As most readers of these forums are aware, recent studies
have brought into question the benefits of intensive running and endurance-type exercise in terms of health and overall longevity. To help clarify some of these issues, we are conducting a survey of training characteristics and health habits in recreational and competitive runners and endurance athletes over the age of 35. If you meet these criteria we invite you to participate in our online survey. It is 45 questions and should take less than 10 minutes to complete. By the way, the study team is composed of several aging ex college and HS runners. The survey can be accessed at: http://www.research.net/s/runmasters
Thanks for your help!! The M.A.S.T.E.R.S. Study Team Visit us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MastersAthleticsStudy
Took the survey but I was surprised that you did not have any questions on how much of the other types of aerobic exercise that many runners do. I know it is difficult to do an exact conversion from cycling, swimming, rowing, xc-skiing, etc, to running but I would think it would make your survey much more accurate in terms of the total amount of exercise people do. For example, on this forum which is mainly focused on triathlon, very few guys/girls run over 50 mi/wk consistently across the year, but they are doing so much cycling and swimming such that the overall aerobic equivalent is well above 50 mi/wk across the year. As just a quick example, let’s say your average “serious” triathlete averages 10 mi/wk swim, 160 mi/wk bike, and 40 mi/wk run across the year. Using the typical conversion factors of 4:1 for run:swim (i.e., 1 mi swim = 4 mi run) and 1:4 for run:bike (4 mi bike = 1 mi run), then our tri-person is doing 40 + 40 + 40 = 120 “running equivalent miles” per week across the year, e.g. three times his/her running mileage, which is a pretty huge difference. Even if you cut those numbers in half, he/she is doing 60 run equivalent miles/wk, much more than the 20 mi/wk that he/she is being credited with in your survey.
Perhaps this type of analysis would make your survey entirely too complicated but this might be something to think about for future work. Indeed, I’ll bet you did consider this but decided against it on practicability concerns???