It started with a thump.
Wait, let’s go back a bit.
I’m a 53-year-old man, and I’ve been a cyclist in earnest since the days of blue Gitanes, toe clips with Binda straps, and when Davis Phinney reigned as the king of criteriums.
I’m sure many of you can agree that once an activity is done enough, it pretty much becomes a part of the way a person is defined. For example, if someone were to approach and say “so, tell me about yourself”, one would assume, as you are reading this, that “I’m a cyclist” would eventually make its way into the conversation.
I’m a cyclist. Perhaps to a fault.
About eight weeks ago, I woke up with a funny feeling like some kind of Keebler Elf was playing bongos on my sternum. And not very well. His timing was horrible. If he were in the Beatles, Paul would re-record his tracks. My heart rate, sitting at my desk, was just over 130. It is normally just under 60. This was not normal.
I’ve had this feeling in the past, normally after I treated my body like an alcohol-soaked Disneyland. You know, the weekends where long rides are followed by beer, wine and some form of low-budget, screw-cap bottle hard stuff. Yeah…weekends when my body got so dehydrated, my heart would decide to shift into self-sustain mode and focus strictly on keeping me alive.
But this was different.
(Image credit: Patrick Bulger)
Atrial Fibrillation is defined as an irregular and, at times, rapid heart rate that sets the top chambers of the heart (atria) and the bottom (ventricles) into a tempo that basically resembles the sound and feel of those moments when two cars blasting their stereos come to the same stoplight. The atria are cranking the syncopated jazz while the ventricles are sticking to mellow soft rock.
In case you didn’t know, the heart is kinda important to, well, existence. So when the chambers of the heart get so out of sync, one can deduce that multiple issues can arise, such as dizziness, fatigue and even a stroke. Blood pools in the heart, which can greatly increase the chance of those dreaded clots being released into the bloodstream.
Cycling is a healthy activity. Cyclists aren’t supposed to have these issues. The common thought is that the more time spent on the bike, (barring distracted drivers, road ragers and random incidents of gunfire) the longer and better the quality of life. Right?
Lennard Zinn is also a lifelong cyclist. If you’ve worked on your own bike, chances are you have learned from one of the…