Fit does not mean healthy

From the constitution of the World Health Organisation.

”Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

A way I've heard this summed up by Stan Efferding was if you want to be healthy, don't compete. If you're competing at a high level, you're almost surely doing something to improve your fitness that is bad for your health.

An aside, seems very on brand for Stan that he found a good succinct phrase that gets the point...but then uses it as a title for a video of him talking about it for 14 minutes.

Yes, it’s common sense, but for some reason indeed provocative around here to say that the health benefits of cardio top off at under 3 hours/week. Much more is understandable for those for whom it’s a livelihood, but silly for the huge number of distance hobbysloggers out there.

A pat LR response is “I’m healthier than folks who sit on their ass and get fat or heart disease or knee problems” or something like that, as if those are the two available alternatives.

Do you have a link to that please?

So true…it’s like there is no middle ground or land of compromise in the minds of some people.

A couple of years ago I was running 50-60 miles per week with hopes of going sub 18 and eventually sub 36. It never happened but I kept at it. I would do a 16 or 17 mile long run on the weekend even though I was tired. Eventually my body broke down with a groin strain and hamstring tendinopathy.

Fast forward a few years and I did go sub 18 on much less mileage. I have three days off every week. Every now and again I overcook the workouts and feel tired all over again.

The real question is where you break even. Is it the number of hours per week? Or is it the intensity? Both? If I only run 3 days a week fairly hard and one of them is a race (20mpw, all hard)… is that safer than running every day, mostly easy (70 mpw, 10 miles hard)?

i don't know any runners with heart problems but i know a few who got cancer and I wonder if it's linked to the constant suppression of the immune system.

"Health is a stage you pass through on the way to fitness." George Sheehan."

The bodybuilders dying in their early 30s are part of the "fitness" industry.

Highly likely. This is something Dr Kenneth Cooper was theorising years ago.

I don’t deny it. But just because bodybuilders are dying earlier, doesn’t justify the negative health effects of too much cardio.

That’s just deflection…

You can do both…and keep the level moderate and stay healthy.

I was only pointing out ironic use of the word fitness. My personal ideal for fitness is biased to the lifting and sprinting end of the spectrum. There, fitness provides work capacity and set to set recovery so you don't spend all day in the gym. Jogging a 5k should be comfortable and not a big deal. If you get stuck in a foreign airport after missing a flight, fitness helps you navigate hurrying through the airport with suitcases or staying awake for many hours. I'm not going to attempt an ultra or even a marathon.

At 72 fitness development is still a mystery to me. My run workouts have morphed from 50 mile weeks in HS to 80 mile weeks in college, but now only at 15 mile weeks of mostly interval work. My resting heart rate is still at 45 bpm and my weight is the same as in high school. The main difference now is reduced power and endurance and trying to increase those with weights or hills seems to be have a mildly negative effect on my overall health so I avoid those. Kinda strange.

Apologies. I misunderstood the direction of your previous post.

Depends on your abilities and goals. I ran 70-75 mpw for a while during the lockdown but most of it was easy pace and I didn't race very well. I was also very tired. On half that mileage I'm steadily improving so my goal is to squeeze as much as I can out of lower mileage. I'm interested in figuring out what works rather than just running as much as possible.

I’ll make it easy for you - Workouts! Mileage is just what you do in between workouts to stay loose and keep from packing on the pounds.

I like that.

Okay…just to play devil’s advocate here (because I agree with your premise even though I’m personally not going to do it… because I don’t compete and have no desire to do so)

…but if workouts are the key, and mileage is just all about keeping loose and expending calories…outside of the principle of specificity ( ie…if you want to get better at running, then run. But isn’t that what the workouts are for?) then what is stopping people from doing that via, say, just walking, or another cardio activity with potentially less injury risk? Swimming or cycling, or in the Valby case, elliptical.

In fact the principle of specificity can be used to support this question…because the aim of a racer is to run FAST…hence the workouts that you mentioned. But plodding through slower mileage is anything but fast, and often there are subtle differences in form as the speed slows. There is more chance that this form is ingrained, rather than that of the faster running as many runners log far more slower miles than they do faster ones. So for the issue of specificity it might be better for most runners to do a completely different activity for their in between workout stuff than the same activity but performed with subtle differences, that might confuse the CNS.