"Get busy living or get busy dying"
"You're gonna die, I'm gonna die, we're all gonna die....just not today"

From a couple movies I saw ;)

I say this lying here recovering from a bike crash resulting in 13 fractured ribs, a fractured collar bone, collapsed lung and fractured sacrum. Oh and the worst part is sever sciatic pain from the lovely lumbar movement of L5 putting pressure on that nerve. Surgery awaits after tomorrow's MRI's.

Last year this time I was getting ready for my Ablation to fix AFIB which I'm happy to say was very successful.

But 13 years ago I was overweight had blood pressure in the neighborhood of 160/100 and cholesterol around the 300 mark.

I'm both physically and most of all mentally much happier now.

the winners of the 70+ age groups doesn't tell you anything. Ninety plus percent of their competitors are gone. Everybody else is weeded out either due to health issues disinterest etc.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Your biggest risk in training for this sport is the chance of getting hit by a car. Whether that be running or cycling. I know way too many people that have been hit.

Yeah, so is getting out of bed! 100% serious.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Being the guy who walked out of the ICU two days ago(I'm sure you saw the thread) after a left side blockage on a run caused me to collapse, then some down time before CPR was started, then a long period of cooling my body, medivac to Ohau etc. I can tell you without a doubt that my fitness saved me and allowed me to survive the whole ordeal without and major damage. The blockage wasn't caused by running, so you can't blame training for it. What almost killed me was being out on a run away from help and I could have easily had the event happen on the road to nowhere on the Honu course... had that been the case it may have take hours for someone to find me and I would not be writing this email. If the event is going to happen, then I suppose the guy sitting at home watching reruns and drinking beer has a higher chance getting help vs the person out swimming/biking/running/hiking, etc. I'll pick the choice of a triathlete, eating healthy, training, and living life.

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Team Zoot

Love it and I completely agree! Coming up on 70 and 40 years in tri, and it's still a complete ball! I love your attitude and in addition to being a cancer survivor, that's what it takes to live a full life despite the "speed bumps". Hope to meet you down the road one of these days..... Keep on keepin' on.

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Kiwami Racing Team

Question is whether excess exercise follows a J curve or a U curve. There still seems to be some debate about this in research, however, most of the recent studies I have seen, suggests that it is a J Curve i.e. there is little additional benefit beyond a certain level, however, there is no inreased risk of death. From the reasearch, training 7 hours a week is considered a very high load, I have been training over 12 hours a week on average for the past 3 years, so would be an outlier, and I guess that most serious triathletes are similar.

What I think is a more serious issue is diet. Triathletes seem to adopt fad diets to lose weight and increase endurance. There is an increasing body of research thet shows that some of these low carb diets may be extremely detrimental to long term health

https://www.thelancet.com/...(18)30135-X/fulltext

Funny that you mentioned the J/U curve. I just read this article that talks exactly about that: https://www.triathlete.com/...art-until-it-doesnt/

Exactly. Either train tri and race ironmans or sit on the couch and eat chips and drink beer. There's no in between, it's one or the other.

My father made it to 87 yrs old, my mom made it until 102. I had my 1st heart attack at 53, resumed training, had a 2nd heart attack 6 months after an ironman at 56. Does traning effect my heart, I think so. BTW, I still ride, swim, and run a little, just not as much at the last 2. I ride over 6k a year. Im now 64, so who really knows??