Part 1 – Atrial Fibrillation and Endurance Athletes
Part 2 – the Good Years
Part 3 – Now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse
Part 4 – Exercising with a beta blocker
Part 5 – Mini Maze procedure and recovery
So after stopping flecaininde as detailed in part 3 I continued to enjoy sport. I ran, did some parkruns, used TrainerRoad and Zwift for cycling as well as the “fine weather” cycling outdoors. I continued to play hockey and was fortunate enough to be selected for the Yorkshire and North East O50 and O55 regional masters squads which was very enjoyable.
I had a number of discussions with the arrhythmia nurses in Leeds along with the consultants who all confirmed it was ok to keep exercising, even if that induced Atrial Fibrillation.
With being on a beta blocker it definitely restricted my heart rate which meant I had to slow down, but I think I was very fortunate that I was able to keep doing the things I enjoyed.
After seeing somebody ride on a closed road to a “hidden” cafe on Strava I planned to see if I could do a 100 mile bike ride and happily this went well. I took it steady on any climbs and had stops as and when needed. I did take a extra dose of bisoprolol early on as I felt my HR was too high, but had a great day out into the Yorkshire Dales and back.
I did find that my atrial fibrillation was becoming more and more apparent, especially after exercising and sometimes during exercise I could feel it come on. I took the sad decision to step back from all Zwift racing at the end of 2024, I’ve had some great years of fun on Zwift, from the very early beta days on Jarvis Island with KISS racing, winning a league in the ZRL races and some great racing with the Ladder, many thanks to everyone I’ve raced with, the riders who joined teams I captained and also the organisers of the many events I’ve enjoyed.
I have carried on using TrainerRoad as I find I really like structured training and the fact it put workouts into a calendar kept me going! I also ran and continued to play hockey, even captaining an O55s Leeds Adel masters side where I went back to Formby Hockey club where I first started playing and caught up with a few players I’ve not seen for years, which was great!
Throughout the first half of 2025 before my mini maze I did some parkruns, including a couple whilst visiting relatives in Australia, ticking off my desire to do a parkrun on a tropical beach at Hamilton Island!
I was quite pleased that even with a beta blocker I managed a 25m 24s time at Wetherby (avg heart rate 150 bpm, max 169 bpm), a fair bit slower than my PR of 21m 17s (avg heart rate 157 bpm, max 187bpm) there which was done prior to beta blockers when I was much younger in 2018.
All in all I was pleased to be able to continue to do things I enjoyed, but also a bit sad I had to virtually stop anything competitive.