Sounds like overtraining. If you overtrain, you are not exercising optimally and stop developing. You must increase the training volume gradually and take days off if the signs of overstraining appear.
Increasing training often requires increased rest. You can't keep busy as usual and train hard. Pro-athletes sit and rest on a couch a lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining#Signs_and_symptom...
>Elevated resting heart rate, a persistently high heart rate after adequate rest such as in the morning after sleep, can be an indicator of overtraining
Your training plan should include days off irrespective. And also easy "rest" weeks. When training you essentially do damage (wear and tear in the muscles etc.), and when resting after the body repairs things better than they were before. If you never rest properly, the body is fighting a losing battle and you'll never improve as much as you are trying to, if at all. This is why marathon training plans and similar tend to be in 4-ish week cycles with an easy week every cycle and explicit rest days even in the hardest of weeks. Even ultra-marathon training where you might have back-to-back long runs will have rest days each week and whole rest weeks within the program.
Caveat: I'm not expert so consider my thoughts anecdotal. Though I'm fairly confident I'm not talking complete rubbish as I've run a few road marathons (best time so far is just shy of 4 hours, I'm not sure I'll try for any faster than that), plenty of road halfs, a number of trail runs of 13 miles or more, one trail "ultra" (30-ana-bit miles so only 4 above base marathon distance, but bugger me there were hills/steps/mud/other!), and a long weekend trail challenge (69 miles over four days), and I'm training for another trail marathon (~28.5 miles this one) next month and another trail challenge weekend (100+ miles over four days this time) later in the year.
I absolutely, do not recommend my training plan for others; it's taken me more than ten years to get where I am, but as an example of what can be done (at least with my body), you can see how I recently trained for the Bataan Memorial Death March[0] and also see a subset of my official ultra results at UltraSignup[1] as well as my self-reported marathon results at Marathon Maniacs[2].
FWIW, I think my sleep schedule and diet have contributed significantly to the gains I've made over the years, but I'm also well aware of survivor bias. Neither of my parents were athletic though and I absolutely hated running as a kid (although I really enjoyed ultimate frisbee in high school).
[0] https://github.com/ctm/Bataan-Memorial-Death-March [1] https://ultrasignup.com/results_participant.aspx?fname=Cliff... [2] https://www.marathonmaniacsdb.com/Maniacs/MyRaces?ManiacId=4...
Modern preiodization was scientifically discovered by Russians in the 60s and it seems to work in every sport when correctly applied. Do you have have mesocycles (2-5 weeks) or macrocycles (6-12 month) in your training plans?
But yes, I'm probably making mistakes. I've never trained seriously until very recently. I reached my current level of fitness more or less by accident with a few thousand miles of hiking.
Suddenly reduced HRV is another sign of overtrtraining. Good heart rate monitors (some Polar models with a strap) can do Orthostatic Test and give even more accurate information than heart rate.
https://www.polar.com/blog/heart-rate-variability-and-orthos...
I really can't recommend "Training For the New Alpinism" enough. It really disabused me of that notion, and after a year or two of conscientious work I can hike the same trails with a smile & easy breathing, faster than I once could dripping sweat & suffering.
A sport heart rate monitor is also extremely valuable.
??? I run ultras and marathons, am 55 years old, have trained 2500 - 3000 miles/year for years. I don't necessarily consider all this as building my health; I assume it helps in some ways and hurts in others.
But I'm fairly plugged in and I've never heard of these "notable" cases of ultra runners dying with heart damage. Do you have links or specific references to any? Sounds to me like typical baseless conjecture (of which there is plenty) that gets thrown around and then accepted as fact by someone down the line.
I did eventually come across some stuff about a "dangerous lung disease" marathon runners are at risk of.[2][3] The news article seems a little scare-mongery (no surprise), but it appears to be backed by science, from the little I read into it.
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4415847/
2: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/343996/Running-marathons-c...
For me, I see that I and all my running friends seem healthier and more vibrant than an average person of the same age. My heart is stronger, running improves bone density, (at least for me) improves strength and reduces pain in joints, improves my balance, helps keep me slim, etc. It gets me out every day, often into beautiful mountains with friends. For as long as I keep running I expect to reap these benefits.
Would I stop or cut down if I were told, with certainty, that running would cause me to die, say, 2 years sooner than I would otherwise if I wasn't running? Not likely, it increases my quality of life in too many important ways. If that number were instead, say, 10 - 20 years, then yeah sure, I might cut down. But there is no science remotely resembling that. I don't think there's anything out there that establishes to any degree of confidence that lots of running reduces life expectancy at all.
