Some of you might think that I expose too much of my life in this blog, but half of what I write is a diary of stuff that I would otherwise totally forget. Let me give you an example.

A couple of weeks ago I started getting heart palpitations. I’ve had these before, but I’m not good with names, so I’d forgotten what it was that I was diagnosed with way back when. Enter the archives of Vicious Cycle Blog, which told me that in 2012 I had similar sensations and that these were deemed to be ‘PVCs’, or a fairly benign trigger-happy heart.

But this time was a little bit different. One day around the same time I started noticing my ‘skipped beats’, I also noticed that I couldn’t get the heart rate up on a ride outside. I of course cursed my Garmin HR monitor and tried again on the trainer with the same weird results (the HR was consistently 10 to 15 beats lower than what I’d expected). I was so convinced that it was a mechanical problem that I bought a new Wahoo Tickr Fit, which promptly gave me the same results when I strapped it on (the forearm – very cool). I then tried the old Garmin and even put my finger to neck. Confirmed – I just couldn’t get it up.

The palpitations were bothering me a little, but this HR thing was worrying. I couldn’t even really find much on the internet, if you can believe it. In the background I had other little symptoms that made me believe it might be a mild virus of some sort, but I decided to see my doctor just a few days after he gave me my knee shots. He immediately stuck 50 wires to my torso and did an ECG. This showed nothing abnormal because that’s the law of going to your doctor with a problem, isn’t it? It never reproduces when you want it to. He gave me a prescription for a bunch of cardo tests if I can get an appointment with a specialist before my next episode in 10 years. He also said not to stop cycling.

So today I went for a ride and, after two weeks of a limp cœur, it bounced back and I found myself in Z2 again. Just like that. Thank you for listening. It’s your good deed for the day – I may need this article in the future.