I will wait to pass judgement until 6pm when another article will come out saying long endurance training is very beneficial....

Well, since the article got wrong the history of how a marathon became 26.2 miles, I will assume the rest of the research is just as weak.

However, does it not really surprise us that a heart wears out? I would think a typical heart has a useful likfe with so many beats. You may be able to add beats to the total available, but eventually you run out. If you ride a lot, run a lot and swim a lot, the heart beats faster a lot. And so what. My 73 year old dad still smokes because he likes it. I will do 100 mile bike rides because I enjoy them. Health has little to do with the choice.

Plenty of people are slowing killing themselves sitting on their ass doing nothing with their life. Ill take my chances.

Why worry about it? I will be out padding my obituary! :)

My doc says some irregular (but very infrequent) spikes in my HR while riding is likely V-Tach. What this article only touches lightly on is the fact that caffeine, energy stimulants, lack of rest, stress, etc are major contributors to irregular heart beat stuff like this. I had a V-Tach episode back in early Spring that shot my HR to 210+ during a pretty moderate effort. Just a regular ride/day - maybe 25 miles but I had done heavy lifting (chest/arms) earlier in the morning and I was heavily caffeinated and doped up on some other energy drink crap. I had to stop on my bike to let it settle down. I was afraid of tipping over. No pain, just light headedness. I was 2 miles from home and got home okay but HR was still 150+ and I was soft-pedaling. For the following 4 hours I had about a 115-120 bpm HR just sitting around trying to recover. Since then, I shared this with my doc and he wanted to know all about what happened, frequency, etc. His advice was make note of frequency and come back if it increases or I have another one like the one I just described. I've had maybe 2-3 more little ones - they hardly register on the HR monitor and I'm right back to normal in seconds - no stopping, no fear of falling over. I am pretty sure I had one Saturday during a psychotic 85 mile and 10K feet group ride - I felt it for a second or two and it went away. Weird.

Yeah, I'm wise to the whole fear factor of this thing related to too many hard workouts, races or hard efforts. But I really believe that lack of sleep, piled up fatigue, caffeine and other stimulants all combine to make this *potentially* happen.

Yeah I never understand the "slowly killing" saying. Everyone is slowly dying the moment they are born. So why worry about things that you enjoy?

Exactly. And last I checked, The IronCowboy is still alive after 50/50/50.

I read once that all animals with a heart have about the same number of beats in a lifetime, for example a dog may live 1/4th as long as a human, but it's heart beats 4x faster (but don't fact check me on this).

I'm 50 and after a dozen years of endurance sports, my resting heart rate has steadily gone down, now in the low 40's, so by that metric, while my heart rate increases during training, the net result is fewer beats over the course of my day/week/month/year/life ergo a longer life!

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“Bloom wherever you are planted"

Seems to me a few of us out there have either congenital heart defects that eventually surface POSSIBLY because of the endurance training. Some seem to develop them POSSIBLY because of endurance training. How many people that do endurance sports develop conditions like this? How many people develop cardiac conditions due to other types of lifestyles?

Despite the correlation/causation issue at play here, I think you would find that the number of people that have these issues that do endurance sports to be significantly lower than the general population.

What is 'long distance'? For my neighbour it's 2km running, or 10km cycling, or 200m swimming.

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Francois-Xavier Li @FrancoisLi
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." George Bernard Shaw
http://www.swimrunfrance.fr
http://www.worldofswimrun.com

As of today my heart has been beating for 59years, probably with some ups and downs and maybe a hicup or two. At an avg of 70 bpm that will have been 2,170,728,000 beats. I sure hope there is something left in the tank as I'm looking forward to aging up next year to the 60 is the new 40 age bracket;)

It's not surprising. It goes against the grain for endurance athletes, but most things in life that are good for our bodies in moderation are damaging in excess. The article even states that it's a question of dose. What is the right dose of exercise for it to be healthy, and at what point does it become damaging? No one knows yet. Maybe eventually we'll figure it out. In the mean time, one thing that we're fairly certain of is that, viewing it as a binary decision, being active is healthier than being sedentary.

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Don Larkin
Reach For More
http://www.reachformore.fit/
USAT Lvl1 Coach, NSCA-CPT, NASM-CPT, BS Exercise Science

So here's what's going on. Every time new information is learned, say a new study is done, the body of knowledge grows larger. Future studies will use the current information as a springboard and refine the best current knowledge. It's not that science is changing, it's that we have an increased and evolving understanding of the world.

While I get what you're saying it just shows a lack of understanding.

This...

This. Consider Hyponatremia (sp?) When I was young I never imagined there could be such a thing as too much water, and yet even the most innocuous source of all life can kill you.

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“Bloom wherever you are planted"

I have had this conversation with my doctor who is a casual triathlete and has read up on it. She tells me there is no real evidence to support it. In her words it is possible that there is some small effect but with the weakness of the data there is probably so little effect as to be meaningless. And much less effect than sitting on the couch has.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

You are 100% sure it was VT? Were you wearing a holter? Dang I can't imagine your doc not putting you on a weeks worth of holter monitoring at least if you ever presented with sustained lethal arrhythmias. AF can conduct very fast to the ventricles as well with many of the same symptoms. I'd actually prefer VT of AF b/c the clots with AF are the silent killer. I only ask b/c having spent 15 years on the industry side of this equation I'm not sure I ever saw a docs let a patient walk out the door with documented VT and not doing a holter protocol or EP testing to exonerate themselves should it reappear and have repercussions for the patient.

Ian-

Not to freak you out or anything, but you may want to check out the A-fib thread. My symptoms started like you describe, at mile 20 in IM Florida, dehydrated and pretty heavily caffeinated. HR jumped from 134 to 210-managed to walk/slow jog it in, but that was the beginning to episodes occurring more frequently over the years until I recently just went in and had an ablation....and it seems to occur at a higher statistical rate with endurance athletes than non...

I guess if the distance is long enough, eventually you'll die.

We're slowly killing ourselves by living.

What kind of ablation did you get? Did they do RF ablation and make you pacemaker dependent? Did they do the cryo-ablation? My neighbor had the cryo it's fantastic tech. I am so glad to see it's been perfected and is becoming more available for when I need it at some point!

Are we desperately seeking excuses for poor race performances by taking any popular rationalization we can find that will allow us to feel better about working out less?

I never said the science is changing. Not once, no where never said it.
I said another article will come out in a couple hours or a few days...whatever, which will show it is actually beneficial. And yes, that could very well be because of all the research that came before it.
Trust me, I understand it. :)

Lanceman , my motto is " when it is your time to go, it is your time to go" ,