"How I got back to the sport I loved"

“I have been a keen cyclist for many years. When I moved to Bristol with my wife Jo and our two sons, I kept my IT job in London. So, three days a week I would commute to work, getting up at 5.30am, cycling to the station and doing three pretty tough days before working two days at home.

I was very active. I would always use a bike to get around London, and then I got into weekend mountain biking in the woods around Bristol with a group of cyclists. I used to really look forward to that as a way of de-stressing after a hard week.

But by my late forties I noticed I was getting more fatigued from the daily grind. When I got back on a Wednesday evening, I would just lie on the sofa. Then in 2016, when I was 50, something strange happened. I was on my bike approaching some traffic lights on my early morning commute and suddenly my heart started to race, and I felt my eyes beginning to roll back in my head.

I stopped and waited until I felt better, and then ploughed on. 

I blacked out going to answer the door

The next year my son got back from the pub one summer evening and tapped on the window, as he’d forgotten his keys. I jumped up from the sofa to let him in and on my way, I blacked out and crashed into the door.

After that I saw my GP and she sent me for ECGs (electrocardiograms that measure the heart’s rhythm) and blood tests.

I was thinking, ‘This is such a fuss’, and confidently waited for the announcement that it was nothing. But the GP referred me to see a cardiologist, who did more tests.

I did not get a diagnosis at first and carried on with my normal routine, commuting to London and out mountain biking at the weekends. But in March 2018, I received a letter from the cardiologist. 

Bam! My life story suddenly changed

The letter said I had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It’s a condition where the muscle wall of the heart becomes thickened and stiff, making it hard for the heart to pump blood out of your heart and around your body.

It said I should not do weightlifting or any kind of competitive sport. I felt as if I had been reading a book and turned the page and – Bam! – my life became a completely different story.

Suddenly I was dealing with the fact that I had a long-term condition. I needed the manual for this new body I had. 

Mountain biking was a part of me that I just cut off

My condition can sometimes be inherited, and the letter had said my children and my siblings should have a genetic test to see if they had it. I was worried I was going to set off this domino effect. But all the tests my family members had were clear, which was a massive relief.

I was put on a beta blocker which reduces the amount of work your heart has to do. My consultant made it clear that I would have to slow down a bit. The mountain biking was very strenuous, so I jettisoned it. I thought I couldn’t afford to be off on some hillside somewhere blacking out.

Some of the people in the group were very lovely and sent personal messages. But it was a big, social, sporting part of me that I just cut off. It was like an amputation.

Hill walking became a lifeline

I switched back to more sedentary things. I became more introverted and home-based. I had done a degree in visual art, and I loved photography, so to get myself out of the house during the Covid-19 lockdowns I started doing more of that.

Exploring the Welsh hills with my dog and taking photos of the landscape became a real lifeline.

A heart condition is not only a physical battle it’s a psychological one as well. It’s about how you feel on a given day. I lost both my parents when I was younger, and that taught me sometimes you need to stick your chin out and get on with it. So that’s what I tried to do.

After lockdown I resigned from my job. I was getting really tired, feeling exhausted by the afternoon, and was struggling with motivation to do almost anything. I was thinking, ‘This is getting worse and it’s the disease that’s causing it’.

A change happened when I agreed to go on a big trip to Belize and Mexico with Jo and two old friends. I was very worried about it, convinced I was going to have to drop out of the things they had organised and go back to the hotel and sleep.

But although there were times I had to rest, I found what happened was that I got distracted by the good things on the holiday. I gradually began to get active and realised I could cope. 

Electric bikes let me do what I love

It ejected me out of this rut I had got into and made me come to a different understanding about my heart condition. I was probably ascribing too many of life’s problems to it.

Every time I was tired, I said, ‘It’s my heart’ and every time I didn’t want to go out, ‘It’s my heart’. But it’s a part of me and I’ve got to live with it. 

I gradually started to re-engage with cycling, thanks to having the chance to try electric bikes, or e-bikes. I'd begun to really miss the sense of freedom and physical exhilaration that cycling used to give me, quite apart from social aspects.

And I started to see how an e-bike could be a way back into the activity – a way to gradually build up my fitness and try to recover some of what I used to enjoy.

I now have two: a lighter powered general-purpose bike, that gives a ‘wind at your back’ feeling; and a more high-powered mountain bike. A better name for them might be e-assist bikes - because they work with you; not for you.

You still have to pedal to make them move - but they give you back electric motor power to help. 

You still have brakes and gears like a standard bicycle - but you also get a motor, a battery and a control button to choose how much help the motor supplies. It all feels very natural riding an e-bike.

You get a boost of power when you set off and when you are going uphill and the rest of the time it feels like you have a tailwind pushing you along.

I don’t worry about running out of steam

My first rides were with Jo to the local countryside around Bristol and to Bath. Knowing I have the motor, and that I can control how much help it gives me, really encourages me to get up and out. It stops me worrying about running out of steam.

I have taken things gently and have not set myself any increasing distance goals. I guess when you learn you have a heart condition, you switch out of that 'push yourself' mentality and into more of a 'preserve yourself' one.

Switching to an e-bike made me dump any competitive urges I may have had. I can always get the e-bike to help me out more for a bit if I need to give my body a rest.

I have learned to listen to my body day to day, and to be careful when I feel it starting to struggle. But I have found my fitness increasing and that encourages me to keep cycling.

I have found my fitness increasing

Being able to return to an activity I love has really helped me accept my condition and learn how to live with it; rather than resent it for what it has cost me. 

I've had my full-powered electric mountain bike for a couple of months now, and that has really reconnected me with all the things I loved when I stopped back in 2018. It's all too easy to slip into feeling bad about yourself when you have a chronic condition.

I had a sense that I was physically fragile, or broken, and I had become too cautious. As a result, I had become very cautious of over-exertion. With that desire to protect myself, I'd cut away a really important, nourishing part of my life.

I'm definitely fitter now and I think a better self-body image is returning. Now I’m excited about finding places to explore, I’m reconnecting with friends and I’m even going on this year’s mountain biking annual trip for the first time in six years.

E-bikes have given me a key to reopen a part of me that I’d locked away.” 

What to read next...