I want to be a runner ! (Read 349 times)

There was a story in the paper just this morning about a young, healthy kid who collapsed and died after football practice. That sort of thing happens a lot this time of year. I wouldn't take from it that playing football is inherently dangerous. Ok it is, but not for collapsing after practice and dying reasons.

 

That happened here several years ago. After investigations, it was found that the school bought all the athletes two Monsters, before every game / meet. The kid who died here, died due to thehigh levels of caffeine and "other" chemicals in his body, not from the sports event itself. It made me really notice what schools will do, just to win. And of course, what message does that teach our kids?

There have been recent studies that show endurance athletes (cross country skiers) are more prone to a type of irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia), with more expert athletes having more risk. BUT NOT for the type of arrhythmia that tends to make people drop dead. Regardless of this increased risk the athletes studied had half the mortality rate of the general population.

 

I generally like the idea of doing my training low-stress, relaxed, and fun. This doesn't mean I don't get to run fast. I like doing 5ks, but I generally train slow, with some random bursts of speed thrown in when I feel like it.

 

If you are worried about heart health, then I think you can probably run to your heart's (ha-ha) content at low percieved-effort (make it easy). Check out the low-HR training group. I want to run a marathon someday but I have no problem logging mostly easy semi-consistent miles and some 5ks for a few years while i gradually build up to it.

 

Right now I generally train <20 miles a week. Low mileage is what you should be doing as a newb for quite some time imho. From a health perspective 20 mpw will infer great health benefits. Probably as measurably much as someone running much more.

 

I think this is a no-brainer when weighing the very real risks of being sedentary and not running at all :-(  versus the highs and rewards of training and racing with some slightly elevated risk for things that have an infinitesimal chance of making me drop dead. And if I do drop dead running, that's not so bad.

You have the be careful of the context you use when you throw out terms like "irregular heart beat" and "arrhythmia".  In the instance of athletes having a slow heart beat (which is anything below 60 BMP from some sources and 50 BPM from other sources), otherwise called "bradycardia", it is considered "normal" for this condition to exist and is anything but unhealthy.  I've had bradycardia for most of my life, I mean geez, I had a doctor back in the early 1970s try and put me in the hospital because he checked my heart rate when I came in for a case of poison ivy and was alarmed when I was beating along at about 35 BPM.  Now at the ripe old age of 56 my BPM still hovers in the low to mid 40s, and depending upon which health care professional I'm seeing at the moment, they're either impressed or worried.

Long story short, if someone is a runner (or other endurance athlete), it is actually good and healthy to have this type of arrhythmia.