The Mayo Machine

The Mayo Clinic, I mean, not some new way of putting the Hellmann's on your sandwich.

I went down to the Mayo Clinic yesterday to do a treadmill stress test and to get another Holter monitor (24-hour EKG) put on.  My cardiologist had said he really hadn't seen anything on the Holter, including PVC's...which was strange, because I had felt a lot of them. He was the second cardiologist to say this (the first being my original Mayo cardiologist, who was moving to greener pastures soon and so sent me to the second cardiologist, and who I wasn't sure had gotten the correct monitor results.  Confused yet? ).  Anyway, New Cardiologist recommended a stress EKG and another Holter, so I scheduled them and down to Rochester I went.

I've been to the Mayo several times before, and it is a truly impressive place.  Once you find it, I mean.  Minnesota has a bad habit of being very vague with its road signage, and the Mayo is no exception.  The signs from Highway 52 are great...until you are about a block from the Mayo, at which time all signs cease and you're left to wander the maze of one-way streets and tall buildings, attempting to guess which of the parking ramps in view are actually a good choice.

Anyway, once you get there the Mayo is great.  The clinic is a well-oiled machine, with printed itineraries for your test schedules, helpful helpers pointing you in the right direction, and even someone playing piano in the lobby.  You follow your itinerary and proceed from floor to floor, test to test, and if a new test is added based on what the doctors are seeing, a new itinerary is printed immediately and off you go to the newly scheduled exams.  I took my dad to the Mayo a couple of years ago for cardiac testing (as I mentioned before, he has arrhythmia problems too), and took him to so many tests that once, when I left him in a test and went down to the cafeteria, I forgot where I'd left him and the always helpful helpers had to help me re-locate him.  Everyone I have ever dealt with there, even just people on the phone, is extremely nice and helpful.  This turned out to be a good thing yesterday, since my appointment had somehow gotten screwed up and they were expecting me today instead of yesterday.  Despite that, they managed to get me in for my stress test and my Holter at exactly the times I was scheduled--all while still smiling pleasantly.

The stress test is interesting.  I've done it probably four times before, not counting some VO2 Max testing I did   a couple of times.  I'm amazed that they can get you to your max heart rate without having the treadmill go any faster than a slow jog (they do it by manipulating the angle).  Which is a good thing for me, since I'm not a treadmill runner (I'm not any kind of runner anymore), and I'd imagine flying off the back of a treadmill while connected to EKG leads and an O2 sensor mask would be frowned upon.

My one focus this time--other than not flying off the back of the treadmill, and not quitting too soon--was to see if, when I felt what I've always been told is a PVC, the EKG showed a PVC.  As it turns out, I was apparently right on--every time I felt what I thought was a PVC and mentioned it, the technicians confirmed that it was, indeed, a PVC.  This still doesn't explain why no one saw any on the Holter from the Pack racing weekend, but at least I know I'm not feeling something that's not there!

So I do feel PVC's, I didn't fly off the back of the treadmill, and I didn't quit early.  Or, not much.  The procedure is that the technicians ask you, every couple minutes, to rate your effort on a 1-20 scale.  I assumed they wouldn't pull the plug until I said "20," or grabbed the treadmill handles, or begged them to stop.  When I reported a 19, though, they told me I was done.  I think they can tell when you're at your max heart rate, though, and there's no point continuing beyond that.  In my case, max turned out to be 202--pretty high for my age.

"I was told it's just genetic, though," I said, "and not an indicator of fitness."

"Yes," the technicians said, "and also you're a small person, and smaller people tend to have higher heart rates."

Me?  Small?

As I said, everyone at the Mayo is VERY nice.

Then I got the Holter put on.  The Mayo Holter techs are very thorough, and application of the electrode sticky-things necessitates much vigorous use of alcohol and sandpaper (fortunately in that order).  I'm glad they're thorough, though...maybe this one will show the PVC's when I feel them, as well as anything else that might or might not be going on.

I wore the Holter for 24 hours, including for an easy inline skate in the Dome.  Then I popped it in the mail back to Mayo today.  And tonight, my cardiologist called.

He mentioned seeing the PVC's, asked how I'd felt during the stress test (fine), and confirmed that I'd done the Holter.  Then he said the Holter should be interesting, and we'd wait for the results and then make a plan from there.

So now I'm wondering...what the heck does that mean?  If he'd seen nothing in the stress EKG, would he have said so?  Is he implying that he's waiting to confirm something, or am I just reading into what he said? And why didn't I think to ask these questions when I was talking to him?

So, I wait again...

Looking Up

The off-season is looking up a bit, because my "week totally off from exercise" is done, and I got to skate twice last week and will be skating again today.  Last Wednesday and Friday I went to the Roller Dome--for those who aren't lucky enough to live in Minnesota and may not know about the Dome, we have inline skating at the (formerly) Metrodome from November through March, including an inline marathon (I believe the world's only indoor inline marathon), which happened to be yesterday. I've done the marathon four times or so, once the "solo" version, and the other times the "team time trial" version.  It's a blast--70.7 laps around the concourse, music blaring, no hills, no wind.  I went to watch the Team Time Trial part of the race yesterday, since several of my inline and long track ice friends were skating in it.  It made me wish, momentarily, that I had signed up for it--but skating a marathon is not exactly what the "off-season" requires!

