Georgetown’s Slacker Half Marathon a special feat for heart transplant recipient

BY DEBORAH SWEARINGEN SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA

When Sedalia resident Andrea Ogg received a heart transplant in July 2018, she made a promise with herself to live a full life in honor of her donor.

As Ogg competed in the Slacker Half Marathon from Loveland Ski Area to Georgetown on June 24, she hoped to embody that promise.

“For me, the half marathon is the exclamation point on that sentiment of my just unending gratitude that someone made this decision (to donate their heart),” she said. “It’s a big responsibility.”

Ogg, now 57, was born with a rare congenital condition called left ventricular noncompaction cardio- myopathy, in which the lower left chamber of the heart doesn’t develop correctly. However, she didn’t learn about the condition until an unrelated echocardiogram in her mid-30s.

For years, she struggled to exercise, fainted regularly and experienced shortness of breath — all symptoms of the heart condition she didn’t know about. But she internalized the idea that she was lazy, unathletic and unmotivated to put in the work necessary to get in shape.

Learning of her heart condition was hard but also validating.

“In reality, I’d been working harder than everyone else just to get through life,” Ogg said.

After being diagnosed, she continued to manage her symptoms with a cardiac de brillator for some 15 years before her heart stopped at a play rehearsal, putting her in endstage heart failure and on the list for a transplant.

Transplant surgery and the subsequent recovery weren’t easy. Ogg had complications that required