Tour de Livingston Kickoff Ride At Balloon Fest

Great morning for a ride, temps were on the cooler side and humidity was low but performance on this little ride was lacking.  I continue to have bouts of shortness of breath with exertion.  Last October I had heart surgery on two valves.  One was bad and was replaced with one of my good ones and in that ones place a donor valve was placed.  Complaints of shortness of breath and an increasingly louder mummer for the previous 18 months had indicated that the valve was going to need to be replaced at some point, it was a surprise that it came sooner rather than later.  I'd had lung testing and just about every other pulmonary test imaginable and all results were fine with no indication of pulmonary or breathing problems, except that I run short of breath with exertion.  The doctors, and I, had assumed that the valve replacement would do the trick.  So far, it hasn't.

I'd assumed that it was a lack of conditioning after having spent the fall and winter recovering and I hit it pretty good this spring with ever increasing longer and harder rides and workouts that haven't produced the intended results.  At this point I am in a deep quandary over the cause and will have to make a round of Dr. visits to try to unravel this.

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Andrew and me

My little Godson and nephew Andrew did great on the ride, we set out from the courthouse to the High School to watch the balloons fly-in.  For me trouble began when we left and split off between the short ride and the longer tour.  I fell behind on an incline, caught up eventually and promptly lost the group again only to find them later.  During my first fall back Andrew came looking for me and afterwards I encouraged him to stay with the pack and not wander off which he did and that was a good thing because I did eventually join up again with the group.  We spent some time riding all together and I later lost the group, only to take a couple of mis-turns that put me ahead of the rest of the tour and back at our destination a few minutes before they arrived back.

                                                                      My friend Jim Gilligan

In the week now since our Sunday June 30th ride I've been out and about running bike errands in town and took a couple of short 5-6 mile rides round the neighborhood, shortness of breath still comes and goes like is has the last little while.