over the years, I've tried a number of different things to try to mitigate it. I'm constantly eating salt, which supposedly causes an increase in blood volume which supposedly helps to prevent it. I've been taking calcium&magnesium supplements which supposedly prevent it. I've cut out caffeine completely from my diet  which is supposedly another potential cause. Another potential cause is not getting enough sleep and this is one thing which I have difficulties with.  I can usually get by on 6 hours of sleep, but I find it hard to sleep for longer than that.  My body just naturally gets up after 6 hours.  I guess I need to figure out how to reprogram the internal alarm clock.

I did attempt to get this looked at a few years ago. Family doctor referred me for an echocardiogram and a stress test.  The echocardiogram did not reveal anything abnormal about my heart, and the stress test wasn't able to reproduce the HR spiking symptoms so the doctors' diagnosis was everything's fine, but I knew that something was still not quite right. I purchased an ECG monitor a few years ago on ebay, hoping that some blatantly obvious ECG problem would show itself, but while it's easy to spend $200 on an ECG device, the $100,000 medical degree that allows one to interpret it isn't so easy to come by. But hey if you're curious and can see a difference.

Normal at rest -HR 56

Tach, jog HR 176

The only difference I see is the tachycardia one is just faster.  The shape of the waveforms look pretty much the same. Ideally, I should have captured the ECG running at the same pace, both when it's spiking and when it's not.  It's just not easy to do since I have to run while carrying the ECG monitor with wires hooked up to my chest.  I did this experiment only once while running around a track back in June and I was excited to capture the tachycardia event with the monitor, but I realized after I should have planned it out a bit better. I'm thinking maybe I should try it out on a treadmill.  

The cause of tachycardia is usually a result of extra signal pathways in the heart that cause extra signals to make the heart beat faster.  The way to cure this is through an interesting procedure called a catheter ablation where they use drugs to force your heart into the spiking mode and a catheter is sent into the heart and the tissue that generates the extra signals are basically burned off. This is kinda scary cause after all this is your heart and if they get it wrong, there's a chance you're wearing a pace maker for life.  I've been reading recently that they've introduced a new technique where they use liquid nitrogen to first freeze the tissue to see if it solves the tachycardia problem first. If not, they let it thaw and start looking elsewhere so this at least offer the possibility of a do-over but it still seems kinda risky. 


In any event, I've decided to try and get this thing looked at again from a medical viewpoint and will hopefully get some more information this time around.  First appointment is tomorrow with family physician to try and get a referral to a cardiologist. 

Graffiti

Day 15, so half way there. This is going to be a bit of a filler post since there's only a couple of hours left in the day and I don't feel like thinking too much right now.  Here's a pic of some graffiti that I saw in an alley somewhere.  I don't remember where exactly, but thought it was pretty cool.