It’s been roughly 3 months since I was diagnosed with sky-high blood pressure and renal artery stenosis. I also spent a night in the ICU after a false alarm for a stroke. (I was on a super strong blood pressure med for the night and it required continuous supervision.)
Since then, I started taking walks. At first it was a quarter of a mile, then gradually pushed up to 5-6 miles, every day. Sometimes even up to 8-10 miles if time allowed.
Jogging started slow, as I could only handle about 1/8 mile at a time. [Insert knee strain injury here]. I worked up to 1/4 mile run + 1/4 mile walk for as many reps as I could handle for my daily routine.
Rucking once or twice a week was added and am almost at 40lbs of weight. (It hurts, but has taught me pain management.)
Sprints once a week for 10 seconds for about 5-8 reps somehow worked itself in to the routine. (Dunno where that came from.)
Finally this evening, I ran a full continuous mile and celebrated with a round of sprints after that.
I am 46 and hadn’t ran a full mile in over 20 years. 3 months ago I thought I was going to die walking up a hill. Walking one solid mile was a huge milestone for me not so long ago.
I guess the point of this post is just a checkpoint and a reminder to myself that things are actually getting better and there are more milestones to reach.
Cheers.
This is such a huge achievement, nice work! Starting out is always so tough and it sounds like you’ve done the hardest thing which is establishing the habit and sticking with it. Hopefully now that you’ve seen that progress you’ll get addicted to that feeling of being able to do something that seemed so far off before. You’re kicking ass!
Edit:. Just wanted to add that rucking is amazing. I’ve been doing it for a little while now as well and absolutely love it.
You are the person that suggested rucking to me when I was trying to figure out how to deal with busted knees.
Weirdly enough, it fixed my serious knee pain issues, almost overnight. I forced myself through the pain one evening and woke up the next morning and my knees were at about 90%. Any time my knees start hurting, its proving to be a decent “cure”. None of that makes any sense to me, but I am not going to question it.
It seriously hurts me though and it’s developed into a tolerable love/hate relationship now.
Edit: Forgot to say thank you. Thank you!
Oh nice I was wondering if that was you but I was too lazy to check post history. I feel you on the pain, I broke a big PR recently and my shoulders were hurting so so much but it’s been really good, helps to build that mental toughness too I guess.
Maybe consider a bike.
I understand your point. An exercise bike is probably the best option and those get super boring for me.
It’s not as flexible for me where I live, unfortunately. A bike is better used for actual transportation here and trying to figure out routes for any kind of sustained cardio would be challenging.
While I say I have a “routine”, that is not exactly true. My only routine is that I get my ass out of the house for a couple of hours and move. I am too scatterbrained to have a fixed exercise schedule and I usually have no idea what kind of exercise will be in store for me.
Maybe a bike will be a better option for me later when I roll into a more steady and planned out routine.
Fuck yeah, well done mate.
If I can offer some advice from when I started running,
If something hurts take a break, missing two days beats 3 months of pain and rehabilitation etc. Swap it with swimming or something, I learnt that the hard way when my knee hurt on a 5k and then the next day did 5k and it hurt and again and again for 2 weeks until I could hardly walk. Turned out the main cause was always running on the same slope of road, building muscle on the outside of my leg pulling thr knee cap across.
So if it hurt rest and run on varied terrains don’t do all the runs on the same left or right slope on the edge of a road etc.
Secondly what really helped me with increasing my distance was when I got running i didn’t stop, I just ran slower as I got tired.
Doesn’t matter if you’re running slower then a walk just keep the same motion and keep pushing.
Best of luck with it.
Also runners highs are real and great, when I hit 8k I started getting them and felt awesome after.
Except the blood pressure it feels like when I started out during the COVID lockdown, dragged my poor ass around outside for 1.5km and all I got was knee aches 😁.
Well done, hang in there!
Nice work! Congrats!
Get it and don’t look back. Running for life is a great way to live a better life
Hell yeah! That’s fantastic, and I’m really proud of you! It echoes my own journey a bit.
Covid fucked my heart really hard, and my regular exercise turned into an agonising slog overnight more or less. Eventually the healthcare system did a proper checkup, gave me blood pressure meds and my life changed.
I’d never tried running before, it seemed horrible to me, but I was envious of how excited runners would make my dog, so out of spite I started sprinting in small intervals. This was in like March this year.
I still remember how rough it was. Moving from one minute sprints to 90 seconds, to two minutes. Now I run five miles continuously three days a week. My legs are looking hella good too.
Soak in this achievement, friend! Be proud!
Wow congrats! That’s some absolutely awesome progress! Keep it up!
Sprints once a week for 10 seconds for about 5-8 reps somehow worked itself in to the routine. (Dunno where that came from.)
Interval training can be bloody hard, but it is so good for your running and your overall health. And it’s a really fun change of pace (pun intended) from steady-state runs.
It hurts, but has taught me pain management
I’m not familiar with rucking, but as a general rule, be careful about pain. Pain in the lungs and muscles can be good. If it’s in the knees or other joints, it almost certainly isn’t.
Rucking is just running or walking with a weighted vest to simulate a heavy backpack. I believe the name is derived from a military style “rucksack”.
It absolutely destroys my upper body (mostly my upper back area) during my normal walk. Keeping correct posture and gait with a bit of weight takes a bit more effort and works muscles that are typically not engaged in regular walking exercises.
But thanks for the warning about pain. We evolved pain for a reason, so it’s best not to be ignored.
Great improvements!
In the last 3 months have you seen your blood pressure improve as well?
Absolutely! Accurate numbers are impossible, because of the different medications I was on to pull me out of hypertensive crisis. My Dr and I are both data junkies, so we were able to openly discuss and hypothesize about how to tweak multiple variables in my immediate treatment. (It’s been fun, TBH. She obviously is the expert at diagnosis and treatment and I could provide her with useful feedback about what was and wasn’t working.)
However, after about a month of walking 3 times a day and about when I started to learn to jog again, we had to cut one of my meds as I was dropping into hypotension range a couple times a day.
For the last couple of months, we made a couple of adjustments to my meds while I was also increasing the intensity of my workouts (rucking and more running).
While resting heart rate is not directly correlated to blood pressure, it’s a good indication of some level of improvement. There is also a bias in this chart when we finally found the proper dosage of metropolol. Metropolol will decrease resting heart rate and put some fairly hard caps on peak heart rates:
With meds and with exercise, I also hit a new personal record the day before yesterday of 111/80 during the evening, about an hour after my workout.
Meds seem to keep my BP in-check and below the danger zone and my exercise routine does seem to correlate with BP improvements. Now that my meds are steady and its effects are hitting a healthy plateau, exercise has the greatest impact on day-to-day changes.
Sorry for the extended answer and could have just said “Yes” but there have actually been a ton of changes in-play.
I Love the detailed reply. Keep it up!
Using average heart rate as a proxy for improvement is neat!
Have you looked at other blood pressure interventions as well?
- sauna
- low carb
Diet and lifestyle tweaks are next. Aside from the immediate and massive caffeine reduction, nothing else has changed drastically. My Dr. temporarily put my request to quit nicotine on hold until we flatlined every other immediate problem, and I do agree with her approach.
There also the dangling issues of renal artery stenosis and peripheral neuropathy that stem from quite a few years of serious alcoholism. My point here is that what would usually be basic changes to lifestyle may have a higher impact on other ongoing treatments than usual.
Wow, I’m glad your so thoughtful and on top of things!
You are doing fantastic!
Good for you. You’ve already cleared that first and most important hurdle.
