No expert nor am I over 40 so I can’t speak to personal experience, but I’d suspect individual genetics/risk factors play a huge role as well as overall lifestyle outside of training. I know a fair few older riders who are putting in big hours year-round while working demanding jobs, sleeping poorly, on aggressive diets etc, and I could see that having a pretty big impact on risk versus someone who’s lifestyle allows for less stress and more recovery even if the training load was kept constant. (The former seems to have a correlation with ‘toughness’ in some people’s minds, unfortunately.)
Another thing that might be worth considering when it comes to ‘chronic marathoners’ as a population is that an all-out marathon incurs significant cardiovascular damage similarly to any other muscle being stressed. My understanding is that it typically repairs with sufficient recovery, however the timeline for that is usually longer than it takes for the rest of your body to feel ‘good’ again. (that’s probably one of the reasons you see elite marathoners compete significantly less than track athletes etc.)
In my experience it’s not uncommon for people to jump back into training earlier than that because they’re motivated following a race or don’t want to lose that level of fitness- IIRC it’s a fairly common cause/hypothesis for those ‘sudden heart issues’ that pop up in marathon headlines occasionally.
There is hard science on the diminishing benefit of more than 2 HI sessions per week but regardless…
I encourage people to experiment on themselves. I personally found that being smarter about my training and polarizing has eliminated my symptomatic palpitations while improving my performance.
I also do take magnesium as someone above noted which is something I started doing during my first pregnancy because low magnesium caused noticeable, dramatic symptoms during pregnancy including increased palpitations, charlie horses, and migraines. Pregnancy will exacerbate any nutrient deficiencies a person has. So I assumed I probably had low magnesium while not pregnant as well given all the training so started adding that in and using more electrolyte powders with magnesium during training.
Trevor Connor has been talking about this lately on the Fasttalk podcast as he’s experiencing some afib now. Trevor is one of those racers that has been doing it at a high level for decades.
Interestingly, he has said that if he abstains from sugar he doesn’t get afib. I just thought this was an interesting anecdote. He just did Paul Laursen’s podcast (personally haven’t listened to it yet) with an anti-sugar clickbait title:
This is an excellent podcast about this subject by someone who appears to know what he’s talking about. I listened to it and was very reassured after hearing all sorts of doom and gloom in the popular press.https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-8knby-1b777b31. It’s one of the the Inside Exercise podcasts by Glen McConnell. I can really recommend the channel for excellent knowledgeable information and advice.
Yup, same as mentioned above (without a direct link).
I’m midway through the podcast and as a luddite on the topic, I find it enlightening and nearly “common sense” to the ideas that some is better than none and doing this (as with many things) in decent moderation.
I absolutely agree with you, but like all things, people then want to know the exact number that equals moderation. 4 rides at 65% FTP for 60 minutes plus one ride at 125% FTP for 60 minutes with 20 minutes in zone. But if you do 18 minutes in zone then you’re not maximizing your quality workout. If you do 22, you will probably expire at a young age. If you do the 4 rides at 60% FTP you might as well skip the ride and sit on the couch, and if you do them at 68% FTP, well…again, you’ll probably die.
(Totally guilty of sometimes falling into this kind of mindset myself!)
Yes the tendency for the medical field especially to default to “moderation” is unhelpful for people who are trying to get performance gains.
I will say, for the “time-crunched” cyclist who is doing the low volume or maybe mid volume sweet spot, there’s probably not much of a concern and their risks are probably more related to other lifestyle choices (diet, alcohol, sleep, etc) rather than excessive exercise. That’s not who these studies are raising concerns about.
Where some of us fall into trouble I think is when we apply the no pain no gain and more is better and “time-crunched” approach even when we’re not time crunched. A lot of us are a bit obsessive, a bit type A and may go years without realizing the detrimental effect of a lack of a recovery or too much intensity too often.
Coincidentally enough, I did an echo this year in the middle of a heavy marathon training block and it showed evidence of right ventricular stiffening. Previous year, not in marathon training, echo was totally normal.
That paper is definitely a good read! Thanks for posting.
Back in the day I would have scoffed at the thesis. But, over the past two years there has been a rash of middle aged to just less than middle aged people in various group rides that have had heart issues. Some very serious. It’s no longer unusual to see a pacemaker lump under the jersey.
Somehow I knew, and accepted the fact, that years of serious competitive swimming would probably jack up my shoulders. And it did a bit. But, I totally believed that torturing a muscle 6 inches away from my shoulders (my heart) then and for the rest of my life was universally good for me …
Of course joint over use is not the same as pushing your HR up but the mindset that there could not possible be a downside is very common among endurance athletes. At least football players are man enough to admit their preferred sport is not healthy!
Sure, especially in this forum. The podcast touches on more specifics than I am willing to requote (likely incorrectly) so they can start there.
I am personally fine without “exact” numbers since there is plenty of variability between individuals that it’s almost a fool’s errand to try and get too precise. They touch on that basic fact that variability exists such that recommendations can only be taken so far.
Agree. Time crunched or not, you don’t have to look far in the endurance community to find people at the pointy end that don’t look healthy.
I’m not suggesting that the eyeball test is gospel and there will be those we can’t tell are doing more harm than good, but I think we can all agree that we need to offer support rather than applaud their extreme behaviour.
We don’t know precisely how much of what is too much, but we might have a sense that the total is harmful.
so I’m 43 and closer to 44 at this point and i’ve probably had the highest volume year of my life, generally I do 14hrs, but recently I did an endurance block with 15-16-16hrs. It wouldn’t be unselling to state that I’m in the best shape of my life. Underlying conditions aside, I don’t see a need to limit oneself just because of age (assuming you add volume reasonably)
Interesting. As a 37 year old I’m not quite there, but definitely rev my heart to the max quite often. For example, in my CX race yesterday, my average HR was 178(96% of maxHR) for 49 mins. That’s a long time to at such a high % of max. I only train 6-10 hrs/wk, and only 2 days of intensity, but I wonder if I’m still doing too much with how hard I push it in my weekly CX races…
Probably not with the low volume plus (I assume) this is only your schedule during race season and you take time throughout the year to rest and recover and base train. I was in this boat though and having symptoms (palpitations) which is why I got tested so I didn’t have this nagging concern and felt free to go as hard as I wanted during my hard days.
I was thinking about this thread more and came to another realization which is:
If you’re an amateur and exercising so much that you’re damaging your heart, you’re probably also experiencing other issues such as:
Recurring injury
Fatigue
Irritability
Obsessing over weight/eating habits
Poor social/family/spouse relationships
Lack of focus for other responsibilities such as your job
Strict adherence to workout schedule no matter the circumstance
Fear of missing a workout or under-committing to other things in your life
Feeling the need to always do more or go harder…
If you are honest with yourself and you see cycling impacting your life in these ways, then you might not have a healthy balance of training, recovery, and life and you might also be pushing your heart too far. But it seems unlikely that you would be causing preventable damage to your heart without also seeing other effects that tell you you might have a problem.
I had some concerns about this and switched to mostly riding endurance. With only an additional 1+ hours/week on average (almost 8 hours/week average in 2022), over 3 years my performance returned to nearly the same level as my best season when I trained crazy hard. More importantly, my RHR dropped over 10bpm, HRV returned to normal range (age adjusted), and overall this year I feel fantastic after celebrating the 21st anniversary of turning 40. All because I had two racing heart rate situations in 2018 (on a 20 minute descent) and 2019 (sitting at my desk) that caused me to rethink my approach to training.
