I was supposed to run twenty five miles on Sunday getting ready for another ultra on 12/20. Nothing crazy in the context of my training. Nothing I haven’t done before. Just a long run. A building block. A chance to push the engine and check in with myself before another big block toward the ultras I’ve been chasing. I woke up that morning with the same mindset I always have. Get out the door. Handle business. You run, you sweat, you learn something about yourself, and you come back better.
But this Sunday ended differently. It ended at mile thirteen. Not because my legs failed. Not because I ran out of fuel. Not because my mind quit. It ended because my body sent a signal I couldn’t ignore, a signal I had never felt before, a signal that changed the direction of my entire week and maybe the direction of my entire approach to training.
This is the story of how a long run became a turning point. Not a race. Not a finish line. Just a quiet moment in the middle of a training session where everything inside me shifted. It is also the story of dizziness, chest pain, adrenaline surges, hospital walls, heart monitors, electrical shocks, and the upcoming ablation I now wait for. Two weeks before this I caught the flu or Covid, still training etc.
But at its core, this is a story about perspective. About education. About listening. And about understanding the difference between pushing through discomfort and ignoring danger. This is not a sympathy story. This is a teaching story. It is the truth as I lived it, and it is something I believe other athletes need to hear.
THE RUN THAT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE A PROBLEM
I have done hundreds of long runs in my life. Twenty five miles is not a beginner number for me. It is not intimidating. It is simply a part of who I am as an athlete. My engine is built for this. My mind is wired for it. My routines are predictable. I know the cadence of my breath, the sensation of my stride, the way my heart beats under different intensities. After years of ultras and grueling training blocks, your body becomes familiar territory.
That is why what happened at mile thirteen felt so foreign.
Around mile ten I felt something off. Not discomfort. Not fatigue. Something deeper. A sensation that traveled through my chest in a way I couldn’t explain. My breathing changed, not because of effort, but because something internal shifted. I tried to regulate it the way runners do. Check the breath. Check the posture. Slow down. Reassess.
But by mile thirteen the dizziness hit full force. A wave. Sudden. Strong enough that the world tilted in a way I had never experienced on a run before. My chest tightened. Not stabbing pain. More like an internal squeeze that kept repeating. And then the adrenaline kicked in. Not the kind you get from pushing toward a finish line. Not the motivational surge. This was a panic surge. The kind your body gives you when it senses danger before your mind does.
I stopped immediately.
That moment, standing on the side of the path, hands on my knees, trying to breathe through a heart that suddenly felt unpredictable, was the first time I truly realized something was wrong. Not wrong like a bad run. Wrong like something internal was malfunctioning.
People always talk about knowing when you need to stop. For me, this was the clearest stop sign I’ve ever received in my life.
WHEN A RUN TURNS INTO A WARNING
I walked back slowly, trying to collect myself. But the dizziness didn’t fade. The adrenaline didn’t settle. My pulses felt uneven. My chest fluttered. My heart rate felt like it had a life of its own. That night, things escalated. My heart wasn’t beating in the rhythm I knew. It was unpredictable. It was jumping. It was dropping. It was skipping whole beats at times and then racing for no reason. I kept thinking, probably the flu “I must be super taxed”.
You can ignore a bad workout. You can ignore fatigue. You cannot ignore your heart.
The next few days became a blur of hospital rooms, tests, scans, conversations with doctors, and monitoring. Every time I thought maybe it was stress or dehydration or some random imbalance, my symptoms reminded me otherwise.
Then came the moment they shocked my heart after things were getting worse day after day.
THE ELECTRICAL REBOOT
The goal of the electrical shock was simple. Reset the rhythm. Force the heart back into a clean, organized beat. AFib, atrial fibrillation, is essentially electrical chaos. The top chambers of the heart fire off random signals in every direction, sending impulses that create irregular, fast, or unstable rhythms. It can be triggered by many things, including genetics, dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, illness, extreme endurance training, long term stress, or no obvious reason at all.
When they decided to shock my heart, I understood exactly what they were doing. They weren’t trying to fix the cause. They were trying to restart the system.
You are sedated. You go under in seconds. They hit the switch, and in that moment your heart’s electrical cycle stops so it can restart correctly. You do not feel the jolt, but you feel the meaning of it. You wake up knowing someone had to intervene because the body couldn’t correct itself.
The shock worked temporarily. My heart returned to normal rhythm. For a few hours it felt like things were moving the right way again.
Then the misfires came back.
That is when the doctors confirmed that an ablation may be necessary.
WHAT AFIB REALLY IS FOR ATHLETES
Now is it AFib? Is it something else? What caused it? I haven’t gotten answers after any tests besides “we don’t know”. So you don’t know what actually causes this? This is not a panic attack. It is not just high heart rate. It is not an overtraining symptom that you can run through.