Regarding marathons: what would you expect to be leading cause of death in marathons? Surely not cancer. Running a marathon stresses your heart. If you have genetic cardiac issues (which many do) it's more likely that they will appear in a marathon than when you're walking down the street. It's a huge leap to suggest that training for a marathon increases overall risk of heart failure. It could just as easily be that the marathoner has actually extended his/her life by running, that they would have died earlier if they hadn't kept their diseased heart as healthy as it could be by doing lots of running. As far as I'm aware, there's no science out there that establishes that marathoning causes people to die earlier than they otherwise would, and lots of evidence to the contrary.
I'm curious, what is your living elevation? When you climb 5000+ feet in a day are you traveling to a higher elevation? And if so, after the movement are you staying at that higher elevation?
I am not a doctor. But I ascend a minimum of 20K feet per month via the steepest trails I can find. This usually includes a movement of up to 7500 feet of gain in a few hours. I've never seen my resting HR affected and do not recall having seeing that happen to anyone doing the same work unless they lived at lower elevation and were visiting.
If you're coming to an elevation much higher than your living elevation, doing a movement, and then staying at a higher elevation, then your elevated RHR is most likely due to the body's response to the reduced partial pressure of oxygen.
But if you're doing a move and returning to your "home" elevation and your RHR stays up...again I'm not a doctor in any way but I'd really encourage you to talk to one.
Out of curiosity, how do you know your resting HR isn't just always higher?
At 6800 feet (where I live) my resting HR is 55BPM +/- 3 and falling because I've begun to train hard coming off of a really bad injury + surgery. During recovery where I was unable to exercise it drifted up over the months to 62BPM. As I get back into my best condition it'll fall into the low 50s.
At sea level my resting HR will fall by 5-7 beats for a couple weeks and then drift back to stasis over 6ish weeks my body reduces its red blood cell count and all the other acclimatization stuff. I try to avoid this.
I watch it pretty closely because as nabla9's excellent commentary in this subthread highlights, a persistently elevated resting HR is a sign of overtraining, which being a type A obsessive nutjob I am pretty susceptible to. :)
I've also found that an elevated heart rate that can't be explained by overtraining, for me, is indication that I've got an incoming illness that I don't feel yet, usually a sinus infection.
Edit: expanded explanation
But yes, to answer your question, I train at sea level and climb between to 6000-10000 feet on weekends, and sometimes high camp.
If your RHR is still elevated after your return to sea level...huh.
I live at 6800 feet now but like you used to live at low elevation. I'd come out, hike up Pikes Peak (6700 feet start, 14100 foot finish) and then come back down to sleep at 6000ish feet. RHR would be up maybe 10-15BPM until I went home to sea level, then it went back down to normal literally on the drive home.
So the response you're seeing, I mean what do I know I'm not a researcher, doctor or expert but I will say that seems odd.
Check out this 40 minute podcast on altitude physiology. Super dense with really actionable information on the body's responses: https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/29
I wonder how much of this is pre-existing heart conditions that went undiagnosed versus running _causing_ heart damage.
> Days like that tend to elevate my resting heart rate for up to a week afterwords
This is surprising to me... I've run almost 5000 miles and 6 marathons so far and this has not been my experience. Maybe it's due to over training? Have you asked a doctor about it?
The sample size might be too small, but I'd love to see a comparison of heart-failure events among ultra runners to other very intense exercise.
Conditions like Marfan Syndrome are obvious candidates for these deaths: it's often undiagnosed, it significantly increases risk for sudden heart failures like aortic dissection (especially in younger people), and it produces a progressive risk with intense exercise (by weakening heart tissues which then stretch under stress). Which, oddly, is both pre-existing and exercise-induced; running wouldn't do the same thing without the condition, but a sufferer who didn't run as hard might never have a problem.
Directly attributing the problem to conditions like that is probably impossible; there are a bunch of them and there's no guarantee they'll be diagnosed or even caught at autopsy. But a cross-sport comparison might turn up interesting data - breath-restricting sports like swimming and scuba diving are higher risk than running.
Do you track your resting heart rate on the days after running a marathon? It's been pretty consistent to me. If I sustain near max exertion for multiple hours, it takes at least a few days to feel normal again, and resting heart rate seems to be a very good indicator of the overall stress of the exertion. Obviously my RHR is dropping over time. These are temporary variations.
