...says the Wall Street Journal's headline. Kevin Helliker blogs in the WSJ's Health Journal about finishing the Chicago Triathlon while keeping heart rate and perceived effort under firm control.
Tri-Coach Mark Allen adds "If you can't let up on the competitive part of it, if you have to go as fast at 50 as you did at 20, you will grind yourself into the ground and become stressed out, bitter and unhealthy."
"...athletes struggling against declining performance are prone to excess training, which can hurt the immune system and raise levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. A number of medical experts, including Kenneth Cooper, the physician long ago credited with founding the aerobics movement, now believe that extreme exercise can increase the body's vulnerability to disease like cancer.Maybe I'll join The Old Farts Running Club. Sounds like my kinda crowd."For aging athletes, it is loss of prowess that can lead either to abandoning exercise or to a health-endangering doubling up of it, "in pursuit of what can't be recaptured," as Mr. Allen puts it."
(Photo courtesy of The Old Farts Running Club.)
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