Today I had my appointment at the chest pain clinic. This was arranged after I had visited the GPs surgery the other week complaining of soreness when I was exercising.

The appointment was in the evening, so Jude came home early. I’d also arranged for music lessons to be swapped around – my guitar lesson would be done before Joel’s piano lesson. Mum and Dad came to look after the children and Jude and I were at the hospital in good time. So we settled down to wait, and wait, and wait…

The outpatients department was super-quiet and there was just one other couple waiting for an appointment, but after about an hour a nurse came out of the consultation room and soon afterwards two porters came pushing a trolly. A few minutes later, someone was wheeled out of the consultation room covered in wires and drips – not very well at all. It turns out that he was “in the right place at the right time” according to the Doctor. He probably only went in for a check – precisely what I was going in for as well. I wasn’t looking forward to it now.

Within half an hour I was sat there explaining what had happened and feeling a bit silly for making such a fuss. After taking all my details and a brief medical history, I was wired up to the ECG and blood pressure machine and then asked to start walking on a treadmill.

This was a first for me. Wired up while walking on the treadmill – it was really very interesting. There were 10 readings along with the heart rate and blood pressure. I was reassured that my blood pressure was normal and my heart rate seemed to stay steady for the first 9-10 minutes as the speed was increased every three minutes. By the 10th minute the pace was a jog with the incline on what felt like 20 degrees although it could have been more.

For the last few minutes it was a slow running pace and after 13 minutes my heartrate hit 150bpm. According to the doctor, he couldn’t remember the last time someone was on the treadmill for so long before hitting their target heart rate. It could have been bullshit, but it had the desired effect of making me feel like superman! I was also quite pleased with my rate settling quickly too – the nurse said nice things about that, too.

The verdict? Well, there wasn’t anything wrong with the tests that he ran. I’m off the medicine and can go back to exercising. This is good. The report back to the doctor included the phrase “Excellent capacity for exercise” which I presume is a good thing.

Sadly I didn’t log it on runkeeper. I should have made a note of the distance and time, but my mind was on other things just at that moment.

However, I had earlier logged my walk to the school and back. 3.3k out and 1.8k back. It was slow on the return because our Lily was looking, sounding and apparently feeling very poorly. This evening she was running a temperature, and so she’ll be with me tomorrow. I think that there’s something going around.

So I’ll re-draw my exercise plans and get back to the gym tomorrow. Which is a good thing too, as I was starting to get used to sitting on my backside all day. I’ll report back tomorrow.