Health Risks of Bike Racing
Bike racing is often unrealistically presented as without serious health risks stemming simply from the practice of the sport at its current levels alone. (I don’t mean crashes.) Any health risks are usually written off to all extents with various remedies to follow.
Some possibly interesting things to note:
**Today’s level of amateur racing and weekend warrioring is MOSTLY at greater intensity than pro racing of yesteryear. In fact, many/most amateurs/hobbiests insist on training with the gear/methods of the pros, not to say Olympians or even the highest level of tech known to man (ergs, supplements, hrm) to a significant extent. We underappreciate the energy we put into all this!
**The ability to generate super-intensity and enormous output, is highly valued. There is not much that is moderate about it…an understatement. Obviously we would say that this has good points to it, but also built-in risk…maybe even endemic and encouraged? Not at all related to *accidents*, but intentionally and knowingly pursued.
**Hobbiests gleefully use the same training techniques today which were invented by Soviet coaches who didn’t care the slightest about using up athletes and tossing them out like waste paper. Asking for health trouble?
**Despite all kinds of stretching and all-round cross-training and muscle building, etc., bike racing is done from a specific posture and limited range of motion. IMBALANCE of quad use and IT-Band tendon exertion would seem to spell very likely eventual trouble due to overdevelopment.
**I raced happily and without real injury on minimal training (compared to majority of teammates) for ten years ending a few years ago and still race off and on. Results of muscle imbalance are only now starting to show. Not a pretty picture….#1 Tight, painful IT-bands which cause thighs to easily go numb depending on posture (standing, walking, laying). #2 Very easily injured hamstrings.
**When we’re young we don’t care. But our elders should stress and enforce moderation and balance since it’s one of the main lessons that sports are supposed to teach in the first place. (Sometimes hard to remember that sports don’t exist for themselves or justify themselves, but are only means to an end of being a well-developed person.)
