Hello again, it's been a while!

Well, I haven't been on here in a long time. I kind of fell out of the training mode. Life seemed to just always get in the way. Well, that didn't fare too well for me. I have never really been way overweight but I had slipped up to 215 in early May and well, on May 4th, I started to feel a little pressure on my chest and when I exerted myself, even a little bit, the pain would get worse. I'm 52 years old and pretty much anyone reading this can tell where this is going. Of course, I didn't go get it seen about that night since I thought it would just get better on its own. I went to work on May 5th and around lunch time, I started feeling the pain again and decided I need to get it looked at. I went to the emergency room and they couldn't find anything wrong (of course), but they wanted me to stay and do a stress test the next morning. So I did and I FAILED it miserably. They wanted me to reach a target heart rate of 145 and I couldn't go for three minutes without excruciating pain. I only got up to 137 and called it quits. I knew I hated the treadmill but this was ridiculous. They took their pictures of my heart and saw that the entire left side of my heart was dark thus indicating a blockage.

The doctors scheduled me for a heart catheterization on Monday, May 8th and when they did that, they found a 99% blockage of my left anterior descending artery. Doc said that on Friday when I came in, I was probably hours away from a severe if not fatal heart attack. They put a stent in and opened up the artery to allow proper blood flow.

The good news is that I didn't have a heart attack and my heart is actually very strong. An EF of 60% for those of you who may know what that means. And the really good news is that I have another chance at life and this diet and exercise thing. I went through 12 weeks of Cardiac Rehab to begin working out again. That was a good way to start slowly and not overdo it. I have even started to have a desire to become a runner. I am working out 5 times a week, mostly just cardio in the gym but I will slowly start to transition to doing more outside.

I have lost 22 pounds since May 8th and I am leaner than I have been in probably 2+ decades.

It appears that most of my former friends I had on BT are no longer active although I will try to connect with them in other ways. If you are in the Atlanta area, specifically Acworth/Kennesaw/Marietta, friend me and help me to get back on track and see what I can do again.

I'm not going back and logging all the workouts I have done since May but trust me when I say, it was slow and steady and well worth the effort. I'm actually already up to 20 minutes continuous running. I look forward to meeting new friends and having some fun.