veganbikes

Well except for liquor and cigarettes those are perfectly safe in large quantities

3alarmer 

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...so am I the only one who felt badly for the guy on reading this? I can remember a time in my life when I was so intent on maintaining a certain level of fitness (for my job...which was pretty physical), that I did some pretty stupid stuff and managed to achieve some chronic overuse injuries that took years to clear up. Some of them never did. I agree that in preference to riding an indoor trainer I would choose to be beaten with a softball bat. But I do have some empathy to the addictive exerciser.



*https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/02/04/care/

streetsurfer

I have to wonder what his fluid intake habits were.

This sounds like it may be a classic case of chronic low level dehydration. Regulatory signals for our autonomic functions need adequately wetted pathways in order to reach their target and do their job properly.

livedarklions

I made the math correction above--it was 40 miles per day, for some reason I converted to miles twice!

On an indoor trainer, that 40 miles is probably about 2 and a fraction hours per day. That's a bit, but it doesn't seem to me like the crazy amount it's being portrayed here. The craziness is ignoring the chest pains, and I'm curious to know if he was overdoing HIIT or something where he might have been deluded into thinking that was normal.

livedarklions

Not sure what our empathy is worth, but I think that someone who dies 3 days after telling a reporter that he's consciously ignoring heart symptoms is an unfortunate object lesson. Frankjy, I think the cycling component here is incidental. He could have had these symptoms climbing a flight of stairs or running to catch a train.

himespau 

A guy who had previously raced with the club I race with on Zwift died of a fatal cardiac event during a race 4-ish months ago. A note briefly went around to all the older guys on the team about "is there someone there with you when you ride in case something happens?" I think most have already moved on from that by now though.

RH Clark

There has been quite an increase in heart related deaths in younger people the last couple years according to the stats released by insurance companies. I wonder what could have possibly caused it.

livedarklions

Sorry, but that's just total BS speculation on your part. I could just as easily speculate he was suffering from hyponatremia, literally the opposite problem.

prj71

I ride indoors sometimes during the winter when the temp starts dropping below 10 degrees. You'd be surprised how easy it is to ride indoors once you fire up the Metallica and other similar music on your favorite play list. I have a station created on Pandora called Avenged Sevenfold radio...Practically every song that comes on has a tempo that is great for biking indoors.

79pmooney

2000 km/month = 1242 miles/month. Times 12 = 14,900/year or 40.8/day.

His heart knew he didn't have a life?

3alarmer 

...and he could have visited the top cardiologist local to him, after waiting three months for a new patient appointment, and dropped dead on the trip home. The cycling component is only the reason it showed up in the cycling publication where it read it.

rsbob 

PubMed defines Exercise Addiction, “The findings suggest that an individual who is addicted to exercise will continue exercising regardless of physical injury, personal inconvenience or disruption to other areas of life including marital strain, interference with work and lack of time for other activities. 'Addicted' exercisers are more likely to exercise for intrinsic rewards and experience disturbing deprivation sensations when unable to exercise”

Hopefully this doesn’t sound too familiar to most of you/us. It certainly defines the subject of this thread.

I did have a bit of this in my early 30s when I had a bad marriage and didn’t like my job. As a result I buried myself in being on the bike when I was not working or asleep. Now I love my job (retired) and my spouse - and can get as little or much of cycling as I want and still live life.

livedarklions

I'm going to have to edit that post to take out the bad math as I really don't want to acknowledge it more than 3 times, and I actually was the first one to correct the error.

Still don't think it's enough time for it to be a health hazard wothout some other complicating factor.

70sSanO

I would think if someone walks into an emergency room with chest pains, they would run some tests to determine if there was an issue. If it were serious, you would most likely get admitted, or a referral to speed things up. Might not be the top cardiologist, but better than nothing.

And they are obligated to uphold the hippocratic oath, which according the the internet in its original form is...
I swear by Apollo Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.

Probably not as good as the Dalai Lama, but at least you've got that going for you.

John

indyfabz

"Hey, Lama, hey! How about a little somethin', you know, for the effort, you know?"

Polaris OBark

I've wondered if some athletes become addicted to their own endorphins.

3alarmer 

...I have been to at least one local ER as a patient. Not trying to get this tossed into P+R, but the first thing they asked me for was my insurance card.

livedarklions

Not that it matters, but that wouldn't likely have been the case with the story in the OP as he was British.

3alarmer 

..there are plenty of people who use exercise as a preventive for seasonal depression, or depression in general.
Endorphin response probably plays at least some role in exercise addiction, but I'm not sure if it's been quantified anywhere.

3alarmer 

...but the cardiology appointment just got pushed out another 3 months

spelger

i ride about half of that a year. guess i only have to worry about half of my heart. now...which half?

seriously, 40 mi/day is a lot of riding. and way too much indoors. i once did a metric century indoors. never, never, never again.

70sSanO

That could be solved if hospitals offered their own cash back cards.

0.5% cash back for all visits.
1% cash back on all sutures.
2% cash back on all transplants.
Plus unlimited miles for all pickups and deliveries.

The first questioned asked will be, "What's in your wallet?"

John

3alarmer 

...that's interesting. For me it was a completely soul crushing job, in Merced California ( a Central Valley town that experienced four straight months of overcast and fog every winter, back when climate was normal here.) My (now ex-) wife was living and going to school at Davis, so that wasn't swell. And I was the AFGE union guy for the Modesto district. I worked out a routine of cycling everywhere, running at night on the creek trail, and swimming laps and weight circuit training after work every evening, over at the community college. I only used the car for drives to Davis, which became les and less frequent.

It worked, because my next job was working for the Sacramento Fire Department. But I'm not sure how many more years I could have kept up that routine.

Polaris OBark

No. Not at all.

wolfchild

Looks like obsession with fitness and trying to reach unrealistic performance standards can be just as bad for your health as eating too much fast food and being sedentary.