I had a friend who was very healthy and fit but, like you, experienced elevated heart rate (and some loss of energy) for a few days after hard exercise days. Turns out, he had a partial blockage in a cardiac blood vessel. It was not blocked enough to be noticeable under normal workloads. But under hard work loads, part of his heart did not get enough oxygen and experienced damage. Eventually he experienced a heart attack, which is when it was caught and stented. Every other vessel was clear... it was just one of those flukes.
Who knows if you have the same issue, but I would suggest it's worth getting checked out.
I just love marathon running and I'd hate for it to be hurting me long term...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5992463/
"A structural change of the heart muscle by an ultra-marathon could be detected by the use of echocardiography. Echocardiography can detect a reduction of the left (Niemela et al., 1984; Krzeminski et al., 2016; Maufrais et al., 2016) as well as the right ventricular (Oxborough et al., 2011; Lord et al., 2015, 2016b; Maufrais et al., 2016; Rothwell et al., 2018) function after an ultra-marathon. The changes in cardiac troponin I during an ultra-marathon are inversely associated with left ventriculare ejection fraction determined with echokardiography (Christensen et al., 2017).
The length of the ultra-marathon is important whether a change in the left and/or right ventricular function occurs. After the 2-day “Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon,” both a systolic and diastolic dysfunction of the left ventricle could be detected. Humoral markers of myocardial damage were increased and the increase in cardiac troponin was considered to be associated with a minimal myocardial damage (Shave et al., 2002). After a 24-h ultra-marathon, two out of 20 runners showed a slight increase in cardiac troponins and echocardiography showed a decrease in left ventricular ejection fraction in one of the two runners (Passaglia et al., 2013). After an 89-km ultra-marathon, there was a reduced function of the left and right ventricles (Chan-Dewar et al., 2010). In a 4-h run, there was a decrease in the activity of the MIBG (131-J meta-iodo-benzylguanidine) in the myocardium, and the extent of activity decrease correlated with the distance covered during the run (Estorch et al., 1997). In a 160-km ultra-marathon, no correlation between the decrease in left ventricular function and the change in cardiac biomarkers could be demonstrated (Scott et al., 2009). During a 24-h ultra-marathon, the left ventricular function decreased during the last 6 h of the race where the function normalized within a few days after the race (Niemela et al., 1984). Another study showed that echocardiographic changes returned to normal within 1 day after the run (Dávila-Román et al., 1997). In some instances, an ultra-marathon leads to no echocardiographic changes. For runners in the “Western States Endurance Run,” echocardiographic findings were normal (George et al., 2011). Therefore, it is at the moment difficult to conclude that an ultra-marathon leads to substantial heart damage."
One could easily write a list of scary side effects for being sedentary too... but which is worse? I'm just guessing (hoping) that the benefits of marathon running outweigh the costs.
What I can surely say is that I have never been feeling better and healthier than since I started running long distances at 30.
Not an expert, but that seems alarming. Please check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSiS9qkJUU0
Although regular exercise is great, complementing with good diet is a must too, I believe.
There’s no such thing as overtraining, just under-recovering.
Unless you mean proper climbing but rather you hike/scramble, that's not really anything extraordinary. I am a rather active person but by no means any endurance or ultra runner. Doing 1500m+ altitude gain hike (which I sometimes do over weekends, most usual one is 1000 -> 2500m) is a weekend warrior level, next day I go and do something else (usually easier).
If you experience that elevated heart rate a whole week afterwards, that ain't normal IMHO, at least not for somebody who is on verge of starting marathons and planning for some lighter ultras soon. Get your heart/cardio/breathing checked by some experts.
My personal theory is - we are not born equal, and some people can literally grow with almost any challenge, others are easily destroyed by the same. I am rather the latter but it has some positive aspect - I need to train harder than most to get to their levels, which brings good amount of mental fortitude.
The craziest of my running friends, measuring by ultras run, has said that she doesn't run far these days, but that's her knees.
1) Scar tissue formation in heart after repeated episodes of prolonged ischemia (ultra marathon)
2) early joint wear necessitating joint replacements at earlier ages (marathon, lifting)
3) ligament and tendon damage requiring surgical correction (cross fit, power lifting)
4) high regeneration of tissue causes premature aging of tissues (increased cell replication and tendency for DNA damage)
I think society's glorification of extreme exercise does more harm than good.
Which society? What glorification? According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_body_mass..., society has clearly moved in the complete opposite direction, with approximately 30% of the world population considered obese. I am aware that BMI doesn't take into account muscle mass, but really, most people who are obese by BMI standards aren't there due to powerlifting. They are simply obese.
It is possible to work out too much, for sure. Most serious exercise programs have "easy weeks" specifically to give the body time to rebuild and recover. I've done many triathlons and sure, there is glorification of the IronMan distance tri; but it should be something that is glorified. It's an incredibly challenging event and worthy of praise.
