On My Way

I don't mean to brag, but I can probably beat any living person in a foot race. I am practically a world-class marathon runner. I pretty much invented running. Actually, I started my cardiac rehab this week and I am feeling great. In actuality I can jog about three blocks before I need a break, but I added a little more normal to my life again.

I had a checkup with my cardiologist last Friday and I got good news. She told me my incision is healing well, my heart sounded strong, my blood pressure was normal and I needed to eat more steak. It might have been the best checkup I've ever had. I need the steak because I'm a little bit anemic right now. I didn't get any blood transfusions during my surgery and I'm still a little low on red blood cells. A steak is apparently a good way to get over that. I have taken that recommendation to heart and had a delicious lunch today. How many people go to see a cardiologist and get told to eat steak. I'm just that good.

I was really looking forward to this checkup because I expected the doctor to write up a recommendation for cardiac rehab for me, but it didn't quite go as planned. I asked about the rehab, but she told me that since I had done it before and seemed to be in decent shape that I should do it myself.

I remember most of what I did in rehab last time and I have a heart-rate monitor so I think I should be able to keep myself alive. I won't push myself too hard or let my heart rate get too high and I'll increase the amount of work I do and my max heart rate by regular intervals. If all goes according to plan I'll be back in good enough shape to start climbing again by sometime in December.

So far I've worked out twice. Now, I know it might be premature to say everything is going to be perfect, but I have felt great through both of my workouts so far and I'm confident the positive results will continue. I started both days with a five minute warm up of brisk walking to get my heart rate up. I followed that with a slow jog for as long as I could without raising my heart rate above a certain level. Once it hit the maximum I decided on, I slow back down to a brisk walk. I do those two exercises for a combined ten minutes and then cool down for another 5 minutes with a slow walk.

I'll stick to a cardio-only workout for the first few weeks and then slowly start incorporating pushups, sit ups and other light strength exercises when they won't make my blood pressure go up too high. When three months of that routine is said and done I'm willing to wager that my body will pretty much look somewhere between Brad Pitt in Fight Club and Arnold Schwarzenegger when he won his first Mr. Universe Title. I don't mean to sound conceited, but I'm gonna look amazing. I'll post pictures later once I'm in perfect physical shape.