Dysautonomically disgruntled.... but qualified for the GB sprint duathlon team again!

 I would love to write that since my last blog I have had a better run of luck on the health front and been able to get back to some consistent training and racing.... sadly, not so. In July I ran the Snowdon Race whilst suffering from what we later found to be our 3rd bout of covid. I set off up the mountain and my whole body just said "NO"! This year the race was cut short due to 90mph winds and freezing temperatures at the summit (typical July weather...), so with this knowledge I plodded on as I knew it was only two thirds of the usual distance. I was gutted to cross the line as 2nd vet 40, just 5 seconds behind the category winner. I had no idea and, knowing that I had taken it easy, was frustrated as I could have easily found those 5 seconds. But that is racing, and I made a judgment call on the day as my body gave out warnings, and so ultimately I did the right thing.

Snowdon Race / Ras yr Wyddfa in driving wind, hail, rain etc.

I had a lot of post-viral fatigue in the weeks after so took a full week off any exercise. Then, shortly after racing Totnes 10k at the start of August we got struck down with the next lurg doing the rounds, which started out as a tickly cough but then entrenched itself and the most hideous, harking, unshiftable cough I have ever had the displeasure to experience ensued. For all four of us - me, husband and both children - it then turned into a chest infection and we all required antibiotics. It lingered on for 12 weeks for me and 15 weeks for my husband, who also needed steroids and further antibiotics to shift his. This meant that for the duration of August, September and October I had to have multiple rest periods and the only exercise I was able to manage was some very low-key plodding. I did get carried away at a couple of parkruns and, at one at Eden Project in September - at which I miraculously managed a sub 20 minute clocking - I massively set myself back and flared up my post-covid dysautonomia: don't push your body when your body is still coughing up half the contents of its lungs people!

I was diagnosed with dysautonomia after seeing a cardiology specialist back in late May / early June. I am only just starting to get my head around what it is and what it means long term. Crucially, it is deemed "incurable". This sounds like a death sentence, but in reality I have learned that although once you get it you are stuck with it, in practice it is like having arthritis, whereby you have to live with it but you can manage it and there will be times of flare ups (triggered by further viral infections, fatigue or stress) and times where you barely notice it and the symptoms fade. For me it manifests itself as tachycardia (fast and also erratic heart rate). I also have symptoms compatible with POTS, so it is exacerbated by standing, walking, running (upright) activities, and relieved by sitting and recumbent activities. At night, my resting heart rate is only about 10 bpm above its previous normal (50 instead of 40) during a dysautonomia flare up, but when I get out of bed it shoots up from 50 to around 120bpm within 10 minutes of waking. Eating large meals also exacerbate it, as does stress and adrenaline. So when you think that racing spikes adrenaline levels plus is an upright, highly aerobic activity, you basically have a recipe there for a truly bonkers heart rate that goes off the scale of my previous parameters and makes any form of heart rate based pacing completely useless! The weirdest thing is, I don't feel any different. My garmin tells me that my h/r is spiking at 185bpm just doing an easy 9m/m warm up jog, but I feel totally comfortable, not out of breath, able to hold an easy conversation and essentially feeling like I do on a normal day when it is around 125bpm at this same pace and effort level. And no, it's not a faulty Garmin as it's been confirmed by ECG and holter monitoring. 

A dysautonomia day: 50bpm in bed, get up and suddenly I'm in zone 2 just preparing and eating breakfast and sat in the car driving to the race. Then start an easy warm up jog and it shoots up to the high 170s. 

At first I didn't really know if this spelled curtains for my competitive sporting ambitions. I am a Mum now first and foremost, so staying healthy and avoiding any undue risk is my top priority to ensure I am able to care for my children. Once the cardiologist did further checks to establish that this is not an actual heart issue and is an autonomic nervous system problem and that exercise is in fact one of the recommended treatments for autonomic dysfunction, I felt happier about starting to push myself again. And what I have noticed is that my heart rate spikes within the first ten minutes of exercise, then the exercise actually kicks it back into a more normal rhythm and rate. So I just have to make sure I do a proper warm up now so the spikes can occur and it can then calm down before the race and real effort begins. That's not to say it doesn't still affect me - I know it does. Mostly it winds me up as, as an athlete, I am used to training my body so it responds when I ask something of it. With this condition, my body does what the bloody hell it likes and I have very limited control over it. But I am starting to see patterns in it and becoming aware of its triggers and also some little fixes, so hopefully going forward I will just learn to live with it and ignore it. I hasten to add, the cardiologist I saw was privately through the Nuffield.... I am still waiting to se an NHS cardiologist after being referred on 9th April this year as an "urgent" case... which I think highlights the shocking state of our health system currently. 

