I had meant to add this in here for awhile but just kept forgetting to do it. I finally had my visit to the cardiologist and finally I have some answers. It seems that my rather irregular high heart rate was not a figment of my imagination, nor was it an indication of poor fitness (ha! told you!). Apparently I have a leaking mitral valve. This basically means that soemtimes when the blood is pumped out of the heart the valve doesn't close properly and a little bit of the blood 'backwashes' into the heart. This explains my high heart rate and low blood pressure with exercise.
At first it was a little scary to hear all that, but it's actually the best outcome of a bad situation. I found out that the cardiologist had been expecting to find a hole in my heart (cue the metaphors...) so a leaking valve was a much better, well less life threatening anyway.
The good news is that I am safe to exercise. There are certain things I have to look out for, but assuming there's nothing funky going on I am right to push myself and all good to train for a marathon!!! Such good news!! So, my heart isn't broken, it's just a little faulty. ;)
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