Greene showing heartening form after return from surgery
REBEKAH Greene is taking her first steps back into highlevel running — and so far those steps are heading in the right direction.
The 24yearold claimed the open women’s South Island crosscountry title at the weekend, completing the 7km course in 26min 05sec.
That was good enough to beat secondplaced Sarah Douglas by 30sec — not bad for someone who had heart surgery in
February.
Having returned to
Dunedin after four years of running at the
University of
Florida, where she graduated with a food and resource economics degree and a masters in international business, she retains big aspirations.
She is back to 100% and has not had any heartrelated problems, although she is still easing back into training.
‘‘It probably sounds more intense than it is. It was a heart inflation,’’ she said of her heart surgery.
‘‘About a year and ahalf ago I developed some faults in the ventricle pathway in my heart and I was having a lot of palpitations and passing out after races and hard efforts.
‘‘I had a surgery in America and they went through the wrong side of the heart, so that was unsuccessful.
‘‘Then I had another one when I got back home and I had another one at the end of February in Christchurch.’’
That one was successful and after a week of recovery, she was able to get back into running.
She is enjoying being home and said the hills and trails around were great to run around.
Now back in much better physical condition, she is appreciating being able to train normally.
‘‘With the heart stuff, it was hard to have any consistency training.
‘‘They put me on beta blockers for a while; that was pretty hard to train through.
‘‘You’re trying to get your heart rate up but you’ve got this medication slowing it down.
‘‘I feel a lot better than then, so it’s pretty nice to train now. It’s a luxury to train without any of the heart issues.’’
Greene retains hopes of reaching the sport’s highest level on the track.
She represented New Zealand at the junior world championships in 2010 and 2012 and set records at national school championships.
Now she is gearing her training towards attempting to qualify for next year’s senior world championships.
That is a way off, though, and she knows it is still early days.
She said she was trying to build her speed up and would try the steeplechase, as well as getting her 1500m time down.
Before that, she would race the national crosscountry championships next month.
Alongside that she would be keeping busy in a new job at the end of the month, set to begin as a marketing assistant with Silver Fern Farms.