PLUS & MINUS 3.5 YEARS (or 3 yrs 8 mths 11 days to be precise) :
Today is not just Tuesday 8th Sept to me but a far more significant landmark day which came about because of the 28th Dec 2016 (3 yrs 8 mths 11days ago)
As I lay in the Harefield hospital bed days after Christmas the realisation that I had gone from having my first angiogram (unstable angina) to a heart attack in a little over 3.5 years scared and even frightened me …. where would I be in another 3.5 years?
It was then that I decided I had to take serious action to prevent things getting worse and set a goal to improve my health & fitness in the next 3.5 years by as much as it had deteriorated in the last 3.5 years – to reverse the trend.
Today I reach that landmark day and having gone through several other hospital admissions, cardiac rehab, FFIT, parkrun, Ridge Off Roader 10K, the Hell-Fire 10K, Rugged Radnage 10K and generally increasing my running to the point where I would have entered the Maidenhead half marathon last Sunday, the first time I attempted this distance in 37 years more or less on the 3.5 year anniversary – that was the big goal but of course the event was cancelled.
Despite losing through the lock-down some of the confidence, stamina and pace I had built up over the past 3 years, I am still pushing ahead with the Maidenhead half marathon challenge on 27th Sept. mainly because Hearts & Souls, the charity who supports the excellent cardiac rehab programme in South Bucks that helped to set me on this path has had cancel all its own fund raising activities this year leaving a massive shortfall which I hope to help offset.
I wouldn’t have achieved any of this but for the fantastic support I received through Cardiac Rehab, BHF, FFIT and the running community and I am eternally grateful to Andrew King, Kris Chaplin, Jenny Hedges & Naa Noo Nicky from the ‘Your Pace or Mine’ running group who have kindly offered to accompany me around this course.
Please read this link about my challenge and donate what you can to help support todays cardiac patients to recovery so they might one day get to their own half marathon ….
Carpbait
Cardio Rehab - low take up
Exercise after triple bypass.
Parkrun/parkwalk
Am I really not supposed to run?
