15-02-2019, 11:55 AM
2548
Re: Post your daily exercise routine
Bratti, I did a bit of a write up after my first heart attack and I thought you might like to read it. Some members have already seen it and to those I apologise. But if you need something to help you to sleep I think this might fit the bill.....There is some more if you feel up to it.....
My Life in Bits - Part 1 – Black Sunday
I pulled hard on my cigarette, I could feel the effect of the smoke on my lungs, I could taste the tobacco in my nostrils, it made me go slightly light headed. A smoke after a run was like your first ever cigarette, ecstasy. I sipped on a half pint glass of water but I wasn’t all that thirsty, I had taken water with me on my local 13 mile run on quiet country roads, past farmhouses and growing fields of corn and barley. The early morning weather was perfect for long distance running, cloudy and not too hot and not too cold.
It was Sunday 30th May 2004, a day that I will never forget, because as I stood in the kitchen looking out of the window I began to feel more than light headed. My legs were turning to rubber and unable to support my weight, I was seeing things in black and white and my face became cold. I reached for a chair before I fell, and flopped down, sweat ran off my forehead like a running tap as I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. It began to pass, and I could once again see in colour, Sue’s voice echoed into my head from the end of a long tunnel “are you alright Rob?” she asked “Yes” I replied, “low blood sugar.” Sometimes after a hard run it’s possible to pass out as blood sugar drops to an all time low. I rose from my chair but the feeling returned, Sue was getting concerned, but I assured her if I could just lay flat on the floor it would pass. As I lay face up on the lounge carpet I could hear Sue on the phone to our daughter, I felt a great weight pressing down on my chest, and after every breath out it seemed impossible to breathe in. My left arm and hand were becoming numb, and a darkness began to descend, the last words I heard were, “I’m going to have to go now Marie, your Dad is having a heart attack”!
How had it come to this? What had gone so horribly wrong? I was so fit. The heart attack had come as some surprise to everybody who knew me, but the biggest surprise, or should I say shock, was to me. I had been a runner for 26 years, since 1978. I was working in an engineering factory at the time, and one of my friends was getting married at the weekend, we thought it best to have his bachelor night on the Thursday before. Wise choice, because the next morning only five people turned in for work out of twenty. Paracetamol and Alka Selzer was the preferred breakfast. Robert Patterson, one of the survivors, used to go out jogging occasionally and suggested that I might try jogging when I got home to remove the stubborn headache that had blighted me all day. It would require some consideration, only after I had exhausted some other, perhaps less energetic solutions. I arrived home later that day and announced to my amused daughter and wife that I would indeed go for a jog. I laced on some old plimsolls, baggy bottoms and a Mallorca tee shirt, and on Friday 28th July 1978 I took my first ever serious run. I jogged up the street to the lane, and after making sure there would be no witnesses, or dog walkers, as they are sometimes known, I injected a turn of speed Seb Coe would have been proud of. It lasted for about 400 yards when my way was barred by a railway crossing gate, I clung on to the gate to support my weight, I thought I was going to die, I was struggling to pull large amounts of oxygen into my gasping lungs, my pulse banged in my ears and my throat burned with abuse from a thousand fags. I limped back home and collapsed on the sofa while Sue filled a hot bath. As I submerged my broken body into the warm caressing water, I realised that my headache had gone, not only that, I felt a calmness and contentment that I had never experienced before.
Over the weeks that followed I ran every other day up to that gate, I even continued further down the lane to a large post, which I measured with my car, it was as far as you could get on four wheels, and it came out at just one mile. With Robert Patterson and a couple of other work colleagues we had already completed some good long fell walks, the most notable was The Lyke Wake Walk, 42 miles over the North Yorks Moors from Osmotherly to Ravenscar on 28th June 1980. The Lyke Wake would inspire me to complete further attempts, but more about that later. I had found that just running two miles every other day, greatly enhanced my walking pleasure. It was on one sunny evening after work as I was jogging my usual two miles down the lane, that I met a runner coming in the opposite direction, as I was close to the mile marker I turned and jogged back to the village with him, and we chatted. He told me that he had gone all the way round, and that it was possible to make a circuit up by running to the next village. It would be five miles. It had permeated my sponge like head, and on my next run I successfully navigated the route, after that day in April 1981, I very rarely ran the two mile course again. I joined the Long Distance Walking Association in September 1981, and regularly attended walks they organised.
By the start of 1983 I had successfully completed another three Lyke Wakes, and several other long distance paths. I even had a failed attempt at a Lyke Wake Double, there and back in forty eight hours (84 miles). But my running had up to now, only been used to enhance my walking. That was about to change.