The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner
I'd like too see more study on the long term damage of endurance sports on the heart. I'm hoping to begin running marathons at the end of this year and ultramarathons next year. But reaching that level of fitness requires multi-hour runs, sometimes as many as twice a week. When training for mountaineering, I sometimes climb 5000+ feet in a day. Days like that tend to elevate my resting heart rate for up to a week afterwords. This probably means I'm sustaining heart damage, at least temporarily.There are notable case of ultra runners dying, and autopsy shows long term heart damage. Some combination of duration and intensity seems to be dangerous, but the risk factors are not well understood yet.