Six weeks and jogging

dave1939 · Oct 27, 2013

Following AVR on September 11, I was able to complete a 5K race, The Superhero 5k, held in Asheville NC. My time of 39'53' was about 10 minutes slower than last year but good enough for third place in my age group, 70+. (OK, there were only three of us) Everything is going well, and I'm looking forward to further improvement.
After the surgery I bought a heart rate monitor, I never used one previously. I decided to keep my pulse under 140 for the race, but the first time I checked it was already at 154, which is theoretically higher than my maximum. I started to walk and jog after that. When my pulse got up to 140 I would resume walking, and so on. Before surgery I had a resting HR of 45-50, now it is 65-80. I can only wait and see if it returns to the earlier rate.
Incidentally the monitor is a Polar FT-1. It is simple to use and relatively inexpensive. I checked with the gym monitors as well as manually and it seems quite accurate.

Duffey · Oct 27, 2013

Congrats, Dave, that's quite an accomplishment.:thumbup:

SumoRunner · Oct 27, 2013

Yes, your resting HR should return to what it was, but give it several months.

big_L · Oct 28, 2013

Wow, 140+ HR. I'm so loaded on beta blockers (two months after surgery) that I can't get above 90 HR. Congrats on the run!

SumoRunner · Oct 28, 2013

I waited the requisite 6 weeks like a good boy before running. I had been walking every day and was up to 5-6 easy miles by then. So on the day I reached 6 weeks I tried to run for the first time and only got 80 yards before gasping for breath. I had a follow-up appointment with the cardiologist in a few days anyway so I hit him with it. Why such a struggle running when I feel good? "Oh, didn't we tell you? One of your lungs collapsed in surgery." Sh*t no, nobody told me! So what can I do to help fix that? "Deep breathing exercises." was the answer. Oh, you mean like running?

It took another 6 weeks before I could complete a whole mile and 5 months before the lung was fully re-inflated. Now that was a painful process let me tell you.