This was the very first race I registered for once I knew my surgery date. And it was an absolute leap of faith. Would the surgery be successful? Remember that the attempt to stent my blockage back in November 2023 was unsuccessful because my blockage was a full 100%. Would my insurance company intervene and add preconditions that would postpone the surgery or force me to pay more money up front?

And would I die, or worse, suffer debilitation due to an unforeseen complication?

Or worse, was this was all “catastrophizing,” as my therapist put it? I didn’t know; all I knew was how I felt: a person trapped, waiting for the jailer to open the door with a key and let me out.

So I sighed and submitted my credit card information, and within seconds, I was officially registered.

The Ahmanson Trails race was my first race out of the gate. This half marathon would be my longest, just three weeks later.

A quick note about this course: it was a three hour drive from LA, in the Santa Ynez Valley, an hour north of Santa Barbara. There was no way I was going to get up at 3:00 AM and drive for several hours in the dark to get there. I registered at a Motel 6 in Ventura, which shortened the drive down to two hours. Not much of a savings in sleep, but a 4:00 AM wake up time felt — saner than three o’clock. I was fine with it.

Until something happened. With my heart.

For the last several years, I have dealt with a proxysmal arrhythmia. Every once in a while, I wake up at 2AM with that troublesome organ flipping around like a gymnast having night terrors. Easy enough to deal with: 30 milligrams of diltiziem calms everthing down so I can go back to sleep. But one of the last races I ran before my heart surgery, the San Francisco Half Marathon, met with disaster when I woke up with the arrhythmia a few hours before the race. I decided to run the race anyway, and it took me nearly three hours to run it. Once the starting gun went off and I began to run, I found myself walking from exhaustion. I had trained for this race all summer with the plan to run up those legendary San Francisco hills as if my feet were on fire. As it was, I walked until exhaustion kicked in, then I stopped and panted.

So when the arrhythmia kicked in the night before the Santa Barbara Wine Country Half, I was, as they say, F***ING PISSED. But there was nothing I could do.

To make a long story short, I was damned if I was going to let this setback keep me out of this race, so as I did the previous year, I got up and drove the two hours to the race. I had my blood pressure cuff on my arm, and every 10 minutes or so I took my blood pressure. The Diltiazem kept the pressure down, but the monitor still showed an arrhythmia in progress.

I parked my car, doggedly walked to the race director’s kiosk and picked up my bib. I was late, the starting gun had already gone off, but I took off my shirt, pinned my bib onto it, then jogged to the start line. Crossed it, and race number two was underway.

Interesting, though: I was compelled to run slower due to the arrhythmia, but I didn’t feel the exhaustion I felt the last year at the San Francisco Half. In fact, I stopped twice, simply to give my mind a bit of a break to calm down. But I ran! And at the halfway point, just as the race got interesting with the promise of upcoming hills and stellar views down into the Santa Ynez Valley, I felt my heart return to normal sinus rhythm, and I ran the race.

It appears that my previous experience in San Francisco was due to the blockage in my heart that was slowly building up. Stenting allowed normal blood flow back into the heart without the need of small collateral arteries, and I was able to run the race in a respectable time: 2:28:xx (sorry; I don’t remember the exact seconds). As it was, I suffered a bit on the hills (walking some), ran down the others, and really pushed myself as best I could for someone quite out of shape for his ambitions. But I pushed myself on the last mile and finished strong.

(Unfortunately, there was an error in my bib; the timing chip was for a different number than was on my bib, which means that a 24 year old female was credited with my much slower time of 2:28:xx, and I was credited with her faster time of 2:15:-ish. I notified the race director, and he credited me with my correct slower time, but I don’t know if he fixed the time for the unfortunate 24 year old female who may or may not know that she finished much faster than she realized. LESSON: Make sure your bib number and the number on your timing chip matches!!)