My skates at the Dome last week were a bit more laid back; 40 minutes easy, listening to the '50's and 60's rock and roll that happened to be playing and talking to friends I hadn't seen in a while.  I ran into Alaska Boy, a very talented masters long track ice skater who is also a very talented inliner, and who lived in Minnesota a couple of years ago and had just flown back into town for the marathon (which his team ended up winning). He's one of the skaters who had tried to convince me to move Heaven and earth to attempt to fix my "bunny on crack" technique, even if it meant abandoning hard workouts for a while and focusing all my energy on technical skills.  I was delighted to tell him that I had, indeed, been able (at least partly--there's still a ways to go!) to banish the bunny and start skating like a real skater, and I gave him partial credit for making me think about spending time working on it (although I was lucky enough not to have to sacrifice hard workouts to do so).  So that was fun.

Today, the Hubster and I are going to a trail near my sister Energizer Bunny and her husband Sherpa Boy's house, where we will skate a few laps with them and a couple friends, then go back to their house to grill.

Yes, inline skating and grilling.

In Minnesota.

In March.

What is the world coming to?

So in general, things are looking up.  I still haven't heard back from the cardiologist, though; I was expecting to hear from him by the end of last week, so I'll call tomorrow and see what's up.  And in both of my Dome skates, I had a lot of what I assume are PVC's...like one every 5-15 seconds for the first 15-20 minutes of skating.  If they are PVC's, they're not dangerous--but that many will certainly affect my ability to skate much harder than the laid-back pace I was skating, so I hope they go away before the hard-work season starts again in April!

Oh, Yeah...NOW I Remember...

...why I hate the off-season so much!

Day 7 of no workouts. The thrill of sitting on my butt on the couch watching TV and eating donuts is gone, replaced by the vague unease, the boredom, and the "something is missing" feeling that befalls someone with an obsession when their obsession is made unavailable.

My chiropractor (yes, I've started seeing a chiropractor for my back/neck/etc issues.  Coach TieGuy's brother, PT TieGuy, is a great Physical Therapist but insurance simply won't let me see him often enough to keep my back happy) has reminded me that this month is supposed to be a time of healing, and it is...physically.

Mentally, this month is gonna suck.

I hate the off-season feeling.  I'm bored, but I don't want to do anything productive (like, oh, say, clean the house).  I miss my skating routine, the physical effort of skating, the fun of having races and practices to look forward to.  The next season seems too far away to really get excited about or even to think about--which is extra unfortunate this year, since I need to write my own workout program for the first time in about eight years (Coach TieGuy will give my efforts the final seal of approval, but he doesn't have the time to write the program himself this year).  So I'm bored and restless and have a house that needs cleaning and a workout program that needs writing and no motivation for either one.

Yeah, the next four weeks are going to be fun...

Season Recap, and Waiting

I guess I should probably do a recap of the 2011-12 season, huh?  If nothing else, so I'll remember how it all went...

In 2011-12, I:

• Got seven Personal Bests (my usual in the previous years was 2-4): a Milwaukee and a Roseville PB in each of the 500, 1000, and 3000, and a Milwaukee PB in the 5000.  Probably would have had a Milwaukee PB in the 1500, but I never skated a 1500 there this year.  Also didn't have any "altitude" PB's because I didn't race at altitude this year (Like most skaters, I track PB's in 3 different categories: outdoor--Roseville for me; sea-level indoor--Milwaukee, usually, for me; and high-altitude--Calgary and Salt Lake City.  So there are lots of opportunities to break one's own records.)
• Skated my first pack races in 5 years, at the US National Mass Start Championships, which I won for my age group.
• Skated with a Holter monitor again.
• Got new skates, custom Van Horns again, which I really like and which have some built-in pronation control to counter my "ankle flop."
• Got more compliments on my technique than I've had total in the 14 or so years I've been skating.  One skater even told me he'd vote for me for "most improved" for the year.  It felt really good to make a big improvement in my technique this year.
• Made MAT 1 (Masters Category 1, an honorary elite masters designation achieved by skating a race in 108% or less of the world record in one's age group) again, in the 3000 and 5000. I made it last year in all distances except the 500, but I really need to go to a high-altitude (i.e., fast ice) oval to make the time in the 1000 and 1500, and I didn't have any official races at altitude this year.  Making MAT 1 is nice because not only is it a way to gauge one's success as a masters skater--but US Speedskating gives MAT1 skaters a skinsuit (a fast one!), which is beyond cool.  
• Had fun skating with other masters skaters--actually skated more laps with other people (in a paceline) this season than I probably have in the last 5 seasons combined.
• Had another frustrating year due to health issues, this time what I am assuming is a heart arrhythmia, which brings me to the "waiting" part...

