Heart scare forces much-decorated legend to retire from racing
How lockdown and moving to an indoor trainer very likely saved Andrew McLean’s life.
“It was during hard lockdown when things really got worse,” says 56-year-old Andrew McLean. Like so many other serious (and not-so-serious) racers, the man whose palmares includes 35 ABSA Cape Epic stage wins and three overall category victories; four Giro Del Capo titles; and various Cape Town Cycle Tour and 94.7 Cycle Challenge wins, turned to Zwift for his racing fix when the world went indoors.
“In a Zwift race you go absolutely full-on from the gun, otherwise you lose the bunch,” McLean says, explaining how he was doing 45-minute warm-ups in order to be ready to race right from the start. The reason? An underlying heart condition. Something he’d known about for a decade. Something he’d succeeded in hiding for 10 years by carefully managing his race efforts. Something he would’ve continued to ‘manage’ had lockdown not put him on the indoor trainer full-time. A move that very likely saved his life.
“I was racing with a mate of mine and we were on discord (the App that lets you chat while in Zwift) and I actually passed out for like three-odd seconds. I kind of slumped forward on the bike and then when I came to I was still in the bunch and saw him in front of me, so I carried on and actually had quite a good race.”
When he got off the bike afterward he didn’t feel great at all. “I was sitting down and my wife walked by. She told me I looked terrible,” he says. “When I told her what happened she was like: ‘You really need to go see someone’.”
McLean went to see a specialist in Pretoria who had trained in Belgium under a sports medicine guru who’d treated many cyclists with heart conditions. ECGs, scans and various tests indicated a big build up of scar tissue on his heart. It was functioning at about 65%. The result: No more racing for one of South Africa’s most decorated riders on the road and off.
REWIND
‘Why, if you knew would you not do something about it earlier?’ Might be what you’re thinking. It’s not that simple…
“For the past eight to 10 years I’ve known that there is something wrong with my heart,” McLean says. “But I also didn’t know… And, did know what it was and maybe didn’t want to know. All I knew was that it wasn’t functioning as well as it should be.”
McLean understood his body (and how his heart was functioning) so well, that he simply raced accordingly. “What I was finding was that when I started an event, I would get to a point where it almost near max but no oxygen was getting to my muscles.” When he reached that point he’d back off until he recovered a bit and then rev it again. “I’d slowly build it up and then it got better and better, this is why longer races and particularly stage races really suited me. It was the real old diesel engine analogy,” he says.
“Most races I would be in 50th position after 15 minutes and I would finish in the top 15,” he says. “No-one would ever pass me once I got it going and often I could do a time that should get me in the top 10 but I couldn’t because I would have these terrible starts.”
He did engage with a few doctors and medical experts when he initially noticed the issue, but they all told him that he was simply getting older and maybe just not recovering as well as he should be.
“We didn’t at that point do ECGs or anything like that, but I did do efforts with a Holter on,” he says. A Holter monitor is a small, wearable device that tracks heart rhythm and the doctors did identify a few ‘runs’ during efforts where McLean’s heart would get ‘stuck’ into an irregular rhythm. “There weren’t that many and they weren’t that long so they weren’t too stressed about them.” Naturally, he then put it out of his mind and continued training and racing. And he would’ve done the same throughout 2020 had COVID not put paid to that
CURRENT PROGNOSIS
“For years I’d heard about people who had heart issues because they’d raced and trained with viruses. I always kind of just told myself that my ‘heart is bulletproof’ and was oblivious to it. Obviously, it wasn’t.”
McLean admits he trained and raced countless times over his 30-odd year career with underlying viruses and even while on antibiotics. “It was shortsighted and stupid and really there was no reason to do it, but I always just managed it. Every time I did that I clearly built up a bit of scar tissue,” he says. “So I was my own worst enemy and my chickens came home to roost.”
McLean is philosophical and pragmatic about his current situation, thankful in the knowledge that it could’ve ended up very differently had he continued training and racing as he’d been.
“I’m actually fine now, other than that I shouldn’t race. I shouldn’t take my heart right to the top end, but I can take it to around 80-percent. I ride an eBike, which I’m thoroughly enjoying (and I think 90% of the population will be riding these in the next two years). The beauty of an eBike is that I can ride with any of my mates who want to go as hard as possible I can keep up without taking my heart out of the zone it’s meant to be in,” he says.
McLean also believes that COVID and all its restrictions has taught him that experiences are what is important and he’s going to focus on ‘experience’ events with his wife and close mates going forward, instead of racing.
SOUND ADVICE
McLean’s advice for other riders who may be in the same position. “The challenge with viruses are that you don’t always feel the symptoms,” he warns. “You might feel just a little ‘off’ and know you have something underlying, but you just brush it aside and carry on.”
“First of all: ‘If in doubt, leave it out.’ If you have to ride don’t push your heart over 70%,” he says. According to McLean you could potentially do a two to three-hour ride this way and be fine, the challenge comes when you’re doing high-intensity training efforts and racing. He believes that if you feel at all unwell, avoid that…
A small disappointment on the day may just be the self-discipline that will prolong your life.
| INTERVIEW BY: Jazz Kuschke |