1492

"The world is flat and if you head west you'll fall off the edge" Mr Columbus was told before he headed on his first transatlantic cruise in 1492. All that awaited him and his crew 20 miles west of the Azores was certain death. Luckily he managed to avoid the edge of the world despite the fact that the low cost carrier he was travelling with dropped him further from his intended destination than he bargained for - no change there then in 500 odd years.

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With 6 days left to my first 100k run (freudian slip there using the word "first") Abina is getting a bit agnsty, dropping hints over the last few weeks that my heart might not be up to the task, despite the fact that I am following a well trodden path. I tried to reassure her that my heart will be more than capable of dealing with the relatively low effort and that it will be my muscular skeletal system that would be under pressure. I don't think she was convinced. "What about the guy who died on Mount Everest, he thought he was up to the task and what good is he now to his wife and newborn child who he will never see". Did I mention that Abina predominantly operates on a emotional plane - balanced by my logical disposition - making for a perfect schizophenic match.

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Her next plan of attach was the fact that we have only so may heart beats in our lifetime and that i'll have used all mine up before my time - maybe I should take to my bed and wait for the inevitable, although i'll have a longer wait at my resting HR. In the interest of giving her the benefit of the doubt and to be quite honest she is probably (always) right I replied that for the 10 or so hours a week that my heart is working at 70 or 80 beat per minute (BPM) higher than normal the benefit is that it is working at least 10 BPM lower than normal for the rest of the week (158 hours). While this makes perfect sense to me it was like white noise to her as she replied with "well you're no use to me dead" or some such thing. I could have mentioned the life assurance and death benefit that she would get but thought it best not to mention it.

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Abina got me thinking about the theory that we have so many heartbeats in our lifetime - anywhere between 2 and 2.9 billion according to this site. Based on this theory I calculated that if I exercised for 10 hours a week at an average of 70 BPM higher than my normal HR and the benefit of a healthier heart was a lowering of my normal HR by 15 BPM I would save enough heart beats over 20 years to give me an extra 2.83 years (assuming a normal HR of 70 BPM). Alternatively my 10 hours a week would add about an hour to my life, which could be seen as a poor return, if you'd rather spend those 10 hours watching the telly or reading a book. The following table shows the "theoretical" extension to your life in years after 20 years of exercising for 10 hours a week for various combinations of normal HR improvement and average gap between normal and exercising HR. You can see that your life expectancy reduces in the unlikely event that the benefit is outweighed by the exertion. A load of old bull really but a good counter argument should you ever be challenged by the flat earth society.

Postscript: 20:49 hrs -

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I neglected to mention that 2 or 3 hours a week would be all the exercise you'd need to keep a healthy heart and therefore the optimum training level for the ultimate endurance event -life, as you'd be keeping unnecessary exertion to a minimum - don't tell the missus (I reckon i'd get another year with her).

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