5k
Barrington, RI
Almost DNF, Almost worse
I finished this race out of stubbornness. My last 5k was a week ago, and I felt great pushing 6:45 pace. This time, I felt great running 6:30. And I ran 2 miles at that pace. I was keeping an eye on my heart rate, staying below 180, and everything seemed to be working as well as it has in the past 2 1/2 years.
One of the fun things about having a bum heart is you never know when it's going to get tired of this running thing and call it quits. This was one of those times. The second of those times.
This time, I was fortunate enough to have my own personal Thumper that shocks me back into shape. I've never felt this before, and I wasn't prepared for what it would do to me. I remember running up a small hill just after mile 2, and starting to feel unusually lightheaded. I knew something was wrong, so it walked to the side of the road. A few seconds later, I was hit with a shock that felt like something exploded in my chest and went out through my head.
I knew what happened, and I knew either everything was fixed, or I would get a few more and probably pass out. I was pretty far ahead in the group, so I figured there would be someone running along and a crowd running eventually that might help. But I was also in the worst part of the race course, 1 mile from the finish, nowhere near a home or spectator or cell phone.
I just walked and waited.
Eventually, I figured I wasn't going to get another shock and my heart had come out of fibrillation and recovered. I could say I was relieved, but I was actually pretty pissed to see all these runners passing me, all the hard work I had done drift away. Probably pretty unreasonable, but I wasn't exactly thinking straight at the time. I shuffled through the finish in 28 minutes, and made my way to my car.
A week later, I received a printout of what was going on with my heart during this episode. If you give a kid a pen and ask him to scribble a line up and down a paper, that's what I looked like, with big, squiggly gaps in between. It's scary, but Thumper worked. Now I just have to wait and see what caused this to happen this time, after all the running and workouts and races I've run over the past few years.
I've got some time off to figure this out.
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