So, that boring tedious health gubbins aside, this weekend just gone I lined up for my first multisport race since the European champs in Bilbao in September 2022. As we have pretty much been plagued by illness ever since then, all the ambitions I had for the 2023 season had to be jettisoned: no Euro sprint champs in Venice; no world champs in Ibiza; no half-iron triathlon in North Wales; no Euro champs standard distance qualifier at Thruxton. None of it. I was ill for every single one of these events. So I left signing up for the Devon Duathlon (a qualification race for the 2024 Euros) until the last minute. I almost didn't do it as I knew I had done such little training (just 2 bike rides outside on the actual road this entire year and very very few wattbike sessions in which my watts were down by around 40 - 50!), and a few slow 9m/m plods and the occasional parkrun. Hardly perfect race prep! But my husband encouraged me as he pointed out that for years I have had to travel hundreds of miles to attend qualifiers in Nottingham, Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Hampshire etc, and now finally we have a qualifying race in Devon, and in East Devon just 7 miles from my house no less, and I am considering not bothering! Truth be told, I was nervous to sign up to a local race for fear of being crap! Yes, there are reasons for that, but, for me, I would feel the pressure to perform and so maybe I'd rather not bother than trail in behind athletes that I am capable of beating when in good health and better trained. My husband said that this was my ego talking and to man up and get on with it and who cares what other people think as I know the truth. Sound advice! My phsyio and long-time supporter, Nigel Wilman, also pointed out that I am notoriously hard on myself, so when he asked where he thought I was at, and I said 70% fit, he said in reality that is probably more like 80-90% and I will probably still manage to pull of an age group win.... I lacked his faith and him saying that put a whole load more pressure on me to perform! But you only need top 4 to qualify and I hoped that I could do enough for that at least.

Race day and, thanks to waking up with a bucket load of pre-race nerves and adrenaline, my dysautonomia went totally batshit crazy and gave me the most erratic heart rate readings I've had since when I first got hit with this in the initial aftermath of covid in April this year. 125bpm just sat in the car driving to the race! In fact, I spent the entire morning in training zones 1 and 2, just having breakfast, getting dressed, doing all the normal life activities. My training zones are meaningless when my heart goes off piste like this! In warm up I felt comfy, though a heart rate of 180bpm suggested otherwise. I just try to ignore it and trust that it will settle. 

Off on the first run and I feel comfortable, tailing friend and local age group competitor Emilie Brock. I know she is in great shape at the moment and honestly, I wouldn't have expected to be able to stay with her, so when she isn't pulling away, I figure I am doing ok.... but can I hang on?! There is an interesting off road section through Woodbury Common, which is pebbly and muddy and rather dicey when wearing Nike Alpha Flys! Into T1 neck and neck with Emilie. Onto the bike and off on a rather technical, hilly, wet and pot-holey bike course. A lot of competitors later said that they considered it a dangerous route and not really suitable for a GB qualifying race, but I think for those of us who live and train on these Devonshire roads, it is just what we are used to, so I didn't actually find it that bad! Again, I found myself trailing in Emilie's wake for the entire length of the bike. I would draw her back on the uphills, and she would pull ahead again on the downhill sections. We arrived into and left T2 together. We didn't know if there were any other vet 40 ladies up ahead of us, but in fact there weren't and we were actually competing against each other for 1st and 2nd spot. I haven't done any brick sessions at all, so the last time I ran off a bike was in Bilbao in September 2022! So it took my legs a little while to work into their rhythm, but once they did I found myself feeling stronger and my pace picked up as the run went on. Coming back into the grounds of Bicton College, Em and I are still neck and neck. My "sprint finish" is never to be relied on as my fast twitch muscles gave up twitching about 10 years ago, so I went for a sustained push from about 200m out. Luckily I got a gap and crossed the line as 1st vet 40 and 6th female overall, just 5 seconds ahead of Em. Both of us therefore comfortably qualified for a spot on the GB sprint team. 

