Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Cardiomyopathy patient wants to run a half marathon!

Here's a great story - a friend of ours is a cardiomyopathy patient. This is basically a illness of the muscular walls of the heart - you can't overstress yourself at all or your heart can give out!

This chap, bless his brave soul, wants to run a half marathon in a years time or so. Some people would say WOMBAT. Others... brave lad.

Some advice from SA Doc...

1. Take it easy. Small steps, slow training and build up over months, not weeks.

2. Frequent checks with your cardiologist to make sure your medication is optimal and the heart muscle training is coming along well. Your Echo needs to be "A" OK!

3. Don't run with scissors.

Please go visit his site and drop the guy a comment or two as motivation. It's a great mission to have - and if patients from around the world can stumble upon this kind of positivity? Well, it just can't hurt.

Visit Mark's site here...

4 comments:

Mark said...

Thanks Doc,
I have no illusions about this taking weeks to achieve, and when I start to struggle I go slower. As for the cardiologist, I'm making an appointment with a new one soon, my regular guy is in Cape Town.

Scissors!? But what if I want to cut some flowers on the way? :P

Andy Hadfield said...

The joburg dudes rock.

Paul S. said...

I am a doc and have Apical HCM. I ran my first half marathon on August 7, 2011. I took months to train for this event. My cardiologist says I will never be able to run a marathon because of the changes that happen to the heart during a race of that distance. I tend to think he is right, well I know he is right. The last mile was done at a snail's pace and there was literally no way to go any faster. My heart was telling me to jog in and finish upright and not on a stretcher.

I wish you luck and agree with all of the recommendations of the other doc. Be careful, be smart and be grateful for the opportunity to run.

Mark said...

Hi Paul,
I did my half marathon in 2009, I can't say I felt any cardiac trouble slowing me down. What bothered me more was a knee injury which had me limping the last 5km.
I've mostly stopped running any distance now, just about 5km to keep fit. I'm quite sure I would never be able to run a full marathon.