Invasive Heart Procedures to Increase Performance

Increased performance is what I'm hoping for, anyway. But that's not the reason I'm going in to have a catheter shoved up a leg vein and have some electrical nodes in my heart zapped. Wolfe-Parkinson-White Syndrome it's called. One is apparently born with it, though I've never really noticed it until the last five years or so. There's just nothing like being in the middle of a training ride and having the ol' ticker rate skyrocket without the benefit of actually pumping blood. Through the wonders of a power meter, I see that I'm limited to 150 watts when this happens. Anything more, and the wooziness and light-headedness kicks in. Lots of fun when there are still three non-trivial climbs to get home. Once I do arrive home, and I always have, even at rest lying on the bed my heart is beating along at 150 bpm. This only happens once or twice a year, and never in a race, but is this going to kill me in the middle of a race sometime?

The cardiologist said, "dunno, but no racing for you until we find out." So I spent the end of my road season doing more officiating than racing until the stress test could be scheduled to find out if a killer heart problem lurked within.

Any cyclist who has done hard intervals should appreciate the stress test. It's a ramp test on a treadmill. Dorky competitive athlete that I am, my first question was, "how high does it go?", with the intention of hitting that upper limit. That isn't the point, of course. I was reminded by the cardiologist that it's not a competition, but merely a test to get me to max heart rate so he could look at the EKG. Bollocks to that, I'm maxing this baby out.

It goes to seven, it turns out. "Anybody ever hit seven?", I ask. A rare few have hit it, apparently; highly competitive, young athletes. Seven shall be my goal, then. I remind you that I was there to hit max heart rate, not break the machine. If max heart rate can be hit at level three, then it's mission accomplished. But I'm having none of that.

Every three minutes the machine goes to a new level, with the incline increasing as well as the pace. It doesn't get difficult until level three. I'm hitting 150 bpm, which is a bit below LT. I've done multiple hours at this heart rate.

Level four hits, and I'm up to the high 160s a bit after. I can do that for an hour. At level five, the end becomes near. I'm up into the 180s, which if this were a race, I'd be preparing for getting dropped. The coveted seventh level doesn't look like it's going to happen. Level six kicks in, and thirty seconds later I'm done. Max HR comes out to be 191, one beat more than I've ever seen on my Polar heart rate monitor in even the hardest race. I left nothing on the treadmill which, as the cardiologist keeps trying to pound into my thick skull, was the goal all along.

Nothing shows up on the EKG, I'm cleared to race myself silly. Except that there's only one or two races left. Meh, I'm calling it a season. Not much of a season this year, but there's always next year.

In the mean time, I've seen the "electrical specialist". I swear that's what he's called. I expected him to come in with a tool belt and some wire cutters or something. The way he explained it, they just go in and zap the problem child in my heart, sorted. But does this problem have less noticable, more subtle effects that might decrease athletic performance? As a result, could going in for the procedure result in, say, a ten watt increase? He was non-commital. I might notice a difference, I more than likely won't.

But if you see me tearing up the roads next spring, you'll know my UCI-legal secret.