Whilst I was overjoyed with the result, which was far better than I would have expected given all my health setbacks this year, it also left me wondering what I could achieve if only I could have better health on my side. To think I managed 6th overall in a strong women's field on the back of no quality training and a year of endless bugs and fatigue is both encouraging but also frustrating. The location and date of the Euro champs has yet to be announced, but I just hope we have a better winter on the germ front and I am able to finally string some consistent training together to get fit for it. I might be able to wing a category win at a qualifying race on no preparation, but I won't be able to medal on the same appraoch!

Thanks go as always to my amazing phsyio Nigel of Honiton Physio. My body doesn't respond well to enforced illness layoffs as residual weaknesses and postpartum niggles start to creep back in, so it's thanks to him and his expertise that I have been able to keep on top of those. 

Next up, hopefully some fun off-road races in the build up to Christmas, then assess my goals for next year once the details of the champs are announced. 

40 not out! (But the night watchman's padding up...)

 A couple of weeks ago I turned 40. Yuck. 30 was quite exciting, heralding the true start of proper ‘adulting’ (home ownership, marriage, kids etc). At 40 I’ve now deduced that adulting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It's rewarding, sure, but bugger me is it stressful, relentless and knackering! Furthermore, my best sporting years could well be behind me and this could potentially be life’s halfway point, given the as yet unknown length of innings I may have. I mean, age is but a number etc etc and I am far from “past it”, but I have noticed that recovery takes longer these days than when I took up running just over a decade ago; niggles are harder to ignore and run through as they are want to turn into full blown injuries; and generally I fatigue more easily and so cannot cope with the same volume or intensity of training that I once could. It’s hard to know whether much of this just is down to age or the fact that I am a busy Mum to a 4 year old and a 2 year old, the latter not being a terrific sleeper, and so a full night’s sleep has not featured in my recovery plan since pre-children in early 2019! I also no longer get the luxury of putting my feet up on the sofa after a race or hard session: it’s a case of jump in the shower and resume parenting as quickly as possible as the Mum-guilt is already kicking in at having abandoned them for an hour!

Then let’s talk about health issues and doctors visits: the older you get, the more of them there are! A particular recent health scare arose following a bout of covid in March. I felt fine with it at the time but about a week later, following a 13 mile trail run across Woodbury Common, I started experiencing ventricular ectopics (palpitations, essentially). Everyone gets these, many have a couple a day that go unnoticed, but having a high ectopic burden (too damn many of them!) can weaken the heart muscle and its pump function over time. 12 weeks on and I have been having continuous ectopics every 2, 3 or 5 beats that aren’t abating, so I am currently undergoing cardiology investigations to determine if something needs to be done about them (an ablation). I also suffered from an extremely high heart rate for the first 6 weeks following covid. My usual resting h/r is around 42bpm, a walk pace would be 80-90bpm, easy run 130bpm, all out 5k race pace 180bpm. In the 6 weeks post-covid I was at 55bpm resting, 130bpm just pottering around the house, 165bpm walking and over 200bpm at an easy run…. Needless to say, I didn’t attempt to race on this to find out the dizzy heights I might have reached! Anyway, the cardiologist suspects this is a form of post-covid dysautonomia and not actually a cardiac issue. A cardiac echo confirmed that my heart remains structurally sound. The solution? Most likely, time. Like many post-covid issues, you just have to let it run its course and hope that that course isn’t too damn long. The important thing is, if it wasn’t for my Garmin or being wired up to ECGs, I wouldn’t be aware of this high heart rate. I feel the same and it doesn’t feel like it is beating any faster. Jolly good as it means I have resumed racing and don’t feel too different or perform any differently (having had a month off all exercise and the ensuing drop in fitness accounted for), so the ectopics are clearly not too much of an immediate problem to my heart function. Not going to lie though, it was a worrying few months and it did make me question what would be my "me thing" if I could no longer run / cycle / perform to the level I have grown accustomed to. I mean, I could take up golf I suppose, but I doubt it would give the same endorphin release and, moreover, it’s too bloody time consuming!

