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brachycardia = slow heartbeat, usually defined as under 60 beats per minute. Years ago I had a physical (when I was running 20 - 30 miles a week, including a five kilometer in 18:18). I was taking the ECG in a cool, air conditioned room, flat on my back, almost dozing, when the machine went "brat-brat-brat" and spit out a paper tape. On the tape it said "MARKED BRACHYCARDIA."
So when the lab guy came back in I asked his what that was all about. He looked at the tape, said "pulse 44, you're a runner, aren't you?" I said yeah. He tore up the tape (he had apparently seen a lot of them in the 101st Airborne)
So the slow heartbeat alone, for a distance runner/swimmer, etc. is good. If you are a tall thin skinny runner with rubber-band legs ... great.
It just means your heart is healthy and fit. --- BUT ---
Now for the second part, a sinus block. The heart doesn't beat "all at once", it actually "rolls" from one quadrant around to the next, each quadrant compressing for a split second and then relaxing. The electrical signals travel, much like demolition time fuse, through nerves that start on one side of the heart and travel in sequence, causing the muscle to compress when they arrive. A block is exactly what the name implies: the electrical signal coming down the bundle of nerves slows or stops, causing the next chamber in the sequence to either compress out of sequence, or not compress at all.
The expression "arrhythmia" simply means "not in rhythm" and describes any of a number of "out of sequence" compressions of the heart.
You are going to need a lot of tests to determine how much of a blockage there is, how much efficiency you are getting out of your heart (what are your times on the runs?) and if there is a risk of the heart getting totally out of sequence. That's "fibrillation."
Oh, and you shouldn't be doing the Copenhagen thing anyway.
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