Running on Empty

Long distance runners know that their sport leads to all kinds of chronic overuse injuries: plantar faciitis, shin splints, iliotibial band syndrome, patellar tendinitis - the list goes on and on.  For some reason, they see this as normal, which makes zero sense, but I used to be one of them, so I guess I shouldn't judge (too harshly).

Now, it turns out that excessive endurance training (of any kind) can damage the heart.



World Triathlon Grand Final in Auckland, New Zealand

 Those two studies—presented at recent medical conferences—follow the publication in recent months and years of several other articles finding cardiac abnormalities in extreme athletes, including coronary artery calcification of a degree typically found in the utterly sedentary.

That's right.  Spend hours a day torturing yourself running, cycling and/or swimming, and your reward may be the heart health of a couch potato.

Opinion is nearly unanimous among cardiologists that endurance athletics significantly increases the risk of atrial fibrillation, an arrhythmia that is estimated to be the cause of one third of all strokes. "Chronic extreme exercise appears to cause excessive 'wear-and-tear' on the heart," the editorial says.

In case you think the doctors behind these studies are couch potatoes trying to justify their sedentary habits...

The most vocal proponent of cutting back for cardiac reasons is Dr. O'Keefe, a 56-year-old cardiologist and former elite athlete. From 1999 to 2004, he won outright the largest sprint distance triathlon in Kansas City, a testament not only to his athletic abilities but also to hours and hours of early- and late-hour training.

But a sense that this regimen was aging him prematurely, coupled with the mounting awareness of cardiac issues in extreme endurance athletes, prompted Dr. O'Keefe to slash his running to below 20 miles a week, never faster than eight minutes a mile.



American marathoner, Ryan Hall



This article surprised me.  I've known for years - from painful personal experience - the damage that excessive endurance training does to the muscles, joints and bones.  But I had no idea it also damaged the heart.  On reflection, however, I shouldn't have been surprised. 

When a person focuses exclusively on one component of fitness, all the others will decrease.  In other words, if you focus exclusively on endurance, your strength, power, agility, balance, etc. will inevitably suffer, which means your overall fitness will suffer.  Fitness and health aren't the same thing, but they're closely related.  It makes sense, then, that if your overall fitness suffers, your health will too.

This isn't even new information.

...for years the endurance-athletics movement has prompted words of caution from none other than Kenneth Cooper, the Dallas physician widely credited with launching the aerobics movement nearly half a century ago. "If you are running more than 15 miles a week, you are doing it for some reason other than health," said Dr. Cooper...

So, what  do Drs. O'Keefe and Lavine suggest?

• Avoid a daily routine of exhaustive strenuous exercise training for periods greater than one hour continuously. An ideal target might be not more than seven hours weekly of cumulative strenuous endurance ET.
• Once or twice weekly, perform high-intensity interval exercise training to improve or maintain peak aerobic fitness. This is more effective in improving overall fitness and peak aerobic capacity than is continuous aerobic exercise training, despite a much shorter total accumulated exercise time spent doing the interval workout.
• Incorporate cross training using stretching, for example, yoga, and strength training into the weekly exercise routine. This confers multi-faceted fitness and reduces the burden of cardiac work compared to a routine of daily long-distance endurance exercise training. 
• Avoid chronically competing in very long distance races, such as marathons, ultra-marathons, Ironman distance triathlons, 100-mile bicycle races, etc., especially after age 45 or 50.

At the same time, a recent study claims that strength training increases life and health.

CONCLUSION: Muscular strength is inversely and independently associated with death from all causes and cancer in men, even after adjusting for cardiorespiratory fitness and other potential confounders.

The good Drs. make more suggestions, and I can't say I completely agree with all of them, but let's summarize all these results.

Basically, what the results tell us is that a complete fitness program that trains all components of fitness, while using short, intense, interval workouts and lots of strength training, is best for fitness and long-term health.

Gosh, where have I heard that before?

Again, this shouldn't surprise anyone.  Humans aren't designed to specialize the way other animals are.  Think about it.  No human can swim like a dolphin, but we can swim, and dolphins can't run or climb.  No human can run as fast as a cheetah, but a cheetah overheats and dies if it attempts to run further than 800m (0.5 mile).  No human can climb a tree like a gorilla, but gorillas can't swim. 


American decathlete, Ashton Eaton


We're not designed to do any one thing extremely well.  We're designed to do many things tolerably well. 

In sports terms, we're designed to be decathletes, not distance runners or body builders.  Decathletes, by the nature of their sport, strive for complete fitness, because they compete in...

• 100m dash
• long jump
• shot put
• high jump
• 400m run
• 110m hurdles
• discus throw
• pole vault
• javelin throw
• 1500m run

Obviously, Olympic decathletes aren't just "tolerably" good at all those events.  They're world-class athletes in all those events.  They could probably qualify for the Olympic trials in each event, if they tried.  But Olympic decathletes, like all elite athletes, are genetic freaks, to which we ordinary folk should not compare ourselves.

So then, why do I say we're designed to be decathletes?  Olympic officials introduced the decathlon in 1904 to prove who was the fittest athlete in the world.  To that end, the ten events, together, test the athletes in all 10 components of fitness.

• Strength
• Power
• Speed
• Stamina
• Endurance
• Flexibility
• Agility
• Balance
• Coordination
• Accuracy

That is why the gold medal winning decathlete receives the title of "World's Greatest Athlete".  We should all train across all ten components of fitness, just as decathletes do, because that is what our bodies are designed to do.



Chad Mackay 



But that would take too much time, right?  If training for a pure endurance event requires hours of training per day, then training across all 10 components of fitness must require ten times as much time, right?

Wrong.

CrossFit's prescription of constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity accomplishes that goal in just minutes a day.  Most CrossFit workouts train multiple components of fitness.  Some train all 10. 

What if you're an endurance athlete and don't want to give up your sport?  Try CrossFit Endurance.  If you follow their prescription, you'll run fewer total miles (preventing injury), improve all 10 components of fitness and spend less time training.  You don't have to be weak and frail, like your average endurance athlete, to excel at endurance.  The 2012 CrossFit games began with a triathlon.  Australian Chad Mackay won that event, despite being the heaviest athlete in the field.

Who looks fitter and healthier to you; marathoner Ryan Hall, or all-around athletes Ashton Eaton and Chad Mackay?

My purpose here is not to diminish the accomplishments of marathoners, ultramarathoners and triathletes.  My purpose is to inform the ordinary person who wants to be fitter and healthier that following that kind of training regimen will achieve neither health nor fitness.

Of course, some people will continue their chronic cardio ways regardless of the risk.

"Even if I knew for sure that running fast had an element of risk, I don't know that I would back down," said Foiles, the 56-year-old runner who lives in a Kansas City suburb. "To finish at the front of my age group, yeah, that's an inspiration."

But let's not pretend that they do it for their health.