jjama: 2015

2014 has certainly been a note worthy year for the City of Edmonton, the Triathlon Community and myself. Our City met and surpassed the high expectations of hosting our sports World Championships and in doing so, gained National and International recognition as being a 1^st class sports city. As for myself, 2014 started off with unforeseen health complications that forced me to ask some serious questions about my future in Triathlon.

2014 was shaping up to be another successful season as my training was constant and all other factors were falling into place but after a series of unfortunate events, my outlook on 2014 soon took a 180 degree turn. It started with the University of Alberta distance running program. The coaching staff lacked the competency to see Triathletes as a tremendous asset to a running program, and due to differing training methodologies and personal conflicts, they forced me into a position where my best interests weren't being address. The pervasive and selfish nature of recruitment forced me to walk away from a program which I once thought would be a beneficiary of our symbolic relationship. For a coach to step over ethical lines, calling into question my sports legitimacy, and furthermore my own ability to performance; all in an attempt to convince me to commit to running full-time is unacceptable. As a result, I was forced to step down from the team to continue my progression as a Triathlete. I am thankful for the opportunities and friendships I fostered during my time in the program, and to this day I still miss going to track as it is symbolic of friendship, dedication, hard work and community.

2014 Golden Bear Open 3000m - Friday January 17th

One week after the Golden Bear Open, I woke up like I usually do any other Saturday, but something was out of the ordinary. I got myself out of bed to grab a glass of water, and I suddenly started to feel light-headed and short of breath. I sat back down to find my heart rate elevated and beating out of rhythm. Being the keen sport scientist I am, I made sure to record this episode before heading to the hospital. After analyzing my Heart Rate Variability recording, it was obvious to me that I was in Atrial Fibrilation. The graph below is a visible representation of the data I collected. My resting morning heart rate normally is anywhere between 48 bpm (beats per minute) to 65 bpm depending on the training I've completed in the days prior. During the recording, my heart rate reached a maximum of 194 bpm and averaged 156 bpm while at rest! These numbers are equivalent to my maximum excretion and my aerobic threshold heart rates respectively.

The University of Alberta hospital is only a 5 minute walk away from the place I was staying at in Garneau so I decided to walk over rather then call an ambulance. I eventually got myself to the ER but I must of stopped at least five times on the way over to gather myself. I remember telling one of the nurses at reception "I think my heart's broken." She laughed of course, but soon realized something was wrong when she recorded a resting heart rate of >120 bpm. Before I knew it, I was discussing my options with one of the emergency room docs. There were a few options presented to me but the most effective was an electrocardioversion, a procedure which uses electrical stimulation to reset cardiac rhythm. Think of the classic heart attack / "The paddles" situation but far less dramatic and my life wasn't in danger as atrial fibrillation isn't a life threatening condition. I gave the physician the green light to go through with the electrocardioversion and I soon found myself surrounded by a team of doctors ready to perform the procedure. The whole ordeal seemed so surreal. Prior to being sedated, my body felt as though I was in the middle of a 10km run race. The anesthesiologist performed the classic, 4, 3, 2, 1 countdown before administering the anesthetic and by the time 2 rolled around I was out.

Once the anesthetic effects wore off, I woke to a calm serenity that transcended throughout my whole body. I kind of felt like Denzel waking from the plane crash in the movie Flight, but without any of the heroics and the killer hangover. Joking a side, the procedure went as planned and I was able to walk out of the hospital on my own two feet a couple of hours later.

Obviously I wasn't going to start training again until I was cleared by a Cardiologist but this became a time sensitive issue since I was schedule to attend a training camp in Tuscan, Arizona in 3 weeks time. I met with Dr. Rob Welsh, a cardiologist and triathlete, the day before my flight to Arizona and he found no reason for me not to travel and he advised me to train on a light program.

48 hours later I found myself in the United States of America

The camp started off well but when your situated within a high performance training group, its difficult to be completely removed from the normative training schedule of the group. I soon found myself training 3 sessions a day and not following the obvious protocol set in place by my cardiologist. This is a personal mistake I made by travelling to Tuscan but also of the coaching staffs lack of communication and effective monitoring of my training throughout the week. As a trained self-reliant athlete, I've always consider it my responsibility to monitor my training but its difficult for me to communicate this information to coaches when their main focus is to train athletes, not rehab them. Due to this disconnect, I soon found myself pushing the limits. I ignored excessive perceived excretion, a subjective measurement, which is a warning sign indicating overtraining. Since I associated the fatigue with the differing climate and increased, positive training load, I persevered.

