I skimmed the paper and walked away with no clear picture about those questions. And I don’t have the time or inclination to go chase down the references, after opening up the first reference in the paper.
Interesting. What kind of insights has it given you?
From the american heart association - this is a great review of the research. Skip to the conclusion if you want.
Still I am concluding that if you have any issues you should get checked and otherwise you should generally watch for signs of over training/obsessiveness/lack of recovery but more exercise is better than less exercise.
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Isn’t the point of this thread, and the linked publications; that more is only better up to a point and then it is worse?
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Nothing radical!
Useful for me to have (secondary) confirmation of the absence/presence of any anomalous heart rate readings during activities, since that’s something I used to see from time to time and so like to monitor.
The Relative Cardiac Stress Score plot, esp. against age group peers is quite interesting! I don’t know how many people are in the database, but it’s a gentle reminder that I might have done quite a lot at times (eg. 99th percentile on a recent cycling holiday), and so a regularly reminder to think about rest & recovery for more than just my legs.
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This issue of endurance, age and heart effects has been deeply discussed by professors in sports cardiology in the “Inside Exercise” series. Here are the two most relevant.
Inside Exercise: #69 - Should middle-aged men pull on lycra? With Dr Andre La Gerche on Apple Podcasts (Ignore the silly title - Its proper physiology and in depth research)
Discusses endurance, ultra endurance effects, myths, AF, and loads of other pieces. These professors are researching athletes from Masters Age-groupers to Olympians
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Important topic no one likes to talk about, naturally. Based on this research I will do less or none of the crazy long races.
It’s an interesting paper, certainly, but I’m not sure there’s anything particularly surprising in it. Some exercise is good for you, lots of exercise can be bad for you. Many enjoyable things can be bad for you, but we still do them because they make life worth living.
Some of the many unanswered questions are: at what load does cardiac risk go up? What’s the absolute risk (quite small from what I can see)? Is that risk specific to individuals and can it be screened for?
I will continue enjoying my cycling wherever it takes me and worry more about the cars than my heart.
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I think it’s more specific: long race pace is bad for you.
I think this is a fundamental problem with lay people reading research papers
I agree with Joe. I don’t think that this paper or its references say what you think they say.
I was intrigued by the u-shaped mortality curve, but I could not access the article. I did find this more recent meta-analysis of over 200,000 participants: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/54/15/898 and its full-text here: https://core.ac.uk/download/322368915.pdf which comments on the curve. Their pooled data from many studies show a mortality benefit from any dose of running and no significant difference in mortality depending on dose (including pace).
Also this: https://www.escardio.org/Sub-specialty-communities/European-Association-of-Preventive-Cardiology-(EAPC)/News/exercise-and-mortality-can-there-be-too-much-of-a-good-thing which is a much simpler read, and self-explanatory.
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A great point on the 2 HI a week, because even if we can do more than that, for 95% of us it’s not sustainable, and consistent training is >>>> than a quick block of throttling the crap out of ourselves IMO.
The one thing to consider is that a hard group ride or race needs to count as a hard ride. Sometimes as obvious as that is, it’s easy to forget, because we want to smash and get W’s during the week to see progress, and then do it on the weekend too for fun. Ugh 40+ woes
Thanks for posting
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The american heart association paper I liked to above lists the absolute risk as tiny (and yeah cars are a much bigger threat).
I think the issue with getting anywhere close to identifying the risk for specific individuals is that the people doing ultra endurance stuff year after year for decades are fairly rare and there’s so much variability… medical science generally doesn’t spend much time thinking about things like that. They have barely settled on agreed upon recommendations for breast and colorectal cancer screenings.
IMO though more people attempting ultra endurance should get testing done. We try to train like pros yet get none of the physical assessments pros get.
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As a 1000 hour a year rider, it’s not something I even am remotely worried about.
I do so much “dangerous” shit, the miniscule risk of a heart issue is way back on my mind.
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Indeed, they only number in the 1000’s and are spread throughout the world. But there’s also great variance in frequency people run or ride ultra distances and what they do about recovery afterwards.
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I read one of the papers and I can’t say I’m worried at 48 years old. Health and resilience varies so much in people especially as we age that I don’t lump myself in with most of these studies. While there is some history of CHD in my family as well as diabetes- I personally sm as healthy as I’ve been in a long time. As someone who is usually resistant to getting sick I notice when I am feeling off. So far, knock on wood, my body hasn’t scared me with all the exercise that I do. I think it also helps that I’ve been on again/off again active my whole life so not as many miles on my ticker as some. Also, most of my riding these days are endurance despite wanting to smash.
So I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing until there is a reason not to. My next check up is this month and I’ll see what my results are but I can’t imagine them being out of the norm.
This is a good podcast on this topic.
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I listened to this, to takeaways:
- The studies are not strong enough to support the idea of a J curve.
- Afib risk is real and some ppl shouldn’t be doing 20h weeks.
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Looks interesting but who are they? Their about page doesn’t really give much information. I like to know to whom I am handing my health data before I do so.
If you listen to the two “Inside Exercise” interviews, in #69 the Sports cardiologist says that long races such as ironman and ultra are done a a relatively low effort, so there is little heart damage, but you do need a few weeks to recover fully. I have been doing 12hrs TTs and recently a 24hr Time Trial, as well as previously doing long course and Ironman triathlons. It makes sense to me.