This is covered well (imho) in a book just released that I’ve just read - Phil Cavell’s Mid-Life Cyclist. Consistent with the posts above (below 7 hours per week exercise good… for example) but overall the books addresses it from perspective of someone who wants to enjoy cycling in an immoderate way!). Something I’ve not seen mentioned above is this is basically a male problem.
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Thanks all for your comments and posts here, I greatly appreciate your thoughts and experiences.
Ultimately, I’ve changed GP’s to a doctor that has a background in sports medicine and is an endurance athlete himself. My previous doctor couldn’t quite grasp my concern as he didn’t understand why anyone would exercise over 30 minutes per day. I will be working with my new doctor to schedule some more in-depth heart tests.
Another issue is finding a heart rate monitor that actually works. I have gone through three Tickr chest monitors (2 Tick’s and 1 Tickr+), all of them basically fail once my heart rate goes over 100BPM.
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Check out Garmin’s HRMs. I’ve been through two in the last 6 or so years, they’ve been flawless (and I don’t use the term ‘flawless’ to describe a Garmin product lightly)
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I’ve also been very happy with Garmin HRMs and currently using the dual BT/ANT+ one. Polar would be the other one to checkout.
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I switched to Polar last year after having four tickr’s crap out over three years. Never tried Garmin, but I have no complaints about the Polar H10.
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I’ve had shotty experiences with my Tickr as well. Sometimes it registers a heart rate on my Garmin head unit when I’m not even wearing the thing. Othertimes my resting heart rate registers over 100 BPM, which is false.
I think Polar make the best heart rate monitor(s). The H10 will read HRV as well which you can measure with a mobile app. That’ll be my next HRM purchase.
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Garmin Dual HRM also does HRV, and is $20 cheaper (retail price) and according to Polar’s own tests is highly rated for accuracy while cycling.
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Interesting read. I guess this is one of those things which we don’t take seriously enough as it happens rarely, and there is survivorship bias.
+1 for Polar H10. Very stable, good HRV readings.
And thanks for this thread… learned about calcium tests and am scheduling meeting with GP to line up stress tests.
54 years old and did 6x3min vo2 max workout last week, with heart in the 170’s for each interval. Hard, yet felt great, but this thread got me thinking I need to act responsibly with an 8 and 12 year old at home.
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I’ve had both Garmin and Polar HRM’s. I strongly recommend the Polar. The Garmin is great until you have to replace the battery. Their HRM’s use the tiniest of screws on the back that strip out very easily. I bought a set of eyeglass screwdrivers to get the damn things out. I ended up stripping out the screws the second time around. Tossed it in the trash, bought a Polar, and it’s been great. You only need a quarter or wide screwdriver to open the battery case. YMMV.
EDIT - My Polar HRM pairs perfectly with my Garmin Edge 130 head unit. FYI.
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I began doing triathlons in 2005 after going from 340+ lbs to under 200lbs. I will admit that i never really took much ‘off’ time. Even when i did an easy bike or run i would look at my heart rate afterwards, once i got a garmin watch with the wrist based hr, I would be in the 160s or 170s which we know is not a recovery hr.
In 2019 at age 52 i had a very stressful time in which i lost my mom. i noticed on the bike trainer that i just lost power one day. I felt a strange flutter in my chest. It did not go away so i went to an urgent care facility. They determined i was in AFIB. I was sent to a heart doctor who was able to perform a cadioversion to get me back to normal sinus rhythm.
I had another episode after a hard bike session and discovered there was a pattern. If i was at a high heart rate and drank something cold … it put me into AFIB. I described the finding to the doctor and he said it is a high vagal tone. It can happen to long term endurance athletes which have the low resting hr. The vagal nerve runs near your esophagus and can be triggered by the cold liquid.
Since this finding i have changed how i trained and no longer drink cold liquids if i have been training at higher heart rate. I run all of my runs at MAFF hr now unless it is a race. This helps build my aerobic base and puts less stress on my joints. I do not focus on hr while cycling but i am aware if it is a recovery ride.