One workout in particular raised warning signs. The run session was 5x2km at race threshold on 2 minutes rest. The session comprised of a 30 minute warm up, activation and strides. The coaching staff decided a dried out riverbed with an adjacent paved bike path was an ideal location for the workout. The temperature was 25 degrees with clear skies. The first interval felt fine but by the middle of the session I quickly started to feel sluggish, heavy-legs and an increased perceived effort compared to similar run workout. I pressed through and finished the session but with interval times much higher then expected and an elevated heart rate response relative to my run times. But again, I chose not to act upon these warning signs

Elevation, heart rate, and temperature data from 5x2km training session in Tucson.

The penultimate day of the camp followed. We were scheduled to climb Mt. Lemmon along the scenic 42km sky island parkway that averages a gradient of 4-5%.

After the previous day's training, I was completely drained but I still wanted to experience Mt. Lemmon and all of its beauty on two wheels. We started off from a parking lot 5 kilometres away from the base of the climb and as soon as we reached the 1km barrier, I knew I was going to be in the hurt locker. By the time we reached the 4 km mark on the climb, I had already been dropped by my training mates and thus my solo expedition began. I proceeded to take it easy from there but even spinning the smallest gear ratio presented quite the challenge.

3 hours later I finally made it to the top

After a quick lunch we started our descent. Under normal circumstances, you would find me at the front of the pack pushing the pace but after climbing for 4 hours and suffering from tremendous fatigue, I was in no rush to get to the bottom. Some of my mates reached speeds of 80+ kph and their total decent time was a mere 40 minutes compared to the 4 hours of climbing required to get to the top. I must have rolled into the parking lot 20- 30 minutes after everyone else. After settling down, I soon realized my heart was once again beating out of rhythm. I checked my heart monitor to see 170 bpm. I had re-entered atrial fibrillation.

Panic ensued and considering we were in America, the last place I wanted to end up was the hospital. So rather then raising the alarm with my coach and training mates, I kept my condition to myself until we got back to the condos.

So little does everyone know

The above photo truly speaks a thousand words. One might think that I'm sleeping like Matt and Dave beside me but I'm performing a mindfulness/breathing exercise. Focussing in on my heartbeat, I concentrated on its frequency and irregularity, trying my best to suppress its activity through my thoughts. I learnt this general technique from Susan Cockle, a sports psychologist at C4 success, 2 years ago and thought it was worth a try since I've heard breathing techniques have shown some success for treating atrial fibrillation. Unfortunately it didn't work for me.

Once we got back to the condos, I waited until everyone was off to their rooms to inform my coach Kevin Clark and the camps manager, Barrie Shepley. Within 10 minutes I was back in an emergency room waiting to have my heart reset.

The procedure went as planned and once again I woke feeling like Mr. Denzel Washington.

On the flight back to Edmonton, I made the decision to place all training and racing plans for 2014 on permanent hold. I also decided to not place a deadline on my decision to continue participating in high performance sport. As a result, I stepped away from the full-time training environment at the Edmonton Triathlon Academy, to give me space to think. I now had tons of time on my hands as Triathlon is a 3-4 hour commitment daily and I had no problem filling it ;).

In January, I was still living in a basement suite in Garneau just off of 84 avenue and 109 street. I was quite happy with my accommodations since it was as central a location as you can get. The U of A is a five minute walk away, the Kinsmen Sports Centre a mere 10 minutes and work at Rosso Pizzeria just down the road. It would have taken a lot for me to consider moving out but that opportunity came knocking when an old friend asked me to move into his apartment on Saskatchewan Drive. This wasn't any other apartment, but rather a penthouse suite. Needless to say I did everything in my power to make this opportunity work. I even had to pay an extra month's rent for my old place so my landlord would let me out of the lease.

You can say it was all worth it

With all my extra time, I soon found myself taking the espresso tour around town when I had days off from Da Capo. Iconoclast, a new coffee roaster/cafe in Oliver attracted most of my attention. Rob and Ryan set up a table tennis table behind the bar for customers and their own personal enjoyment. As soon as I saw the table I challenging Ryan to a game. I can't even count the number of games we played over the course of the summer but let me tell you, it was time well spent. I found myself addicted to the game and I couldn't stop thinking about it. One night I was laying on the floor in our living room when an idea popped into my head. I did some quick research and figured out the area of our living room to find out that there was plenty of room to have ping pong table.

I shared my idea with Rob Wilms from Iconoclast and he instantly came up with our name.

Ilia Biziaev from Oliver Apt. was also onboard and before you knew it we had a table

We created a few social media accounts and within a couple of months, we had an international following. International players from The Netherlands, Iran, China, America and clubs from Moscow, Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, Bahrain, London, Barbados, and Copenhagen were all keeping up with the ping pong action here in Edmonton. We host a friendly tournament at the end of every month so if you would like to play or know someone that would, don't hesitate to contact us.