Running Diary 0033: Anaerobic, not a option

3 Jan 2014, 27C, sunny.
Clocked another 10km in 1:10. Much easier than yesterday, DOMS almost gone.
A few days ago I talked about consistency excercising/ training was the key to develop healthiness/ fitness. No need to say, the exercising frequency is everyday because of human body recovery cycle. How to train everyday, the intensity is the key. It involves energy consumption in muscle and blood circulation for fuel supply to sustain the workout. The higher the intensity, the faster depletion of the fuel in muscle and more demand for blood supply to replenish fuel and oxygen. If the intensity goes high, like sprint, the oxygen depletes quickly (breathing hard) and the fuel(sugar) could not been burnt completely, it forms lactate acid, made muscle sore. This is typical anaerobic exercise. During the exercise the heart rate reach maximum heart rate (220-age). Usually the sprinter just do it in minutes (<400m). As for mid/ long distance runner, they do relaxed sprint, or repetes in similar heart rate zone (93%~max heart rate). They might run longer time but limited to 8min as recommended by Dr Jack Daniels. Because not only lactate acid accumulation makes the athlete feel very bad. The oxygen deficiency is harmful to body, especially heart. The longer the heart work under anaerobic (lack of oxygen) condition, the heart muscle cell is more prone to damage, and dead at last. Because human muscle could not be regenerated (only could grow bigger, longer). The dead of heart muscle weakens heart function. Moreover, the dead muscle will not disapear. It will continue to grow its mass, as a useless scar. It added more weight to heart and increases loading. If one exposed long under anaerobic condition, he might develop bigger but problematic heart and more easily to induce cardiac arrest(sudden heart beat stop). The most famous case is Micah True's (aka "'white horse" in Bore To Run) sudden death during a trail run. His autopsy revealed his abnormal big heart and the cause of death was cardiac arrest. Every year there was lots of case of cardiac arrest in running and triathlon race (>0.1%), most in shorter distance (higher intensity). And many professional athletes like Arther Lydiad(though later change toand advocated easy running), Alberto Salazar etc all had heart problem. Because in their career they exposed quite long time under anaerobic training (interval, repetes) to develop peak performance. So for ordinary runner to improve health and fitness, I don't think the need to take the risk. There must be an alternative way could improve fitness at no risk of healthiness. I'll continue tomorrow.