When exercising goes wrong
With a growing number of Kiwis signing up for endurance events, Sarah Catherall hears about the dangers of overdoing it.
Nine months ago, ultra runner Malcolm Law reached breaking point, his body shutting down after years of relentless running and back-to-back marathons.
The 55-year-old spent years running daily, often for hours at a time, striding out up to 150 kilometres a week. Last February, Wanaka-based Law donned his trail shoes for his biggest physical challenge yet – running 50 mountain marathons in 50 days, conquering 42km of peaks a day without a break.
Traversing 1650km, he raised $521,000 for the Mental Health Foundation for his conquest and made a documentary, High Five-o. But the hours and kilometres of pounding and pushing his body over the years finally took its toll.
A year after stepping over the finish line, the father of one was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, brought on from overdoing it. ‘‘I really thought I was unbreakable,’’ he recalls. ‘‘But I was a basket case.
‘‘I felt very old, very tired, and I had dizzy spells. I had a lot of mysterious aches and pains, headaches, and many and varied symptoms.’’
To recover, his GP prescribed gentle exercise. And after years of jogging or running most days, the man who questioned his own sanity before the event was ordered to stop. ‘‘It was almost a relief. I had to reboot myself,’’ he says.
The wiry runner has started running again. Training for another charity endurance run – this time around the circumference of Wales next year – he is cautious. For now, he won’t stress his body, runs at a conversational pace, and only covers about 50-60km a week.
Walking his lean limbs up hills rather than striding out as he used to do, he says: ‘‘I’m not running at a training pace, even though as a runner you never lose the urge to speed.’’
His case is a lesson, he says, to those hooked on endurance events, who also think they are unbreakable. ‘‘We tend to get gungho. You hear ultra-runners talking about how they ‘just ran a marathon today’. But the lesson I learned is that you really need to allow your body time to recover.
‘‘Everyone has their breaking point. Don’t be a hero. Health is more important than ego.’’
Exercise scientists and physiotherapists say we are fundamentally designed to push ourselves, although Law learned his lesson hard – the body needs time to recover from extreme exercise. At the same time as we are getting lazier and more inactive as a population, a record number of people are signing up for endurance events.
In February, the Tarawera Ultramarathon sold out in record time, with 1008 ultramarathoners from here and around the globe paying to run the 100km trail from Rotorua to Kawerau.
This Saturday, 600 runners will take on the challenging, sell-out Goat event – a 20km alpine run from the Whakapapa to Turoa ski fields on the Round the Mountain track, which boasts more than 1000 metres of vertical ascent.
Glenn Muirhead, a Wellington physiotherapist who specialises in rehabilitating athletes at Capital Sports Medicine, says the body has to undergo stress to get results.
A former physiotherapist for the Hurricanes and All Blacks, he says we all tolerate exercise differently. Older athletes often can’t train as hard as younger ones. Some ultra-runners can comfortably run 100km-plus a week without any injuries, while others will suffer.
But Muirhead says it’s not healthy to run consecutive marathons day after day as Law did because the body needs time to build up collagen, which helps in recovery.
Also a competitive kayaker representing New Zealand, Muirhead says a common sign of over-exercising is tendonitis, when the tendons become injured and people keep exercising, and more extremely, stress fractures or joint problems.
When women lose their periods from exercising – a condition called amenorrheoa – they’re also overdoing it.
Associate Professor Jim Cotter, of Otago University’s Physical Education Department, says the human body is designed to be pushed hard. Studies have shown that triathletes, rowers and ultramarathoners are the only athletes who can exercise too much, and like Law, only after a sustained period of time.
‘‘People who do a lifetime of high level activity, big volume exercise, like triathletes and rowers, when their heart is under pressure and getting stressed so much and so often, they’re more at risk. You can get pathological changes in the heart – the heart can enlarge, and that’s not good.’’
Cotter runs in endurance events, and is often out for 120 hours at a time, although he does get a few hours sleep in between. While some might think he’s crazy, he says: ‘‘We don’t know if that’s less healthy than doing nothing for 120 hours.’’
One South African study found that half marathon participants were more likely to drop dead of a heart attack on or after the event than marathoners. ‘‘That’s often because they just get out and do a half marathon as a bucket list kind of thing without actually doing the training.’’
The trick, say experts, is finding a balance. Regular exercise promotes feel-good hormones, known as the runner’s high, while the blood flow to the brain can protect against dementia.