The 52-year-old vegetarian would ride his bike more than 200 kilometres a week, both indoors and outdoors, often at a high intensity. 

He didn’t drink, nor smoke, and prided himself on living a healthy and active lifestyle. 

But one night, he woke in pain.

“At 2am on Wednesday, July 19, I woke up aching and feeling ill in my chest,” he said. 

“My wife and I called an ambulance and I was rushed to the emergency department at Wimmera Base Hospital. I thought I would be given some tablets and sent home.”

Mr Heyward did not know it at the time, but he was having a heart attack.

“I didn’t actually realise I had heart disease, and had a heart attack in the middle of the night,” he said.

“They found some blockages in my heart and I was scheduled for open heart surgery. I had one completely blocked artery and two partially blocked arteries.”

He was taken to St John of God in Geelong the next day, and was scheduled to have surgery on the Sunday.

“A lot of tears were shed between my wife and myself. It really threw us. We didn’t expect anything like that,” he said. 

“The days waiting for surgery were the most traumatic time of my life. There were many tears and soul-searching. The unknown ahead was terrifying.

“At 7am on July 23, I underwent six and a half hours of surgery for a quintuple coronary artery bypass graft. My heart was stopped. I had a vein removed from my left arm and two mammary arteries removed from my chest wall.”

For Mr Heyward, a man who would regularly ride more than 100 kilometres in a day, the recovery process posed a new set of challenges. Suddenly, he could barely walk, let alone mount his bike. 

“After the surgery, I was in the intensive care unit and was assisted out of bed for a little walk with a walking frame,” he said.

“By the Thursday following I was able to walk around the ward five times, amounting to roughly 30 minutes.” 

In the weeks following his surgery, Mr Heyward increased his physical exercise to walking more than an hour each day. 

It was not until 10 weeks post-surgery when he was able to ride his bike again. 

“I wondered if I would ever be able to return to the level of fitness I used to have prior to surgery,” he said. 

“The Wimmera Health Care Group have an eight-week cardiac rehab program, and that was great to get me to start exercising again.”

Slowly, Mr Heyward has been increasing the amount he can ride as his body continues to recover from the life-saving operation. 

“I’m nowhere near 200 kilometres yet – it’s been very slow and it needs to be,” he said. 

“I’d like to get back over to the Grampians and ride the look-outs in there again. That’s roughly 100 kilometres around there and that’s something I’d like to get back into again. I’m sure I will.”

Helping him adapt to his new life is a group of athletes who have experienced similar issues – the Cardiac Athletes. 

“Not long after my operation I didn’t know if I could actually ever ride again,” Mr Heyward said.

“My wife Leanne did a bit of web research on cycling after open heart surgery and she found a website called Cardiac Athletes. It’s run by a cardiologist in Melbourne and it’s a worldwide group.

“There are runners, cyclists, weight lifters… all people who have had heart conditions.”

Mr Heyward said the group was one of the main reasons he remained optimistic of regaining close to full fitness.

“It’s a fantastic information base and support group, and it showed me you can actually have an active lifestyle after open heart surgery,” he said.

“That just proved to me there is life after heart surgery. You can still be active and fit – you just have to take time to get back into it. It was a real motivator.”

In the meantime, Mr Heyward plans to continue riding and being active. Most recently he rode 70 kilometres in a day.

Doctors believe his healthy lifestyle contributed to him surviving the heart attack. 

“The doctors knew how passionate I was about staying fit, and in reflection they said that’s probably what saved my life,” Mr Heyward said.

“If people just keep active, walk half an hour a day, just keep up some sort of fitness, it really helps.

“It gives you more resilience if you have an issue down the track. It could save you. 

“If I wasn’t fit and active, the heart attack could have been a whole lot worse.”