Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 108, July 2018 | Página 18

ROAD RUNNING
Matters of the
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Dawie Aucamp has been running for 26 years, but the last few years have
been really challenging after he suffered a heart attack while out training… even
though he didn’t know that until 12 hours later! After many operations and having
an Implantable Cardio Defibrillator (ICD) implanted, he’s not only returned to
marathons and ultras, but also done his first Ironman. – BY SEAN FALCONER
T
he troubles started in November 2010. Around
the 32km mark of the Winelands Marathon,
Dawie felt pain in his chest, experienced white
vision and couldn’t breathe, so he pulled off the
road. Eventually he began feeling better, so he slowly
carried on and made it to the finish. Then it happened
again 16km into the Dangerpoint Half Marathon that
December. “I thought it was just blood pressure,
because I was fine in the Bay to Bay 30km in January,
but later that month, the same thing happened 30km
into the Red Hill Marathon. I had to put my hand on
my wife Annalita’s shoulder to balance, but again I
recovered and finished the race. Then it happened
again at 30km in the Peninsula Marathon!” says the
56-year-old finance manager from Stellenbosch.
The next day he called his doctor, who ran tests but
couldn’t find anything wrong, partly due to Dawie
being so fit that he was unable to get his heart rate
high enough on the exercise bike to really stress it.
That saw Dawie referred to cardiologist Dr Wouter
Basson, who ran more tests and prescribed blood
pressure tablets. “That worked for a few years, but I
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was still tired in the legs and would finish races totally
exhausted.”
Fast forward to 2015 and Dawie was running his
11th Two Oceans Ultra when a friend passed him at
30km and said he didn’t look good. “I replied that I
was going to bail if a bus came past, but none did,
so I finished in 6:18. Then at Comrades the same
thing happened – around 35km in I told Annalita to
go, because I was holding her back, and after a lot of
tears she eventually did. I recovered after a while and
finished in 10:44, but I was getting worried.”
Then on 9 August, he experienced problems again
during a long training run. “I struggled home, but
started vomiting and shivering, and my stomach
was upset. Annalita found me sitting in the shower
under hot water, so helped me get into bed to try
rest, but I had no circulation in my extremities, and I
kept vomiting, so when she came home later from a
Women’s Day function, I said I think we should go to
hospital. The doctors gave me one look and booked
me in for emergency treatment. It took three shocks to
ISSUE 108 JULY 2018 / www.modernathlete.co.za
LUCKY ESCAPE
The following day he was visited in ICU by Dr Basson
and specialist Dr Rust Theron, who told him the
troponin count in his blood was 37,000. A raised
troponin level indicates cardiac muscle cell death, and
a normal count should have been 40! “Dr Theron still
said, ‘You’re somebody’s favourite up there.’ I was
in ICU for four days, and three weeks later Wouter
diagnosed Super-ventricular Tachycardia in the top
chamber of the heart. He said I could start training
three weeks later if I kept my heart rate under 130,
and in my first run everything was fine. However, the
next evening my heart went off the chart, so it was
back to Wouter. And yet, the angiogram showed
nothing wrong, so he sent me to physiological
cardiologist Dr Razeen Gopal, who took one look
at my charts and said I’m going nowhere. He also
promised me, ‘I am going to give you your life back’.”
In October 2015 Dr