The last nine months have been a challenge, to say the least. But I have set many goals to keep myself motivated. Some of the goals have been major lifelong Goals that I've had help with from my family. My nine-year old son has a bit of a Guinness Book of World Records obsession, and with his help, we've set the Goal to become the person to survive the longest after quadruple bypass surgery. While there is no official record for this (that we could find anyway), we think it's somewhere in the 35-40 year range. My Goal is to make it to 90 years old, which would mean I would need to survive 50 years after the surgery. Totally doable.
I've explained to the kids that these major goals don't just happen. You have to set little goals all along the way to help you achieve the big ones. The last week was a good one for ticking off some of those little goals on my way to hitting some major ones.
The first baby step this week was my six month checkup with my cardiologist. I hadn't set an exact number for my goal cholesterol or blood pressure. Neither of them were ever tragically high. I was very anxious to see the results as I have been working incredibly hard at my diet and exercise habits to lower these to more optimal levels. I had no idea what to expect, but they were drastically improved compared to the readings from my checkup in August of last year a week prior to discovering the blockages. My total cholesterol went from 215 to 99, with the LDL (the bad one) dropping from 134 to 53. My triglycerides went down to 59 from 213. My blood pressure has been better, hovering around 110/75 as opposed to the old 135/80.
Hearing these numbers gave was a great relief and affirmation that I am doing something right. Here's the rub...my cardiologist's reaction was, "Great, the medications are working." Don't get me wrong, I love my doctor. I think he is incredibly smart and has done a great job treating me, but he barely asked about my diet or exercise habits. I realize it's impossible to know how much of the improvement is due to the meds and how much can be attributed to my busting my ass. In my opinion this is a big problem with our current healthcare system. So much emphasis is put on addressing the symptoms of disease, especially with drugs, rather than trying to prevent the disease from happening or addressing the underlying issues causing the disease. More on this in a later post. I've got lots of thoughts. But in the meantime, let's get back to patting myself on the back.
The other baby step goal I notched this week was completing my first post-surgery 5K. A good friend of mine, Justin, reached out after my surgery last fall and started joining me on some of my recovery walks. I told him I wanted to complete a 5K early this year as a carrot to keep me working out regularly through the winter and that he should do it with me. He gamely agreed and so the plan was hatched. We would run the Ravenswood Run, a 5K run through our neighborhood.
It was a little worrisome before the race when we were forecast to get 4-8" of snow the day before the race and it was going to be just above freezing at the start of the race. But it ended up being a beautiful day. It was sunny with no wind and a slight chill in the air, my ideal running weather. I had set a goal of sub 30:00 with a reach goal of sub 28:00. I started out a little on the slow side because we were in a pack and I wasn't exactly warmed up properly. All of my splits were negative, and I finished in 28:18, middle of the pack for my age group. Not bad for a guy who underwent quadruple bypass surgery just over seven months ago.
On one of my last training runs before the race I was thinking about my goals going forward. I've come up with my next Goal. My next major birthday is 50, in a little over nine years. On the day I turn 50 I will have been alive for 18,263 days. My goal is this: between today and then I will run or cycle as many miles as the number of days that I have been on this planet. This gives me 3,445 days to complete this. I need to average almost 160 miles per month or 5.3 miles per day. This almost seems too easy. I'm going to see how the next few months go and I may adjust the cycling miles to only count for .5 of a mile towards the Goal. I'll try to post monthly totals here on the blog, but you can follow my daily progress on Strava. I'm looking forward to tackling this new challenge and I know I can do it because I have so many people supporting me and I will take all the baby steps necessary to make it happen.