Earlier this month during the Pan-American Championships in Lousiville, Jeremy Powers left mid-race despite having a good chance for a podium finish. After the race, he posted on his athlete Facebook page that his heart rate had spiked over 200 bpm for nearly six minutes, thus forcing him to withdraw.
Yesterday Powers posted an update on his Facebook page. The text is shown here, and the full Facebook post with a picture Powers looking very Bane-like is below. We will continue to follow his updates, and the whole Cyclocross Magazine team wishes him a quick return to 100% heart health.
Update on my heart stuff!
Last week I was at SRAM / ZIPP Monday / Tuesday after the Pan Am / Sho Air finals. I flew back home Tuesday night, got in around 9pm and 6AM Wednesday I drove out to Mass General and spent the entire day going through a slew of tests on my heart, met with my doctor, as well as an electrophysiologist (another doc) and then I did a stress test where I did some really hard cyclocross simulations with the electrodes hooked up, I went so hard I had to have them bring the trash can over.
I even got off in the middle of the effort and jumped up and down as hard as I could to try and replicate the perfect storm, but I was unable to make it happen. Which isn’t the end of the world.
Basically the big question for me is to ablate (zap) the cells / fibers that are causing this “re-entry” and occasionally putting me into a tachycardia, OR to not ablate, at least right now. My situation isn’t a life threatening issue, more so a quality of life issue and one that I may need to make a decision on at some point, especially if it keeps on happening. I’m grateful it’s something that isn’t life altering and has a cure if it continues to hamper my ability to do what I love and have made my job.
My plan is to wait and see if it continues to happen during races and after this cyclocross season, I will re-consider the ablation procedure, especially if it does keep happening. I probably would more strongly consider the procedure immediately if it had happened more often then the couple of times I referenced in my previous post,
But if I were to go ahead with the procedure, it would be the end my current season, which I don’t want to do right now and I don’t think is necessary given everything I’ve learned and talked about here.
Thank you to everyone who has reached out to ask how I’m doing and given thoughts / advice / ideas, etc. It’s a journey and thats how I look at everything anyway, I feel good on the bike still and in my day to day, I feel awesome. If anything weren’t feeling right, I wouldn’t even be typing this, I’d be getting my health right.
Thank you for reading! Ride safe, have fun & see everyone out there 
👊
