Hi everyone,
This month we have an extra blog post to share with you all.
Thanks to Gareth Davies for his inspirational story. He is training at TriCamp,
Mallorca on an Ironman 70.3 training camp and his story has truly inspired
Pete.
So here it is…
When Gareth Davies
signed up for the Little Woody Ironman 70.3 to raise money for his local
hospital to purchase a baby incubator, he thought training for the challenge
would lead to an improved fitness geared for triathlon. Instead, however, he
suffered a heart attack in a sprint triathlon leading up to the Woody and spent
a year working towards mental and physical recovery from his experience.
Gareth had always been active. Although he never calls himself an athlete,
he played rugby to a good standard when he was young but had to give up the
sport due to a cornea ulcer in his eye which prevented him from wearing contact
lenses.
Gareth’s physical activity soon reduced as his IT career became
more stressful and required longer working hours. He did not stop exercising completely though
and still did a spin class and a run once a week. Nevertheless, he kept eating
enough carbohydrates for an athlete-fuelled diet, as well as buying takeaways
after work. As a result he gained weight and, at his heaviest, weighed 20
stone.
When he bent down to put his shoes on for work one day, feeling
stiff and heavy, he changed his lifestyle. He and his wife Janet signed up to a
nutrition course and visited the gym every morning for 6 months, until together
they’d shifted 10 stone.
Gareth caught the triathlon bug by complete accident!
Unfortunately, one of his friends from the gym lost one of his premature twins
and wanted to gather a triathlon team together to complete the Little Woody
70.3 in the Forest of Dean. His aim was to get sponsorship to buy a new baby
incubator for the local hospital. At first, Gareth thought he was a sponsor,
but was actually a new recruit for the team!
At first, training went well for Gareth. He signed up to a
week’s triathlon training at Tri Camp Mallorca, completed a half marathon and
completed open water swim training early every morning.
His first triathlon was also success! It was the Wye Not Tri
Sprint Triathlon in Wales which Gareth completed in 1.07.24. He took a well-deserved
second place. He then came third in the Novice Nice Tri Super Sprint in May
2013 with a time of 38.34.
Gareth had planned to do a Sprint and an Olympic-distance
triathlon before the Little Woody. But when he arrived at the Sprint Event in
June 2013, he felt tired and a bit fed up with triathlon. He finished in a
respectable 20th place but later suffered from severe pain in his
back, between his shoulder blades and it became increasingly difficult for him
to breathe.
Gareth was suffering from a heart attack. He needed to have an operation which
consisted of the surgeon removing a blockage from his heart and inserting a
stent (which is a splint, smaller than the spring in a pen) into the artery to
stop it collapsing.
Breaking Bad to
Breaking up
The first two weeks of the recovery process were brilliant
for Gareth! He watched the Breaking Bad series and was well away from the
stresses of work. The plan was to keep his heart rate below a certain level for
a month and then he was to bring it up slowly. But for a fit young man, Gareth
felt he did not have the resources to support his recovery. Most self-help books were aimed at older
people or those who have inherited a heart condition and the NHS Cardiac Rehab programme
was simply too gentle to push the keen gym-goer and triathlete.
Gareth then found himself in a dark space emotionally and
joined ‘Cardiac Athletes’ online which allowed him to approach other sufferers
of heart problems who were also young and physically active.
He was just unlucky
In a bid to discover what caused his heart attack, Gareth
approached Professor Sanjay Sharma who is a specialist in sports cardiology and
the medical director of the Virgin London Marathon, the Silverstone Half
Marathon, the BUPA 10k run and the Adidas Women’s 5k run. Professor Sharma
informed Gareth that the cholesterol, on the walls of his heart, fragmented
when he was exercising and assured him that a heart attack is unlikely, but not
impossible, to occur again.
Tri-ing Again J
Gareth’s now training for triathlons again and has shared
his story while out on training camp last week in Mallorca. He takes Beta
Blockers (that make the heart less active by blocking the action of hormones
like adrenaline) and a number of other pills at the moment and will take
aspirin for life. The blood-thinning element to his medication meant that when
he completed the Cambridge half marathon (7 months after his operation in a
time of 1.53.28!), his toes wouldn’t stop bleeding when his trainers rubbed his
feet. That said, his time was only 5 minutes slower than his half marathon last
year! With true resilience, Gareth has booked on to the Oulaw IronMan 70.3 in
Nottingham this year and plans to complete an Ironman in 2016.
After overcoming so much, Gareth still feels vulnerable in
the water but has hired a swim coach and views swimming Open Water in a UK lake
as his next challenge to overcome!
Good luck Gareth- and keep us posted on how you get on!
Happy Triathlon-ing,
Pete and Laura x
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