The oldest guys I know of are Dave, Dean Harper, myself, Tinley, and many that are already dead. 2nd group just behind are Mark Allen, Mike Pigg, Scott Molina, Norman Stadler, Greg Welch, and the others from that generation. And pretty much everyone I mentioned has had a serious heart issue, it really is the unicorn to find an old pro in their mid 60’s to early 70’s that has not had one…
That’s a shame that many legends have had/have heart issues. I don’t wish ill will on anyone, but I can’t help but wonder what Lionel is doing to his. The guy seems to empty his tank on every race he does and you have to wonder how many times you can do that before it does some sort of damage. I know that there are pro cyclists that do the same but I agree there must be some compounding effect with running and perhaps swimming.
My swim club has several 80-85 athletes. Zero heart issues. These guys are on fire and setting national records all the time. I think swimming has the least cardio stress in terms of moving blood around “lying down” versus moving blood around “against gravity” (see my post above) late into racing. I don’t THINK that swimming is the culprit here (again, my hypothesis based on racing with and training with many senior swimmers…I say this as someone a year away from 60 so not sure what category senior is, but I mean people 75+ in this context)
My swim club has several 80-85 athletes. Zero heart issues.//
But you are just using conformation bias here Dev. Of course the guys “AT” your pool are fine. So are all the 75+ year old triathletes still competing. It is the ones you dont see anymore, or ever did see that make up the cohort. I got to swim meets and see 100 year old swimmers, should I assume that age group doesnt have any heart problems too?? What about Fran Crippen or the half dozen other pure swimmers I know who died of heart issues?
I dont know the answers, neither do you or anyone else at the moment. And believe me, it is answers, not answer. All we can do at the moment is just gather as much information as possible, come up with some theories, and someday they will prove them out or not. But I think we do know there is a problem with a certain segment of endurance athletes that are at high levels, think that has been known for quite sometime now. My doc in the late 80’s told me about someone he knew who had already either done a study, or gathered information that pointed to a 2 to 4 times more likely event for guys like me…
I remember the conversations I had with my coworkers in the office when they would comment on my training and racing implying I must be really healthy.
I would tell them that, no, I’m very fit and I hope I am healthy. That was hard to grasp for some of them…
Monty it’s not just 80+ lifetime swimmers in my club. There are these people all over the world in clubs all over. My eyeball sample is they are doing better than their 80+ sedentary cohort and I would say better than their 80+ triathlete cohort on general health (I am not talking about performing in their sport, just their quality of life and robustness all around). Again hypothesis , nothing definitive based on what I see all around me, but I don’t think doing hard long tris at the level that your cohort did is helpful for log term heart health. The pure bikers , pure swimmers my hypothesis is these athletes fare better.
It would just be super hard to design a study. For now we kind of have to go on statistical samples. I am not seeing so many ex pro bike champions in the news for heart health but it could just be I am not getting the full flow of health status of all these guys all over Europe.
Again it is a hypothesis. Nothing definitive. If you want to argue with a hypothesis that’s fine it’s a hypothesis not proven fact.
How many hours per week does a top level IM triathlete train per week…say Dave Scott in his prime? I’m hoping 6 to 8 hours of training time per week for a 56 year old guy like myself is safe from doing any damage to the heart. I bike 3 days per week, jog 2 days, and strength train 2 days. I just want to be fit for life for my wife, kids, and grandkids.
It’s interesting that top level cyclists don’t seem to have quite the same effect, but I have a thought as to a mechanism.
Blood pressure is elevated during exercise. Similarly, my understanding of the primary cause of aeortic anurisms, valve problems, etc is hypertension. I’d be curious if triathletes from that time period spent so much time training/racing that the cumulative time with elevated blood pressure did similar damage as someone would get with hypertension, even if the resting blood pressure is low.
11 years ago, @ age 64, I became concerned about cardiac issues from multiple years of Ironman training and racing at a high level (40 races, 11KQs, 8 AG wins). I found an article from Australia and Belgium (European Heart Journal, Dec 6, 2011, by La Gerche, Burns, Mooney, et al.) It’s specific to long-course triathletes, studied pre and post races that showed an increased risk for evidence of cardiac fibrosis who met the following criteria: competing for longer (20 yrs vs 8 years), had greater predicted VO2 max for age, and were older (50+).
They found those with evidence of fibrosis (determined by delayed gadolinium enhancement, (whatever that is) had a LOWER right ventricular ejection fraction ( I’m not a cardiologist, so you’ll just have to accept that as a measure of cardiac function) than those without. The article suggests the gold standard for determining if there is right ventricular injury is a cardiac MRI,
My conclusion is that years/decades of high level endurance training does constitute a cardiac risk. In 2013, I wrote a little post about my own theories about this, won’t repeat here, just link: http://bikrutz.org/triblog/?p=1140
I was a participant in that trial, one of the n=13 who did an Ironman and was studied.
Is there any update on Dave Scotts recovery? Im not on IG and am hoping that he’s well. This time of the year as we approach the full moon in Kona he comes to mind.
Lets not forget that Scott Tinley had the same basic surgery at the same time, so an update on either and both would be great to hear…I remember hearing the surgeries went well, but of course now we are all interested in the time after, and are they “fixed”?
Yes Scott Tinley as well. Both of them. Watched from thesidelines as Tinley won The infamous Diamond Triathlon in Nassau. The worlds fittest man on the cover of RunnersWorld? Anyway, best for both of them in their recovery.
Dave is hanging in there, but is still having some issues. I would be out of place to divulge the little I know.
When Dave feels like talking about it, he knows there is an audience.
Having said that on the “health span” vs “life span” vs “quality of healthy life span” putting aside those of us who actually get excited and get off on what we do in our professional lives (which I would say is under 3% of the population if I ask everyone I work with, if you had $10M would you still do this), the pro triathletes like Dave won the lottery on “quality of healty life span”.
They are generally doing for decades what most people did when their parents paid for it, or in retirement (play sports as their primary occupation). We all have to go, and how much life we pack into life while living it, for me seems most importantat relative to what the span is (be it health span or life span). So on that, Dave Scott beat pretty well everyone around here!
I was Hyprotrophic cardiomyopathy coupled with an athletes heart required me to have open heart surgery. I was fortune to have the best medical professionals helped me return to endurance sports. Many Ironman, 1/2 Ironman and decades of short course races including crit races, swim and running events. To this day I ride with my cycling mates each and everyday. We hold a nice 19-23 mph for 25-30 miles. I am grateful and blessed to be a part of this experience each and everyday.