My point behind this is that we must mix our heart rate training zones just like we do our power zones. If we don’t then we may pay a higher price than just overtraining.
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Great video that really drives home the issues…
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Wow is all I can say. Two awesome triathletes. Looks like he had an actual heart attack though from a ruptured partial blockage and not any form of arrhythmia from endurance training. I wish him and Rinny all the best for his recovery.
So…I searched this thread because. I have been riding and racing for 35 years. 57 years old, “excellent health”, annual physical in June spotless. Needed to get carpal tunnel procedure done and went to ortho for pre-surgical consult. They take x-rays of wrist and he tells me significant placque build up, tells my GP, get chest scan and placque score of 895! See cardiologist last week, EKG fine, cholesterol fine, no diabetes, no family history. Long story short, on statins now and nuclear stress test scheduled for October 4th. Cardiologist says keep riding…easy. Likely need two stents. He says common, as does another orthopedist I know who is an accomplished tri-athlete. I’m just wondering with blockages removed how much will HR drop through power zones. I will say that in the last year I noticed HR would spike quicker than in past years. Dr almost hit the floor when I told him my average HR was 183 BPM for an hour at state TT champs 6 years ago. I got lucky, found out in clinical setting.
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Had a read of that
“ But, like many other medicines, more isn’t always better. Research is honing in on the issue of dosage in exercise. If you think of exercise as a drug, there is a certain threshold at which good becomes bad, when benefit becomes detriment. When is too much? Is everyone the same, or are some predisposed to risks of extreme exercise? Is intensity as bad as duration, or duration as bad as intensity? Is it only bad if repeated over years or decades? The science is new when it comes to the science of overdosing on exercise.”
“ We might know what is too little exercise; we have a good idea what is too much; but there’s a large space in between. And you can never rest too much. Embrace it.”
They don’t know what is too much exercise over how long and intensity distribution. They cannot tell us what us too much for us. But embrace the rest periods.
That was my “long story shot”…kind of. Spent a year riding easy and waiting only to find out it was all a misdiagnosis. Cemented by a CT angiogram (and a few chats with the heart specialist) which revealed a 99.9% healthy heart…once considered “diseased” by historical stress tests (and olde timey medical professionals).
Yup. Smashing TR-style sweet spot month after month…year after year…might not be the best recipe for heart health. I know I’m faster, much less fatigued, and have a more responsive heart by doing fewer (and focused) intensity sessions and waaay more Z2 stuff.
That said, it’s not just exercise intensity which plays on the heart, genetics is most likely the main culprit.
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I’ll know soon enough…thanks for insight.
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Yeah, I think rest + stress management (along with the guidance of a qualified professional) can go a really long way in terms of prevention and general wellness. I am by no means a doctor, just a dumb 20-something, but I can imagine if you’re placing your heart under significant stress during exercise, dealing with work and/or kids for the rest of the day, and potentially not getting enough sleep, there is potential for that to become more than the sum of it’s parts.
Sedentary lifestyles are rightly blamed for a lot of modern health afflictions, but stress is another factor that is hugely overlooked- perhaps because it’s one that’s even more complex to navigate.
Might be helpful to research heart patient rehab protocols to see what the medical profession considers healthy activity for the heart.
Hint: it rhymes with ‘Bolarized’. 
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Yeah most the time I’ll do intensity (> 90% max HR) about once a week. Rest of time below VT1. Then coming up to an event I likely do the high intensity twice a week. Then after my events for year are done I’ll mostly be below VT1 for three months or so. With a high intensity thrown in once every 10 days or so. Plus if feeling fatigued I’ll just have recovery days where I’ll go for a walk instead.
I’m mid 50s so further down the line on exercise. But so far so good. Never overdosed on intensity. Take rest seriously. Plus my sports have varied over the years from rock climbing and mountaineering to cycling to:squash and table tennis etc. Always cycled but haven’t done decades of lots of intensity or decades of high volume.
Definitely something to take seriously.
This is the graph for respiratory infections. But it could likely apply risk of problems to heart health as well.