It is an electrical disorder…from what I’ve been told.
Instead of the heart following one clean pathway that tells it when to contract, multiple pathways begin firing at once. Those chaotic signals cause skipping, fluttering, racing, dropping, and the kind of dizziness I experienced at mile thirteen. The blood flow can become unstable. The oxygen delivery becomes unreliable. The brain can briefly lose blood supply, which is what causes passing out.
Endurance athletes are more prone to AFib than almost any other athletic population. Years of high volume training combined with dehydration, stress on the atria, and repeated elevated heart rates can increase the risk. That does not mean running is dangerous. It means running requires awareness. The heart is strong, but even strong systems have limits. When you push them long enough, they respond.
This is not about fear. It is about education.
THE ABNORMAL FEELING THAT SHOULDN’T BE IGNORED
Looking back at Sunday, I now understand exactly what my body was trying to tell me.
That dizziness was not fatigue.
That chest tightness was not exertion.
That adrenaline spike was not mental.
It was my heart firing the wrong signals. It was the electrical system glitching.
The symptoms were not random. They were warnings.
Runners are conditioned to ignore discomfort, to push through pain, to find a way to keep going. That mindset is both our strength and our weakness. There are moments where the body whispers, and we push through anyway. But when the body screams, you need to listen.
Stopping at mile thirteen wasn’t failure. It was the smartest choice I made all year.
WAITING FOR THE ABLATION
The ablation is the next step. It’s currently Saturday morning 9:19 as I write this article. A specialist known as an electrophysiologist will map out the electrical pathways inside my heart. They will find the areas where the misfires originate. Then they will neutralize them with heat or cold. The weak pathways will be shut down so the clean signal can take over again.
It is precise. It is technical. It is controlled. And for many athletes, it is the thing that allows them to return to training with full confidence.
I am not afraid of it. I respect it. I understand its purpose. I see it as another mountain in the journey, not the end of one. Everyone is battling something.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF PAUSING MY ULTRA GOALS
Since August it has felt like every time I planned something big, something unexpected came up. Training blocks interrupted by illness. Fatigue that didn’t make sense. Runs where the engine didn’t respond the way it normally should. A sense that something was brewing beneath the surface even when I tried to push through and stay focused.
I wanted those ultras. I wanted the build. I wanted the momentum. I wanted to prove something to myself. But life doesn’t always line up with the schedule you want. Sometimes it rips the paper right out of your hands and forces you onto another path.
This does not mean the goals are dead. It means the timeline shifted. It means the approach must change. It means the foundation must be rebuilt with more awareness, more precision, and more respect for the system that makes all those goals possible.
I am disappointed, yes. But not destroyed.
I still know who I am. I know what I can do. I know what I have built my life around. I know the miles I plan to run in the future. This moment does not take that away from me. It simply pauses it.
HOW I’M HANDLING ALL OF THIS WITH PEACE
People expect panic in moments like this. They expect fear. But I do not feel either. I feel clarity. I feel perspective. I feel an understanding that there are seasons in life where strength looks different. Sometimes strength is pushing harder. Sometimes strength is stopping. Sometimes strength is listening to the quiet signals before they become loud ones.
The reason I’m not spiraling is simple. I’ve lived enough life to know that adversity is part of the journey. I’ve trained enough to know that you don’t get to choose your obstacles. You only choose your response. I’ve accomplished enough to know that my life has meaning beyond a single run or a single goal.
If this story ended today, I would be proud of everything I’ve done. But if the story continues, then this moment becomes a chapter that builds me rather than breaks me.
That is why I am at peace.
EDUCATION OVER EMOTION
This is not a plea for sympathy. I do not need it. What I want is for other athletes to understand what AFib feels like, what passing out means, what a misfiring heart looks like from the inside.
I want people to know that chest pain on a run is not always exertion.
Dizziness is not always dehydration.
Fluttering is not always anxiety.
Your heart speaks. You just have to learn its language.
If you take anything from my experience, let it be this. The body always tells the truth. And if you ignore it long enough, it will force you to listen in a way you never wanted to.
THE ROAD BACK
I will return to running the way I run. I will return to ultras. I will return to challenging myself. But I will not return blindly. I will return smarter. I will return with more respect for the machine that carries me. I will return with more patience. And I will return with a new understanding of what it means to build a long, sustainable career in endurance.
This is not the end of my story. It is simply a moment in the middle. A moment that hurt, yes. A moment that disrupted everything, yes. A moment I wish didn’t happen, absolutely. But also a moment that taught me more about myself and my health than any training block could.
When my heart returns to rhythm, so will I.
And when that happens, every mile I run afterward will mean more than any I’ve ever run before.