The kind of super competitive person that races relatively hard for decades is a type A personality. This is a known issue for heart problems.
So even if the doomsayers were correct - there is more to the story IMO.
Clearly people who do NO exercise at all die much sooner - also a fact. So then the question might become how much is too much - and thats such an individual answer that it makes everything kind of a moot point.
I'll be the first to admit that this isn't a scientific study, but I've seen an alarming number of older lifelong competitive athletes with health problems. A-fib, other heart rhythm issues, enlarged rupture-prone aortas, calcified arteries, and so on.
On the cosmetic side, a large number of them look way older than their actual age and have leathery, wrinkled faces and hands. On the performance side, 2+ decades of intense training wears down your muscles, joints, and tendons. The best masters runners are often those who didn't train much in their youth and still have fresh legs, and the exceptions to this like Lagat usually take long extended breaks after each season.
Those issues aren't exclusive to runners either. If anything, the cardiovascular issues among long-time cyclists and XC skiers are even more common. The one common trend is that prolonged endurance training isn't good for your health and isn't worth it from a performance standpoint.
When you're young, perhaps from your early/mid teens through your early/mid 30s, go ahead and put in those miles. Chase those victories and PRs, enjoy the time with your college teammates, and dream of making the Olympics or Olympic Trials. But after that, hang up the spikes and just jog or hike to stay fit. A few sub-par late-career years aren't worth a heart valve replacement.
Totally worth it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My Dad and brother died just from these exact same situations you laid out here. If they had died any other way they would have been pissed. They said 1000's of times this is the way they wanted to go out---and they did. Hat's off to them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Couldn’t name a single life-long runner that is worse off than the average joe who doesn’t exercise. Most look better also. But sure OP whatever you say.
Clearly people who do NO exercise at all die much sooner - also a fact. So then the question might become how much is too much - and thats such an individual answer that it makes everything kind of a moot point.
No, it’s not moot and is the kind of silly false equivalence that long distance hobby plodders here delude themselves with. There is no research showing any health benefit to running much more than ~3 hours/week, so whatever you are running beyond that supposedly for the love of running is like saying I like to jerk my dickens day in and out for hours just for the love of it even if there’s no benefit.
What is the definition of “training seriously?” I’ve trained “consistently” for the past 50 years and feel great. Mid 60’s and still putting in 30 miles per week with one medium/hard effort. 87,000+ lifetime miles.
Exactly.
However, I will say that I now know more than a few women and a few men in their 90’s, more than half of them doing well, especially the women—and not a single one of them has ever done any meaningful exercise.
I'll be the first to admit that this isn't a scientific study, but I've seen an alarming number of older lifelong competitive athletes with health problems. A-fib, other heart rhythm issues, enlarged rupture-prone aortas, calcified arteries, and so on.
On the cosmetic side, a large number of them look way older than their actual age and have leathery, wrinkled faces and hands. On the performance side, 2+ decades of intense training wears down your muscles, joints, and tendons. The best masters runners are often those who didn't train much in their youth and still have fresh legs, and the exceptions to this like Lagat usually take long extended breaks after each season.
Those issues aren't exclusive to runners either. If anything, the cardiovascular issues among long-time cyclists and XC skiers are even more common. The one common trend is that prolonged endurance training isn't good for your health and isn't worth it from a performance standpoint.
When you're young, perhaps from your early/mid teens through your early/mid 30s, go ahead and put in those miles. Chase those victories and PRs, enjoy the time with your college teammates, and dream of making the Olympics or Olympic Trials. But after that, hang up the spikes and just jog or hike to stay fit. A few sub-par late-career years aren't worth a heart valve replacement.
Sixty-six year-old here. Have raced and trained consistently for over 50 years, and have no regrets.
Primarily a middle-distance runner/steeple-chaser who also does road and x-country, I wasn't a high mileage runner, although I did do a couple of marathons in my late thirties, I probably haven't gone past 15 miles in one session more than a dozen times in my life.
I did, however train extremely intensely, with either two interval sessions and a race, or three interval sessions per week.
I competed as a club runner in England until my late 30s, then primarily as a road runner in the US since. I placed several times in USATF Masters Championships from ages 46 to 56 (Steeplechase, 5000m, 3000m indoors), and won the World Senior Games 3000m (with due respect to my competitors not the toughest contest) in my age group a couple of years ago, and did place fairly well on the World Masters Rankings in that distance. At that point was doing four EIM sessions (3x2000m, 6x1000m, 12x400m, 16x200m) per week with 3 or 4 mile recovery jogs in between.
No general negative health signs. Facially, I don't think I'm older looking than my age (although that might be because, I'm not out in the sun for much more than an hour at a time. I work from a home-office and am not otherwise outdoors very often), and when I'm fit, I'm a little lighter than when I was running my best 800ms about 40 years ago.
Incidentally, I have a sister who is 64, and has a similar background. She won a world indoor master's title and recently was on some record-breaking master's relay teams. She similarly enjoys good health, and is like an energizer bunny.
Yeah but, like me (57), you are both still relatively “young”.
I think you can extend “middle age” to maybe mid/late 60’s, if you are consistent about things. We’ll see what happens to people like us when we’re 70. Two super athletic guys I know got cancers in their early 70’s—one is still going through it, the other one didn’t make it.
Suppressed immune system from too much activity? idk
Here’s to you—whatever happens, you know you have enjoyed good times, both training and competing, hard. Fvckin’ A💪👍
My anger about Dr. Anthony Fauci I have trouble managing because he is responsible for all these killings
The point of the discussion is about long term 30-40 years (1980-2020) of high level exercise plaque build up produced by the liver from processing inflammation.
If i'm understanding your position has Dr.FaucI from 1980 until 2019 responsible for deaths due to high level exercise plaque build up produced by the liver from processing inflammation.
