Runners Heart

Athletic training. Intense, prolonged endurance and strength training can cause the heart to adapt so that it can handle the extra workload. In some people, these changes may lead to left ventricular hypertrophy (MayoClinic.com).

I have been living with LVH for quite some time. I do not have a high BP for the most part and my readings when I donate blood and more recently platelets has been spot on normal according to the talented phlebotomists at Melville Blood Center.

So where did my condition originate from?  My cardiologist’s hypothesis is from my long distance running a half lifetime ago. I was a marathoner and ultra-marathoner in my 20s and 30s, and this is possibly how my left ventricle got enlarged. I don’t have a family history of heart disease.

Running gave me a new lease on life after I had lost 75 pounds that I had put on in four years of college. I went into military school at 140 and came out at 215.  Weight Watchers was my formula and I was able to eradicate most of that girth in approximately 4 months time. Probably too fast, but I adhered to the regimen the program set forth at that time and it produced prodigious results. 

I started running in April of 1975 and by October of that year I was running in my first marathon in Central Park, one year before that race took to the streets of the 5 boroughs.