As a very fit cyclist who hadn’t even reached the age of 50 yet, Reverend Carl Matthei didn’t expect the feelings in his chest to be heart disease. Also as a very fit cyclist, traditional rehabilitation wasn’t really for him. So he found a new kind of program based on HIIT that brought him back to his previous fitness and trusting his body again. Here is his story, in his own words:

I’ve always been into health and fitness and sports. I regularly cycle between 62 and 93 miles (100 to 150 kilometers) per week, and I eat what most people would call a really good diet. I don’t eat fast food. I don’t drink alcohol or smoke. So I assumed I was in pretty good health and wouldn’t have been a candidate for a heart attack.

But on October 30, 2019, at age 47, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to go for a ride with three friends before work, and we planned to ride hard. I felt a weird feeling in my upper chest that started almost as soon as I started rolling. A lot of times when I’m riding hard, it’s not uncommon to have various aches and pains, so I didn’t think about that. I had had a similar feeling on a few other rides, but assumed it had to do with the banana I ate before those rides.

When I got home I had a shower and breakfast, got dressed for work and even threw a little family birthday party for my daughter who turned 20 today -the. I mentioned to my wife that the banana I ate didn’t swallow very well, and there was still a weird little lingering sensation in my chest.

My wife is a doctor and she immediately said to me, “Are you telling me that you had chest pain while exercising? I replied “No, it’s not that!” She then demanded that we go straight to the local hospital. I told her she was overreacting, then she threatened to call an ambulance. I backed off and agreed to go to the hospital (provided we drop another girl off at school on the way).

I arrived at the hospital with very little pain and looked perfectly healthy. The initial ECG test didn’t show anything unusual and the doctors were pretty casual at first because I didn’t look like I had much trouble. As the doctors asked me questions, someone took some blood and sent it for testing.

It was definitely‘it’s something i ate

Fifteen minutes later, when the blood test results came back, all hell broke loose. They threw me on a hospital bed, shaved my chest, stuck electrodes all over my chest and put a cannula. I was rushed upstairs for an echocardiogram, which showed that part of my heart had stopped beating and I was officially having a heart attack.

I was then rushed straight into an emergency angioplasty. Although I don’t have any of the usual things that are normally associated with heart disease (not overweight, not high cholesterol, not high blood pressure, not a smoker or drinker, and quite young in terms of a heart attack), for some reason i have aggressive coronary artery disease. On the day of the heart attack, I didn’t know if I was going to live or die, but I found great comfort in my faith.

I was very lucky to have a cardiologist who was also a competitive cyclist. The first day after the heart attack, he told me that I would be back riding soon. He gave me confidence and hope that the exercise I loved wasn’t over forever, and he gave me a plan to get back to it safely. As there is evidence of depression in people with heart attacks, it was great to be inspired from day one to keep going.

I got a new kind of cardiac rehab

I underwent cardiac rehab at the nearby Prince of Wales Hospital. When I arrived at the service, it was clear that I was different from most people there. I was 10-15 years younger than almost everyone else and not really overweight. Much of the rehabilitation involved spinning slowly on a stationary exercise bike. I could see that I was going to get bored pretty quickly.

Luckily for me, Dr Andrew Keech, an exercise physiologist at the UNSW School of Medical Sciences in Sydney, had been working with the Cardiac Rehab team on another way to recover from a heart attack – it was using HIIT training.

We pushed very hard during the high intensity games, even shortly after having the heart attack. After the warm-up for each session, the staff made me do 30-second sprints at full intensity then 30 seconds of rest. This was repeated without a break 15 times, then followed by a warm-up. As my health and fitness came back, they increased it to 20 times. It was fantastic to be able to exercise at high intensity!

Research indicates it’s more effective than normal cardiac rehabilitation, and it’s really helped me get back to the serious exercise that’s such an important part of my life. It was so good to be able to get back to a good level of fitness fairly quickly in a safe and well supervised environment. It’s hard to come to terms with having a heart attack, especially since I was young and healthy.

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I was very lucky to be able to stay in the rehab program a little longer than normal to continue building my fitness and strength. It was really only the COVID lockdowns that put an end to my rehabilitation. At that point, I got back on my own bike and started riding on the road again. Initially, my cardiologist just told me not to be competitive on the bike and to stop when I was in pain. I tried to do both but kinda messed up! I discovered that I had to set myself a maximum heart rate to mark where the “competition” probably started. It was frustrating but probably wise.

A year after the heart attack, with a good report from the cardiologist, I was cleared to ride at full intensity again, which did me good. All chest pain was gone by this point and it felt great to be able to really push hard again. Over the next year, my cycling (and even my general health and fitness) has returned to about the level it was before the heart attack, for which I am very grateful to God.

Over time, I became much more comfortable talking about it and owning it. I suspect most people have similar initial difficulties, but I want to encourage others to say that it soon becomes easier to talk about and live with. Getting back to riding helps. And I won’t erase any symptoms if I feel them again!

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