Hi

I was fitted with a pacemaker 4 years ago for Sick Sinus Syndrome, (heart pauses, slow heart rate, beats not all getting through). Things were amazing the first year, never felt better. Recently I found out one of the leads isn’t working so they’re trying to sort that but it’s not causing symptoms.

Completely separately, I’ve now developed early heart failure. I’ve been running and racing on the fells for 20 years, mileage and pace obviously decreasing as I’ve aged. I’m 57 now, a young 57 in my opinion :-).

I also run with a local road club in winter. In November my running pace started to deteriorate until a few weeks later I was 4 minutes a mile slower for no apparent reason. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get back to my previous pace. On top of that I began to feel I couldn’t get a big enough breath and had to repeatedly stop running to try to take a bigger breath. I felt as if I was pushing a bus in front of me on every run.

Anyway suffice it to say I’m beginning to come to terms with this although it’s been a real unexpected blow.

The medical people have said it’s fine for me to carry on running. It’s really hard to run, (and bike now too), but I certainly have no intention of ever packing it in and still hope to carry on racing.

I’m after any advice on training from anyone in similar circumstances and any tips, shared experiences etc would be fab too.

Thanks in anticipation