Long Distance Running - bad for the heart
Just a quick heads up on a couple of articles I saw over the weekend indicating that long distance running is bad for the cardiovascular system, despite apparently positive impacts on the normal metrics for cariovascular health.
Kurt notes and points to one on Medpage
Open Water Chicago points to a separate report on the same research in abcNews
Researchers at the Minneapolis Heart Institute and Foundation found that these runners faced a greater risk of accumulating plaque in their coronary arteries – despite having less body fat, lower LDL cholesterol levels, and lower heart rates.
An abcnews comment amuses me:
No one is sure exactly what the plaque findings mean.
Well, we can guess.
March 22nd, 2010 at 9:26 pm
How heart functions in long distance running vs. short distance running?
Is there a difference between how the heart functions between ld running and sd running? I know the heart rate is higher when the workout is more intense, but does the your cardiovascular system have fast twitch muscles and slow twitch, or is that just the muscular system? Another way of saying this would be would you consider running a one mile race AND a half marathon race as both cardiovascular strength, or would you just consider the one mile to be cardio strength and the half marathon as cardio endurance?
March 23rd, 2010 at 2:28 am
The heart is a muscle which is different from any other in the body. It has to be because it never stops working. The heart reacts to the the body’s needs, thus if you are running that half marathon, your heart rate would slowly creep up and then hold steady. The same would pretty much happen in mile except that your heart rate would accelerate faster and then hold steady at a higher rate UNTIL you began a final kick (and this also happens in the 400 and 800 races). Then your heart will beat so fast that it can’t fill with blood to pump, in essence it becomes inefficient. That is what will seperate a better runner from the rest, that either through training or genetic makeup, they can sprint further without the heart becoming inefficient.
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