Anyway, enough of the negativity. There are plus points to being 40: bottom end of a new 5 year age block for competing at age-group events; potential to win age group prizes in local races as well as top 3 overall; having the knowledge and conviction to do what works best for you and not be swayed by others: this applies both in sport and in life in general. A prime sporting example is that I now know that my legs do not handle speed work, so I simply don’t do it. I do the occasional hills session and a weekly parkrun at tempo pace to get into the anaerobic training zone. I also don’t do high volume sessions or high mileage as I simply don’t have the time. I do a daily set of specific strength exercises prescribed by my amazing physio, Nigel Wilman of Honiton Physio, to target my weak areas and make me more robust. This compensates for any lack of endurance training to ensure I can hold my form even when fatiguing towards the end of a race.

And so, to some recent race results. Up until May I hadn’t raced since the Templer 10 mile in November 2022. I was meant to do the Tough Runner Exeter Epic Trail at Escot in March, but it got cancelled with less than 48 hours notice. Over 4 months on and still absolutely no updates sent out on a rescheduled date, despite my three emails to the organiser to be told three times: “an update will be sent out in the next couple of weeks”. Still waiting. Seriously, a money-grabbing commercial outfit that doesn’t give a buggers about the runners. The thieving sods have pocketed my £28 and are away laughing. I digress…. Recent races. I’ve done three:

The Uplowman 10k in May. An undulating road race near Tiverton. A fabulously organised, cheap to enter event by Tiverton Harriers (Tough Runner could learn a few things here). I finished as 1^st lady in 41:10. Not bad considering this was following my full month off any training with the post-covid heart issues. My legs felt zippy and rested and full of running. It was a pleasing result.

Shiver Me Timbers 10 mile trail race in June. A coastal path race from Goodrington Sands to Brixham and back. Again, superbly organised and a beautiful trail route. The combination of distance (I don’t run over 6 miles in training) plus hills made this a challenge. The hot, humid weather didn’t help either! So I set off conservatively with another lady and we ran together for the first 3 miles. We then took a wrong turn as an arrow had been moved and added on an extra ¼ or so of a mile. The lady then pulled ahead and I was happy to settle in for a comfortable 2^nd place, finished 10 minutes ahead of the 3^rd lady. Finish time of 1h29, averaging 8:50m/m pace for 10 miles with 1500ft elevation.

Charnmouth Challenge fell race in July: my first race in the new vet 40 category. A coastal path challenge from Charmouth taking in 3 major climbs, including an ascent of Golden Cap – the highest point on the south-west coast path. 8 miles with 1700ft of ascent. I led the lady’s race up the first climb but as we topped out at Stonebarrow another lady pulled up on side and then put major time into me as we started to descend. I love a hill…. but I am pretty shit at running down them! She was then away and gone and I dug in for 2^nd place and comfortably first vet 40 (gotta take these old person wins now!). An average pace of 8:40m/m was an improvement on the Shiver Me Timbers race, given the increased elevation. I was pretty knackered by the end; it was another hot day and I don’t have the endurance to cope in the latter stages of these long races, so a fair bit of walking occurred on the final climb!

Next up? Snowdon International Race. 10 miles / 3000ft of climb. I have done this race twice before (2011 in 1h36m and 2015 on honeymoon, after being up all night violently puking with food poisoning from mussles(!) in 1h59). I’m now older, not as fit, not as well trained and having heart issues! My main aim will be to survive!

And of course, Saturdays wouldn't be Saturdays without a parkrun fix. Today's, celebrating the NHS@75 (which my husband proudly works for) was at Longrun Meadow in Taunton where I finished as 1st lady in 19:59. I've now done 314 parkruns at 74 different venues. It's the official start to the Dominey family weekend. The choice of location now gets swayed more by the quality of play park near the finish line than the quality of the post-run coffee, but hey ho, a Mum can't have everything!

"Come on chaps, keep up"!!! ;-) 

Thanks as always to Nigel at Honiton Phsyio for helping me keep on top of my niggles. Some pregnancy induced weaknesses crept back in in the enforced month I had off with the post-covid heart issues, so I have been paying him many visits and the combo of a well-placed knuckle in a strategic place plus strength, flexibility and activation exercises have enabled me to keep on top of the problems.