Originally Posted by
terrymorse
I just finished a book entitled
The Haywire Heart - How Too much exercise can kill you, and what you can do to protect your heart.
It's written by athlete cardiologists and Lennard Zinn, who many may know from his books and technical articles on cycling.
It has lots of actionable information for the masters athlete.
If you're a cyclist with concerns about your cardio health, I highly recommend getting a copy. It's available from
velopress.
Here's a
review of the book from cardiologist and athlete Larry Creswell, MD.
Read that. It's a good book, but does more than a bit of scare-mongering. I've been riding with ultra-cyclists and just plain hard-riding folks for 20 years. We've had two riders develop Afib. One is an ultra-cyclist with a wall full of medals, the other is a runner/cyclist who ran a 4:11 mile in his early 20's and kept up that level of training until his mid-70s when he was still one of the fastest riders I've had the pleasure to paceline with.. So yeah, it's possible to overdo it, but it takes absolutely incredible dedication. Those of you who have ridden at that level for a couple decades should take note and maybe back it off. For the rest of us, have at it all you want - very unlikely that you have the physiology to enable that level of stress for long enough to cause any damage.
I've always ridden with a bit of moderation. IOW I ride myself into the ground regularly, driving my HR as high as it will go for extended periods, panting like I'm being pursued by lions, but I don't do that all the time and I recover well from those bouts. Recovery is the key to avoiding long-term damage, and also the key to getting fast. Anyone can train hard, what's hard to do is to recover adequately between bouts. At 74, I can still do long endurance rides in the mountains and finish well up in the pack and feeling good. That said, there's a lot to learn about what you're doing w/r to training and your health. Read everything you can get your hands on.
About getting a full heart workup: I've had one because I had something odd happen to me during a very hard bike tour, more like a stage race really, but at 70+. Mostly I was just vastly overcooked, way beyond my previous experience. I couldn't get my HR over 105 no matter what I did and was panting like crazy even going relatively slowly. Anyway, that was a good enough story to get my insurance to pay for the workup. The cardiologist found that I had the physiology and aerobic conditioning of a fit 40 year-old, but had a lot of calcium built up in my coronary arteries. My research revealed that a high "calcium score" is very common among endurance athletes for unknown reasons. However for this group, a high score is not predictive of a heart attack, in fact the opposite. We are less likely to have heart problems.
I don't take a statin and have no heart issues. I do get some chest pain, but that's just normal lung pain, nothing to worry about. If you go hard enough, your lungs will hurt. Just how it is.
A HRM is a good idea. It's good to know what your heart is doing. I also use a power meter for cycling. Using both together is very informative.