I run with a pacemaker.

In fact, since my early twenties, I’ve done everything with a pacemaker.

But not the type of pacemaker who leads top-class athletes to prevent tactical racing or who helps you reach your target marathon time.

Instead, the metal type that’s buried into my upper-left chest and generates electrical impulses through wires attached to my heart.

Just a little different then…

If you’re reading this and don’t like scars, it’s probably too late to look away.

And although this might sound strange; as well as being one of the most formative things to happen to in my life, it’s also one of the best. That's easy to say now though.

Funnily enough, taking this hindsight, holistic approach in the immediate aftermath didn’t cross my mind when I got the news:

‘Luke, there’s an issue with your results. You’re going to need an artificial pacemaker - and we'd like to move soon’

It’s certainly a voicemail I’ll never forget.

Searching for camp spots above the high tide line, The Inside Passage, SE Alaska

I rarely talk about my pacemaker and my condition - complete heart block - let alone write anything about it.

But not due to embarrassment or shame. Yes, there’s a certain stigma attached to having a device whose average recipient is 75 years old, but stereotypes are there to be broken. And, they’re relatively common after all, just not in 23 year olds.

Instead, I’ve tried to make sure that it doesn’t define me, or anything that I do. If that means people not knowing about it, then that’s great.

I think friends and family would say I don’t really take sympathy very well - I’d prefer to offer it to others who can; and anyway, it rarely affects my life in any negative way.

It takes a little longer at airport security, I can’t really sleep comfortably on my left side and have an annual check-up every year.

Don’t slip. Don’t slip. Training for this years 100 mile ultramarathon

During the latter, the technicians use a silicon horseshoe shaped device (I’m no medic) to give me the once-over and ‘pace’ my heart. During this ‘pacing’ process, the pacemaker is programmed to make my heart beat at any speed the technician chooses.

And yes, I’ll admit that feeling of someone else being in control of the speed of your heartbeat is a little disconcerting and one of the few things I’ll probably never get used to.

But even the annual check-up has its positives. Providing a thumbs-up, and an often timely reminder of how valuable my pacemaker is.

Not just in ensuring I stay healthy and alive, but in making me feel more alive.

This is not actually me - but if I did have an x-ray it would look a lot like this.

After that initial diagnosis in 2008, and a brief self-pitying ‘why me, really?’ moment, those exhausting, worrisome ponderings quickly developed into an appreciation of how precious and fragile life is.

How humbling to have family and friends who cared so much. How lucky to be who I was, to be here right now with caring and skilled professionals in the age of a national healthcare system. The first implantable pacemaker, after all, was only invented in 1958.

And on the face of it, how fortunate to have had this experience and to now have an opportunity to support others with their own challenges in life; help them learn never to underestimate their own strength and resilience, not to doubt themselves.

To come back stronger.

And that moment of realisation was a game-changer.

I had dreamt of skiing across Antarctica since I was a boy. And I’m definitely not the only one. Although the characters of the early 20th C Polar Expeditions were only part of the inspiration, most who’ve read about that era probably had that same dream - or at least an inquisitiveness.

Who couldn’t fail to be intrigued by such a wondrous, curious, far away land?

But, for all sorts of very understandable reasons, practical and rational, much fewer get there.

And at that young age, I too thought that perhaps when quite a bit older it’d be nice to go there and see Antarctica for myself. But the reality was far from being realised, no semblance of a plan existed.

It was an aspirational dream.

But then something changed.

A more-or-less 730 mile straight line to the South Pole (that line is definitely not straight…)

With that voicemail my perception of what could happen in the future flipped in an instant. I became less naive and more aware of ‘life’; not as some pre-planned streamlined voyage, but as a path of discovery, where you take the decision to head in the direction you want to, seizing and creating opportunities along the way.

On the 730 mile solo trip to the South Pole, I thought a lot about my pacemaker - my little metal companion with me all the way - and about my more recent brain surgery (but that’s for another blog).

I had no-one else to talk to, after all.

I flashed back to receiving the news, waking up with a metal device regulating my irregular heart, wondering how it would change my outlook and my future.

The answer?

It’s enriched my life in every way.

Made it! 730 miles solo, but never feeling alone for one single step

Reaching the South pole, I had the chance to reflect further, without - for the first time in 40 days - worrying about melting snow for drinking water, crevasses and frostbite.

I was relieved.

But more, so utterly grateful for those that had helped me get there and for all the twists and turns life had taken and for all those stand-out moments in life that had moulded me and taken me to this point, at the bottom of the world.

And so just as human pacemaker pushes an olympic athlete to work hard, keep focused and overcome challenges, mine does too - including running my first 100 mile race earlier this year.

It keeps me striving to have impact and to have purpose in life. To be appreciative of what I have and the people around me.

And although it doesn’t define me, I can’t help but acknowledge how it has shaped me.

During the toughest times in life we all go through, it can be difficult to see though the all-consuming haze.

Just remember that we can always take much more from those moments than they can ever take from us.

- Luke

Running with an artificial pacemaker