If anything, I think society needs to encourage, explicitly and with great zeal:
1. Hard exercise (long runs, swimming, lifting, rugby, cycling, etc.) at a bare minimum of 3 times per week for 1 hour or more.
2. The basic physiological fact of "Calories In, Calories out". A person is fat because they consume more calories than they burn (barring certain medical conditions/medications that cause weight gain). That's it.
3. Quality fuel. Ensuring people eat foods that provide the essential amino acids, necessary vitamins and minerals, and an even macro distribution of carbs, fats, and proteins.
Lastly, I would gladly trade [2, 3, 4] in exchange for living a fulfilling and healthy life spent exercising and accomplishing goals like completing an IronMan Triathlon or breaking into the thousand pound club for lifting. The other option is wasting my life eating chips on my couch and getting fat.
The high-functioning, wealthy society of working age professionals. I think of the United States - and I assume most countries are the same, but perhaps to a lesser degree - as a cluster of societies that sometimes intermingle and share space with each other but are otherwise distinct. Obesity is a disease of the poor.
In certain circles there is a glorification of extreme forms of exercise. Partially as an indicator of status, to demonstrate that you have the both the personal agency and excess resources to pour into a training program to achieve impressive feats. But also as a sacrifice to the gods of success. All the respected leaders in business are doing ultra endurance sports, so it would stand to reason that there is something, some X-factor it's contributing to their ability to achieve.
It's worth asking whether there's any benefit to this kind of thing past a certain point. Are people their wasting time and causing long term damage to their bodies just to impress their friends?
Your last sentence, by the way, gave me a laugh. It could be the dictionary example for false dichotomy. Not sure whether this was intentional.
I think it's a bit presumptuous to categorize extreme exercise as "just to impress their friends". Was Alex Honnold free soloing El Cap just to impress his friends? I doubt it. The same can be said for almost all extreme challenges. Why climb Everest? Why run a marathon? Why go to the moon?
To crib JFK: Because it's hard. Because you can. Because it's there and it's maaaybe, just maybe, possible.
Regarding my last sentence, perhaps I could have phrased it better like this: I would rather destroy my body through hard work by trying to achieve difficult things like an IM triathlon than destroy my body out of apathy and sloth and gluttony. Either way, if all goes to plan, my body is gonna go to shit at a certain point anyway and I can't do anything about it. And then I die. So why not try to have some fun?
Sorry if it comes across as an attack on your lifestyle. It isn't meant to be. If you find extrinsic motivations morally suspect, then let me assure you I believe your motivations are entirely intrinsic and pristine.
But regardless, there are such things as trends. It isn't presumptuous to assume that people do things for the social benefits. That's just being realistic. If it builds their social network, increases their status, widens their career prospects, makes it easier to find a better mate... perhaps they should be doing that thing, whether it's running an ultramarathon or doing a 6-hour headstand in a park. What does it matter?
Except that if 6-hour headstands become the hot new thing that every young professional seems to aspire to, I'm going to ask about whether "society" should be glorifying something that's obviously going to lead to neck damage versus, say, a nice 6-hour foot race. That's all.
People will always go to extremes in everything, though. And naturally, some people will see that extreme and feel a strong desire to push further. I simply see nothing wrong with it, regarding exercise, is all. Have a good one!
Honnold probably does it for himself but I agree that a lot of people exercise mainly for other people. They want to look good or impress them. Not necessarily wrong but it can lead to unhealthy extremes.
I see that a lot. A lot of people do nothing and then they suddenly want to do marathons or they start Crossfit. At some point they get injured and revert to doing nothing.
You definitely get more attention and admiration if you run marathons or climb Mount Everest vs doing some mild exercise every day although the latter is probably much healthier.
I think this because to be even a mediocre marathoner, one needs to exercise with about the same frequency as the control person. But one also needs to work diligently on a large peripheral system like flexibility and mobility, recovery routines, stricter diet controls such as counting calories, macros, ensuring proper vitamin/mineral uptake, strength work with lifting, etc.
Sure, a mild exerciser can be relatively healthy, but the real difference is that the marathoner has challenging goals to accompany the systems for building health; whereas the mild exerciser only has the systems and easily accomplishable or even no goals besides "being healthy".
https://www.amazon.com/Haywire-Heart-exercise-protect-heart/...
There are notable case of ultra runners dying, and autopsy shows long term heart damage. Some combination of duration and intensity seems to be dangerous, but the risk factors are not well understood yet.