Long story short,i am 28 and am shitting bricks as i have been told i may need a pacemaker due to a possible heart block but waiting for a 2nd ecg to confirm.
Does anyone out there ride / race with a pacemaker, i do xc marathons etc and wonder how it is gonna be affected.

Advice please,cheers

best advice would be to talk to a doctor who knows about pacemakers and doing sport rather than your run of the mill one who’ll often just say ‘don’t do anything strenuous’ to cover themselves. Anyone else’s views or experiences may well not be indicative of how it’ll be for you.

Regardless, hope it works out well for you.

Hmmmmmmmm – digging thru knowledge from decades ago here
I guess you have symptoms or you would not have had the ecg.

Some very fit folk with low resting heart rates their basic ECG looks like heart block but they have no symptoms and their heart rate does increase with exercise. Make sure the docs know about the exercise and stuff.

Really you will have to ask the professionals but I would cross that bridge when you come to it. I don’t think it will necessarily have any huge effect on you having a pacemaker – depending on if yo are in heart block / what type of heart block you have and what your symptoms are.

3rd degree and got the symptoms including a few stops unfortunatly,at the mo i can only walk to and from the car/around the house.

Just make me feel better knowing that someone still pedals with one

Having a dig around the journal articles for you – found this

“With my pacemaker I will have to slow down.” This is false. In our practice, we have pacemaker patients who play sports such as golf, tennis, or basketball. Pacemaker patients can even participate in more strenuous activities such as marathons or scuba diving after consultation with their cardiologists. Any activity restrictions usually result from other medical problems and not from the pacemaker.

It seems that pacemakers like many other things have developed so as to be able to regulate heart rate even when doing vigorous exercise.

this is no substitute for real info tho

Found this as well – a forum for folk with pacemakers!

http://www.pacemakerclub.com/public/jpage/1/p/Home/content.do

There is absolutely no problem for you to ride with a pacemaker.
You may have heart block, which means your heart slows down to the point you may faint.
A pacemaker is a small device placed below your collarbone at the front of your chest.
It has a wire that goes into a vein by the collarbone and runs down into your heart where it is secured.
It does nothing until your heart slows down, then it will kick in, you probably won’t notice.
It’s just a safety net.
Give it a few weeks to bed in, stitches heal etc.
After that, live normally.
I’ve looked after a marathon xc rider who has one.
Hopefully it wont come to a pacemaker, but if it does, then don’t worry too much, you’ll be fine.

Thanks very much tj + guy, i have been to the pass out stage with a full 8.9 sec pause 😀 – cardiologist was impressed it was on the ecg record

No problem.
9 seconds will make you feel ropey!
Don’t worry, the procedure is under an hour, fairly painless and extremely safe.
Good luck.

you gotta wonder why you have it? underlying? new? because of myocardial damage? risk factors? etc

one word: cardiologist, cardiologist, cardiologist !!!!!!!!!!!