If one trains harder and harder from age 12 to peak, one will likely peak before age 32, I do not care which T&F event. If a person lay on couch to age 38 or so, decides to get healthy and begins training harder and harder every year, likely won't get to age 60 without a serious injury &/or surgery. There will always be outliers.
Fine. I’ve seen studies that point to such risks, and I’ve seen other studies that either dispute that point mildly or at least suggest that the findings are not strong enough and warrant further study.
Have you made a very wide ranging survey of the literature on this topic?
Are you:
1. Methodically working from a rationale for accepting the results of some studies but rejecting those of others? if so, what is your line of thinking on this?
2. Merely erring on the side of caution? Ie., you may not be able to say why the less optimistic studies about endurance exercise are right, but you just find it beneficial to give them greater weight.
3. Thinking about this in some other way I haven’t considered?
Mainly #2. I'm no cardiologist or PhD, but I know 6 people of similar ages and lifestyles with cardiovascular problems. 3 of them are people with a long history of endurance exercise, while the other 3 are mainly sedentary, aside from an occasional short weekend hike or swim.
Problem is, most of the people I know are sedentary folks and not long-term endurance athletes, which means that long-term endurance athletes are more likely to have heart problems. Since that didn't make sense and since my sample size was small, I did some research.
It turns out that if you plot the amount of weekly exercise on the x-axis and the likelihood of heart problems on the y-axis, you get something like a reverse J-curve for heart disease mortality and a U-curve for non-lethal heart problems. The completely sedentary guys have the greatest risk, but the occasional weekend warriors are better off than those who've done strenuous training for multiple decades.
There have been studies showing cardiac problems after years of very strenuous training. But there is a giant gap between that and going on a slow run or hike a couple times per week. I have spoken to two actual cardiologists at a major academic medical center about this recently and both indicated that the strenuous exercise that you mention can cause problems but neither had a problem with someone doing cardio 7 days a week. The benefits of exercise are just too significant.
Take someone with A-fib. They would not necessarily recommend that person reduce exercising. In fact they might advise the opposite (again depending upon specific circumstances). Afib puts someone at higher risk for stroke. In order to limit that risk, other aspects of cardiovascular health must be as strong as possible. That comes from a healthy diet, low weight, and consistent exercise.
Stuff happens when you do things. If you don't do things, nothing happens. None of those consequences matter if people want to compete. Everyone figures they'll deal with it then. They have to do compete, like those crazy teenagers that keep scaling skyscrapers. Or maybe that's just one guy. Around 2000 I watched a show about the differences between not working out enough, working out too much and when the porridge was just right. The "too much" segment was all about the OP's points about wear-and-tear and accelerated again. All the segments were obvious but the "too much" segment was the most informative. Again, it can't be about fearing the end results and people want to live a life.
65 yo male here, been running since 1975. There was a study done in 2012 which was referenced by, I think, a very popular speaker, James O’Keefe. It had millions of views on YouTube. This is where the "J-Curve" concept where too much running is bad was developed. Here it is:
The problem is that this result is not what it seems. In fact, it suffers from a serious error in statistical analysis: the failure to distinguish between confounding variables and mediating variables. I won’t get into the weeds too much, but basically, the study was misinterpreted. You can find articles by Amby Burfoot and Alex Hutchinson pointing out the flaws of the study.
Personally, I have always been injury prone. Fortunately, they are all soft-tissue injuries that heal over time. I have never had heart or any other serious problems or, even, injuries requiring any type of surgical intervention. The difference now is it takes me longer to get over an injury. I heal more slowly so my time off running is longer. I’ve adapted and learned to enjoy doing other things while I heal.
Now, what have I seen personally with my running peers and non-exercising classmates? Very simply, more of my non-exercising classmates are dead than the one’s who do exercise. Period. Do I see more afib, need for pacemakers and ablation surgery among my running peers? Yes! But! They are alive! People forget that the older you get, the more crap breaks on your body. So, EVERY old person has a huge number of things that could go wrong at any time. That’s normal aging. Years ago, I coined a term “subchronic” for the hundreds of little tendon injuries I have just waiting to jump up and bite me. This is just normal life for older runners. You learn to live with it, give yourself time to heal up, and you are very grateful to be able to get back out there and run again.
Afib is an electrical problem and not an endurance issue. Many people suffer from it who are not related to long term endurance activities. Check around. Older people like talking about their health issues…full disclosure nearing 70 I know!
Joint issues are mostly caused by accidents or genetic arthritis. Actually running on healthy joints is good because the impact makes the joints and surrounding tendons stronger.
Skin sagging is age related. Tan skin is sun related. Check out most people at elevation that don’t use sunscreen.
So what are the age related issues with endurance training?
What is the definition of “training seriously?” I’ve trained “consistently” for the past 50 years and feel great. Mid 60’s and still putting in 30 miles per week with one medium/hard effort. 87,000+ lifetime miles.
Generally an average of 1 hour of moderate training or half an hour of intense training a day.
If you run 4-5 miles a day at 8-9 min/mile pace from Monday-Friday and race a 5K on Saturday, you'll be fine. But if you train like a typical college runner with 70+ miles and 2-3 hard workouts each week, you'll almost certainly regret it if you keep doing that for 20+ years.
Hmm, been doing exactly that for 30 years or so. Still getting carded as I push 50, so I’m guessing my skin is holding up.
As to the other health conditions you associate with exercise, only the arrhythmias have any scientific literature suggesting a possible association.
Of course, I could get another cardiac MRI or confirm with an echo to see if something has changed. But that seems like an unnecessary effort to test your theory since I’m not real concerned with your medical advice as you don’t have the degree or training to qualify you.
best of luck worrying about things that won’t happen