Born in 1948. I raced in the late 1960's before returning to Minnesota in 1972. After that I mainly competed in x-country skiing and running events. I had a nasty heart attack playing hockey in 1992 which left me with some permanent damage. For the next twenty years I kept some conditioning by hiking and snowshoeing year round, but finally needed quadruple bypass surgery in November of 2012. Of course I did some mountain biking, but found falling a lot did not appeal to me, but after surgery I lost a lot of extra weight and started dreaming about being back on the road bike. I started riding again about 5 months after surgery and haven't looked back. I'm at the same weight I was when I competed in my 20's which makes the dang hills around Duluth, Mn a bit easier to climb.

This spring I picked up a Raleigh Tamland gravel bike. The road around here are pretty beat up from 6 months of winter, and gravel "racing" has exploded in Minnesota and around the midwest. I did a short gravel race in June and will be doing the Filthy Fifty in October. I wear a heart monitor when I ride and started tracking all my rides on Strava. I created the "Cardiac Cycling Club International" on Strava for folks like me with heart disease. We have 32 members now.

I've had some issues with beta blockers, which limit the heart rate, but am on the lowest dose they make. My conditioning has improved steadily especially since I started weight training about a year and half ago. But here's an issue that is concerning me today. Yesterday I did a 28 mile ride with about 800 feet of climbing. Normally on the hills or during a hard effort I can get my heart rate up to about 135 - 140, but yesterday I could not push it past 124. I averaged 15.3 mph and my perceived effort was fairly hard, but that heart rate just would not budge.

Any thoughts?