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One Foot in Front of the Other

What a frustrating week this has been! On one hand it was good since the cardiologist okayed marathon training. But my body has been saying "no" ever since! I really wish this could just go away. Someone told me one time to wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up faster. Well, I'm guessing that this is not going to disappear so I'll have to learn how to deal with it.

I hate feeling like my runs are a fight to take every step and every breath. My runs and workouts this week felt like I had a boa around my chest compressing my lungs; and it felt like I was dragging an elephant behind me. Some days I had chest pains to go along with it - or even worse in my opinion is chest pains after finishing a good workout.

Today I felt a lot better. Who knows what is actually going on with my body to make me feel horrible or good? Today's 3+ miles was pretty good and I wore my PEAR sports heart monitor to watch my heart rate. I started my higher dose of medication last night and I've taken the diuretics for a few days now so I just want to watch it all real closely to make sure it's all good.

My heart rate actually did excellent. I did a half mile warm up where I walked a lot and got going. Then I wore the monitor for another 2.8 miles. My heart seemed to go ahead and elevate to about 103-107 which is low really - but beta blockers are supposed to keep it from jumping too high. That's actually why the cardiologist raised the dosage so it wouldn't jump up. I've seen it jump scarily high during a race before so this was good! It also came right back down when I would switch to walking. I held a pretty good 3:1 interval run for quite some time. I'm pretty happy with that. Why can't every day be this good?

So what's the plan from here? A week where I feel really bad like this has a tendency to set me back a bit. I'm not sure how I will handle the next bout, but for now I'll just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I'm still going to set up a marathon plan as if I didn't have to deal with the extra baggage congestive heart failure brings to the table. Pretty sure I'll do a mileage plan now. That allows me to be more flexible inside the plan. For instance, if my goal mileage for the day is 3-5 miles or even 10-12, I can do the miles with whatever my body gives me that day. I can use  run:walk intervals until I cover the miles.

One thing I've been thinking about is that I feel better overall if I do something every day. So this week I'm going to try it. I want to at least walk a mile a day this week. I can ride my stationary bike, walk or run everyday; and do some sort of strength training 3 or 4 days too. Next Sunday is the OKC Memorial Marathon (I'm doing the half) so I want to take it easy too. It is a true challenge to try and get my miles in without overdoing it. We'll see how well I can do this going forward -because I have no intentions of stopping - one foot in front of the other - one day at a time. Second marathon I will conquer you!

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