On Wed, 15 Nov 2017 14:20:32 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 11/14/2017 11:08 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 4:41:22 PM UTC-8, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-11-14 16:15, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 12:37:35 PM UTC-8, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-11-13 19:02, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/13/2017 7:03 PM, Joerg wrote:

[...]

They just don't want to ride.

This is true. Again, we're an unusual group. If you gave every
American a perfectly safe, absolutely level, completely separated
bike path directly from their house to their favorite grocery
store one mile away, I doubt more than 3% would ride bikes to
shop.


They would if you gave them an E-bike with a throttle-only mode.
And if it had an A/C button.

I'm dealing with an infestation of eBikes. Some woman dropped me like
a rock last night on the latest Trek super-commuter eBike while
wearing the most expensive, fully reflective Showers Pass rain
jacket.


Spandex would have been nicer if she was pretty :-)

But yeah, same here on Sunday heading up a rail trail with a buddy. We
aren't slowpokes but then we heard a whirring from behind ... zzzooom
... a guy in his 70's shot past us on an E-bike. He didn't wear fancy
clothes though.


https://www.showerspass.com/collecti...nt=27454486405
In combination with her super-bright lights, she was a human flare --
and an expensive one. She could have gotten the same dollar-to-lumen
ratio by burning $20 bills. I want all that stuff! It was he
https://tinyurl.com/y7fgaymx The "flat" route home. I was on the
better paved section to the right going up.


You guys need someone to fix those roads. A few more winters and the
underlayment is toast, meaning it can't be patched anymore.


I can't hang with the eBikes through the hills -- not without giving
myself a heart attack, and although death is part of my long-term
financial plan, I'm saving it for later.


Some guys are pushing it too far. I passed a rider last week on a hill,
probably about 65, somewhat obese but lots of leg muscles. That didn't
sit well with him so he passed me and really stepped on it, telling me
"It's on, mate!". I decided not to give chase because he was really fast
and I carried some load. Up the hill where it leveled off I closed up
quickly and he looked totally exhausted. That can't be good.

"It's on mate"(?) What a dope. I would have gone out and bought an old Silca frame pump just so I could stick it in his front wheel. "Hey, wait here; I'll be right back." I pass people all the time and couldn't imagine saying "It's on mate." I'd sign up for Death with Dignity if I did that sort of thing.

Totally OT, but I was riding up on Skyline a few months back and ran into a group of guys I raced with 30 years ago -- including a guy who was a junior prodigy back in the '70s and was in USCF development camps with Andy Hampsten and Greg LeMond. He's now CEO of a national company. We just rode along, nobody trying to prove anything, talking about the good old days. My regular cohort is like that too, except we do race each other at very predictable points in the ride. I'm slowing, so my place is no longer assured. I've learned to be more strategic, and my friends have learned to wait.

FWIW, a local mountain biker was found dead on some very tame single
track a few days ago. I didn't know him, but have friends who did. They
described him as middle aged (much younger than me), in tremendous
physical shape, built like a muscular swimmer, very low body fat, a
regular user of the YMCA etc.

Given the location, he probably wasn't pushing anywhere close to cardio
extremes. Indications are he was JRA and died instantly.

Apparently there is a correlation between long history as an endurance
athlete and atrial fibrillation and other electrical problems. Grant
Peterson has written about what he calls good exercise and bad exercise.
My views have certainly changed.

As you say, there seems to be some correlation between endurance
athletes and some heart problems, but at the same time some endurance
athletes seem to just go on for ever. "Old" John Kelly ran something
like 61 Boston Marathons, his last at the age of 84, In his 70's he
was still running 50 miles a week and some 15 races a year, while
"Young" John Kelly (the family name "Kelly" is not a rare one in South
Boston :-) ran 31 B.M.'s his last at 62 in 4:07.

On the other hand
https://www.peakendurancesport.com/e...urance-sports/
says:
"Endurance athletes who exercise for three hours or more have an
increased chance of dying from a cardiac arrest. About 1 in 50,000: if
you run marathons or participate in other forms of exercise which last
for three hours or more."

They also say the "For one thing, it's clear that regular exercise
protects you from heart attacks over broad time frames; for example,
over the course of a year regular exercisers will have fewer cardiac
failures than their sedentary counterparts.

And they go on to say that "If you are having second thoughts about
running marathons, you should know that the previously quoted rate of
one death per 50,000 marathon runners might be a bit high. For
example, there is evidence that in male runners aged 30-64 who have
not been diagnosed with heart disease, there is approximately one
death for each 800,000 person-hours of running or jogging"

And even more enlightening they add "Expressing the 800,000 statistic
in a different way, we can say that healthy, middle-aged males who run
for one hour each day can expect to die while running once every 2,192
years (800,000 hours divided by 365 hours of running per year = 2,192
years). By the same token, individuals who run two hours per day
should die while running about once every 1,096 years. When the risks
are seen in this light, many endurance athletes will consider them
acceptably low, especially as the general risk of heart disease is
reduced by strenuous training."

I think that some exercise is far better then no exercise and I think
I'll carry on as best I can :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.