How do you feel?

 

Me and Eddy, my training partner on our walks

 Lately I've been asked the question a lot. "How do you feel" and I appreciate every one's interest about how I feel after the heart attack. It's already been four weeks since the mishap and there's two parts to this, one is the physical side and the other the mental.

Physically I am doing great and I am glad that the recovery is going well. The Doctor told me that I will recover faster than the average person due to me being very fit and healthy and I am glad he was right. I've started walking with Eddy the week after the heart attack and started with 100 meters a day and slowly building it up and is now up to 2.5 km. I must constantly remind myself to walk slowly and take it easy.

Physically I feel like I can almost start running and need to force myself to walk slower than what I want to. According to the Doctor I can start training again after six weeks (two weeks to go) but only at 70% of max heart rate. Can't wait!

Picture above is my Training Peaks performance management chart and the blue line is the Chronic training load (CTL), [basically it is my fitness level and it is quite disturbing seeing the chart taking a nose dive the past four weeks].

Even with the alarm switched off, the body clock still wakes me up at 4am after all these years

Mentally it is not going that well. Being used to train twice a day for seven days a week most of the time and now only walking once a day at turtle pace for half an hour is hard. I really miss the training and that feeling you get after a hard training session or a race.

My emotions is also divided in two. One moment I am so thankful that I am alive and been given another chance. The next moment I am upset that this has happened to me and ask the question, Why?
Living healthy, being active, no health issues, no signs of an attack coming and then Bam!
Cancelling all my flights, accommodation, race entries etc. for upcoming races I've already booked was also not helping.

So unfair but then I think back to that day and am thankful again and realize that this will be a long road to recovery but I must enjoy every day being alive.

Tomorrow I am going back to work after my forced "holiday" and am exited to be back at the Dealership again but am going to miss the extra family time with Kim and DJ which I got so used to