I heard back from a cardiologist from the Mayo yesterday.  Actually, to back up a bit, I had heard back from my old cardiologist at the Mayo (the one who did my ablation in 2005, and who evaluated me again in 2009 when I was trying to diagnose what turned out to be hypothyroidism) a week or two ago.  My Mayo doc called me back a couple days after I had had the Holter monitor, which was a bit of a surprise since I hadn't known that my GP was going to send him the results.  And I was kind of surprised when my Mayo doc said he hadn't really seen anything on the EKG.

"Other than the PVC's, of course," I said.

No, he said, he really hadn't seen any PVC's either.  I thought that was weird, since I had felt many (of what I've always been told are) PVC's during the warmup before races, and had a couple incidents of what felt like the arrhythmia I've been experiencing this season, during the races (although, since they were pack races, I was a little flustered and therefore had a hard time focusing on what I was feeling).  But anyway, he said he didn't see anything of concern. He also said he was leaving the Mayo for another job opportunity, but if I wanted to follow up further I should contact the Sports Cardiology department at the Mayo.  So I figured that was that.

Before I had a chance to blog about it, though, I got another call, the next day, from my GP. He had my Holter results, he (or actually his assistant) said.  OK, I said, but I've already heard from my cardiologist...

"Good, so then he's told you about the PVC's and the Second Degree AV Block, also called Mobitz 1."

Uh, that would be a "no."

After I got off the phone with my GP's assistant, the Hubster reminded me that I'd actually had TWO EKG monitors, and suggested that maybe my Mayo doc had gotten the results from the first one, which hadn't really captured anything because I couldn't push the button effectively when I felt arrhythmia symptoms.

So, a couple phone calls later I had determined that it was likely (although not certain) that my Mayo doc had indeed not seen the Holter results, and so I arranged for the Holter results to be faxed to the Mayo for review.

And then I waited.  And played phone tag.

And Googled.  

Never, as I believe I've mentioned before, Google your medical symptoms.  This time, I discovered that Mobitz 1 is fairly common in athletes.  It is usually seen when they're resting or asleep, and is benign (harmless) in these cases.  It can have more significance if it is triggered by exercise, though--and of course, I don't know whether my doctor saw mine during resting parts of the EKG, or when I was actually skating...

Finally, yesterday, a very nice cardiologist from the Mayo called me.  Unfortunately, he hadn't been given the Holter results, so he couldn't tell me anything.  I filled him in on what I'd been experiencing, and he said he'll track down the Holter stuff and get back to me later next week.

So now I wait...and try not to Google anymore...

...and start planning for the 2012-13 season.

The Off-Season

Now that it's officially the off-season (mine will last through the first week in April), what's a skater to do?

Well, thus far I'm:

• waiting to hear the final word from a cardiologist on the Holter monitor results
• trying to clean up my eating so I'll be able to fit into my pants post-5-weeks-off
• marveling at the fact that my fellow skaters (as per their Facebook posts) are apparently on the opposite diet plan, and are now eating everything they've been denying themselves throughout the skating season
• nursing the arm I hurt this morning slipping and falling on ice at work.  Apparently if I don't have skates on, I shouldn't be on ice
• watching TV in the evenings. I actually get to see network shows on the night they are broadcast
• going to bed at 9:00 since I'm no longer just arriving home from practice at 9:45
• thinking wistful thoughts about the season just past

So far, that's about it.  I'll start doing some casual workouts next week--slow inlining at the Metrodome (or whatever they're calling it these days) and maybe some yoga.  I have this week completely off from any workouts, but I'll need to do some easy stuff a couple of times a week after that just to keep in the working-out routine--and to keep my sanity and good mood! So there should be a thing or two to blog about in the upcoming off-month...

Goodbye, Oval

Today was the last day of ice at the John Rose Oval for the 2011-12 season.  We had metric sprint races; I did the 100, 300, 500, and 1000.  No spectacular times (you know how I love sprints!), but the weather was great and it was a fun morning. And, I'm finding that the end of the season gives me the desire to wax poetic.  Since my only claim to poetry fame is having memorized more limericks than anyone else on the women's rugby team in college, don't expect much--but here's "Goodbye Oval" (with apologies to "Goodnight Moon," Dr. Seuss, and anyone else I might be inadvertently channeling).

Goodbye Oval

Goodbye, John Rose Oval

The season was fun

And now let me list

My goodbyes one-by-one

Goodbye winter weather

Bye ice, rain and snow

Goodbye rare calm days

Goodbye winds that blow

Goodbye frozen toes

That pain us a lot

Goodbye frosted lashes

Goodbye dripping snot

Goodbye Gore-tex jackets

Goodbye dorky glasses

Goodbye Nike Swiftskins

Stretched over our...glutes

Goodbye boots and blades

Goodbye sharpening stones

Goodbye painted lane lines

Goodbye starting cones

Goodbye weeknight workouts

With laps slow and fast

Goodbye Masters men

The draft was a blast!

Goodbye hockey players

Goodbye errant puck

(Get out of my lane!  

OMG!!  WTF?!)

Goodbye weekend races

Both metric and pack

(It's metric I love;

It's pack skills I lack)

Goodbye fellow racers

"Enduros" and sprinters

Goodbye wooden benches 

With butt-piercing splinters

Goodbye winter beauty

By night

and by day

Goodbye John Rose Oval

The best place to play!