I just got a call about the echogram. They said I have left ventricular hypertrophy. I looked this up on the mayo clin. website and see the following.

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Definition
Left ventricular hypertrophy is enlargement (hypertrophy) of the muscle tissue that makes up the wall of your heart's main pumping chamber (left ventricle).

Left ventricular hypertrophy develops in response to some factor, such as high blood pressure, that requires the left ventricle to work harder. As the workload increases, the walls of the chamber grow thicker, lose elasticity and eventually may fail to pump with as much force as a healthy heart.

If you have left ventricular hypertrophy, you're at increased risk of heart disease, including heart attack, heart failure, irregular heartbeats (arrhythmia) and sudden cardiac arrest.

The incidence of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) increases with age and is more common in people who have high blood pressure or other heart problems.

I didn’t realize it had been so long since I have posted. Since the events started with Vicki’s untimely illness and death things have been crazy. We are finally starting to settle down a bit and get in to a flow at work.

As far as other things going on- Glenn started Pre-K last week. He was so excited about going to his ‘big boy” school but now wants to go back to his other school where his friends are. Hopefully he will adjust soon.

Soccer started for Glenn a couple of weeks ago. We had our first game this past Saturday and I guess it went about as well as one would expect a 4 yr old soccer game to go. I think I ran more than any of the kids on the team trying to get them to run up and down the field for the ball. Oh yea… did I mention I was coaching the team?

A few weeks ago I started having some weird feelings in my chest and left arm. I figured it was just all of the stress I was under at work but with thing that happened to Vicki I wasn’t going to play around. I went in for a physical and all of the blood work came back fine but there was something on the EKG they didn’t like and there were the words “borderline” in the one of the blanks. The one funny thing was that it showed my heart rate at 45. I had to explain that even though right now I am not in real good shape that I am a distance runner. I was referred to the cardiologist.

I went in for my stress test and echogram this past Wed. I got on the tread mill for the stress test and she started the testing. I was told that I needed to get my HR up to 145 (80% of my max) for the test. After a few minutes of the test and I was still at 70 she started calling me “Mr. Healthy”. Then after about 15 minutes and a few computer generated t-mill adjustments I was finally at a speed and incline that raised my HR enough to complete the test. I got a call from the stress test and they said no problem there- blood flow was good. Now I am just awaiting the results of the echogram.

Running wise I am finally kind of back on track. After weeks of running 2 and 3 miles total I ran just over 20 last week and will be about the same this week (if all goes as planned). This is a good thing given the fact that I am 17 weeks out from the Rocket city marathon.

That’s about it for now- hope everyone is doing well!

After the memorial service for Vicki on Saturday Kathy and I loaded a saddle bag each on the motorcycle and took off for Blue Ridge, GA for the balance of the weekend. We hit some rain in the final 8 miles but made it fine. We had a nice relaxing evening there and then took a quick trip out to a water fall before eating at a restaurant on the river and then heading back home. Turned out to be right at 100 miles each way which is just about right for an over night trip on the bike.

I went out for a nice, hot (91*) 5K run today at lunch. I was pleased with the run and how it felt overall. I need to really get back on a program- training for Rocket City starts next week. My program has changed from what I was going to do. With almost NO running for the past 5 weeks or so I obviously need to do some base building before doing anything too strenuous.