Ten

Today I thought I'd push my mileage up to 10 to see if I was getting any better. It was a grey morning and the wind was kind of easterly so I headed off down towards Musselburgh knowing I'd have the wind at my back as a reward on the return. I still feel odd, particularly my breathing, and wouldn't be keen to push it. Having said all that I had a nice steady heart-rate and my pace wasn't all that bad. I was kind of tired, but that kind of thing can happen in a week! So, once again, I'm pleased.

I've been counting things up because its a good day for tiddling about on the computer in a nice warm room. Since we changed to using power-saving light-bulbs its mighty gloomy around here. I had to wear my head-torch to get Peter's ancient calculator to work. (Its solar-powered.)

The year splits quite evenly into two halves. Before and after my heart broke. It happened two days after midsummer - possibly brought on by the sad sight of Richard Dennis pulling out of the WHW race after running all night in the most extreme wet weather. Maybe something else caused it, I don't know. Maybe it was how little I'd been running, because today I discovered that this has been my lowest mileage year for quite some time. Before breakage I ran just 813.48 miles and my highest mileage week was a mere 45.63  miles. Since then I have run 698.27 miles making my total for the year so far 1511.75. The last few years I've easily cleared 2000 miles so this really has been a year of backing off.

In the first half of the year I ran 17 races, in the 2nd half I've run 3, making a total of 20.

This has been my year of drugs. In the second half of this year I've swallowed 372.5mg of Bisoprolol and  13.9 grams of Flecainide. I also had my first go at opiates, in the form of Fentanyl. At the same time I've cut back on my legal highs, restricting coffee to just one weak instant one in the morning and I've cut out tea. I've had one half glass of red wine and one half cup of mulled wine since July. They were both on Saturday. That was some party!

Still on the drugs, I'm now getting into the blood-thinners (well they don't really make your blood thin, they make it slippy), so I'm munching my way through a heady mix of Clopidogrel and aspirin each morning.

I have never been told I am young and fit so often ever in my puff. Just go and see a cardiologist and you'll soon realise it IS an aging population and most of the people they see couldn't run a bath.

I have never waited for a letter so long as I waited to get the one with an appointment to get an ablation. It was exactly 17 weeks from when I was told I'd be referred until I got the letter, making around 90 little shots of disappointment before the day it arrived. (I didn't expect it to come right away and I've excluded Sundays).

Okay, this has been autistic heaven but I better bring it to an end. It seems like a good time to go and make dinner as we'll be out later on. It is the Portobello Awards night and I'm sharing my title of first older girl with Aileen Ross. (I got my races in in the first half of the year.) Peter is like-wise sharing a podium with Michael Fullerton this evening.