Yet another article about cycling and aging

[Owlie]

I feel bit insulted that the metric used to determine active women as only 37 miles in five and half hour while for men it was 62 miles in six and half hours. I assume this is on a flat course.

Well aside from the "put down", maybe it explains why I have so much better sense of balance and coordination than my partner. I'm not sure if it makes a difference between bicycle or trikes. I'm sure it does. But it is still far better than planting ones rear end into a couch and watch TV.

Another good reason to go hit the road. Yipee!!

I think they picked it so that they had two groups to study. If you look at organized rides in many places, the longer distances tend to skew overwhelmingly male, hence the lower minimum activity level. I don't know why they couldn't use the same, lower bar for men, but what do I know? Of course, this study seems to have a few problems with selection bias and cause and effect...

Anyway, I think we all know that cycling (and exercise in general, but we're biased ) is good for you.

[OakLeaf]

Yeah, that bugged me a lot too. I guess that's what we'll be seeing as the response to the long history of medical research excluding women (and people of color, and children) entirely.

Assuming that demographically men tend to ride longer than women (if anything, I'd say the opposite, that the demographic of CYCLISTS is overwhelmingly male and white, but as the distance increases, so does the gender balance, to where the century riders are nearly 50-50 IME) - even assuming that, the solution still isn't to pick two groups that are not comparable to each other, but instead to pick a group of men who ride the SAME distance at whatever quicker pace concords with men's generally higher VO2Max and lean body mass.

[Crankin]

I know there may be issues with the research design, but I really do agree, based both on myself, my DH, and lots of riders I know.
Many of the comments centered on saying something like, "well, the cyclists ride that much because they are already healthy."
But, my experience is that is not always true. I have a few chronic things that don't keep me from riding and my DH has 2 stents. Some the people in my riding group have had serious medical issues. They are older than me and still riding. A few who no longer ride are hiking like crazy and doing other sports.
I seriously wish my regular friends would get up off of their butts, but instead they complain about their weight, finding a magic diet, and how much they hate to sweat!

[Sky King]

I look great on paper too ~ It's that mirror thing that gets me every time. And now when I take a photo with my camera and it opens with the camera facing me I always am startled "who is that gray haired lady" hee hee.

[Owlie]

I know there may be issues with the research design, but I really do agree, based both on myself, my DH, and lots of riders I know.
Many of the comments centered on saying something like, "well, the cyclists ride that much because they are already healthy."
But, my experience is that is not always true. I have a few chronic things that don't keep me from riding and my DH has 2 stents. Some the people in my riding group have had serious medical issues. They are older than me and still riding. A few who no longer ride are hiking like crazy and doing other sports.
I seriously wish my regular friends would get up off of their butts, but instead they complain about their weight, finding a magic diet, and how much they hate to sweat!

No, I totally agree that it does work both ways! (Riding helps keep my eczema in check...definitely a quality of life issue there!) The trouble is that this study really can't address "I ride so I'm healthy" vs "I'm healthy so I ride" with the design it uses.

The other thing...from what you've mentioned, you have a history of being active, and what this study doesn't appear to address is how that influences aging and the ability to overcome health-related obstacles. Again, study design. I'll have to actually read it fully when I get to school. I don't have access at home.

[Owlie]

Yeah, that bugged me a lot too. I guess that's what we'll be seeing as the response to the long history of medical research excluding women (and people of color, and children) entirely.

Assuming that demographically men tend to ride longer than women (if anything, I'd say the opposite, that the demographic of CYCLISTS is overwhelmingly male and white, but as the distance increases, so does the gender balance, to where the century riders are nearly 50-50 IME) - even assuming that, the solution still isn't to pick two groups that are not comparable to each other, but instead to pick a group of men who ride the SAME distance at whatever quicker pace concords with men's generally higher VO2Max and lean body mass.

At the century mark, probably (not that I've ever done a supported one). But that's going to be a pretty small group of people. The middle distances, from what I've seen, tend to be heavily male.

[Crankin]

I haven't done a lot of organized rides, but here in New England, it's seems to be fairly evenly matched in terms of gender. This hasn't always been the case, though. Whenever my son comes to visit, he always comments, "I can't believe how many woman are riding around here," as compared to when he was racing in the early 2000s. Generally, I would think that even 60 miles is more than most rereational riders do. We're just skewed in our thinking!
Owlie, yes I was active before I started riding, but in a way that was very different. It was at the gym, didn't really involve other people, not something I shared with my family, and was always done so as not to interfere with the parts of my life. Now, it is my life. That is fairly new, maybe in the last 10 years, out of my 15 years of riding. And, when I started riding, I was not really active. I was 15-20 lbs. overweight, was rarely going to the gym, and I hated the way I felt and looked. My friends all told me it was "the natural course of things." One day I got so angry at myself and jealous of my DH, who had started riding (he was always the inactive one in our marriage), that I went out on a 90+ degree day, with no water and did a 5 mile walk that included a long 3 part hill (the name is Hill Rd., so you get my drift). I knew I made a mistake not taking water, but I was pissed! But, I was also scared. Generally, I was brought up to not try new things, but when I got home, DH said, "If you can do that, you can ride," so I swallowed my fear.

[Owlie]

I'm trying to make clear that I don't think the study necessarily reaches poor conclusions (I've had a chance to read it now), but it's not exactly new and exciting--"exercise is good for you." It does, however, raise a lot of questions. (Hey, taking scientific studies apart is part of my job description.)

Also, this is from the paper regarding their break points:

In the absence of clear evidence defining the amount of exercise necessary to combat the negative effects of inactivity, we pragmatically set standards for acceptance into the study. For men this was the ability to cycle 100 km in 6.5 h while for women the standard was set at the ability to regularly cycle 60 km in 5.5 h. The difference between sexes was necessary because of the paucity of women cyclists aged >55 years who regularly cycle 100 km.

[OakLeaf]

That still doesn't make sense to me. If they couldn't find enough women cyclists who ride 100k, and if 60k is enough for there to be a correlation with the health metrics they were looking at, why not look at men cyclists who ride 60k?

And yeah, me too, I'm not trying to argue that sweating and getting your heart rate up aren't good for you. But the way most scientific studies pretend women don't even exist, this is supposed to be so much better to compare women who ride shorter AND slower, and it just ticks me off.

[Owlie]

That still doesn't make sense to me. If they couldn't find enough women cyclists who ride 100k, and if 60k is enough for there to be a correlation with the health metrics they were looking at, why not look at men cyclists who ride 60k?

And yeah, me too, I'm not trying to argue that sweating and getting your heart rate up aren't good for you. But the way most scientific studies pretend women don't even exist, this is supposed to be so much better to compare women who ride shorter AND slower, and it just ticks me off.

Hell, many animal studies are done with male rats, unless for some reason you specifically need females. Supposedly males are less bitey than females, so it makes handling easier, or something.

It really sounds like they just asked the local bike club if they'd like to make $20 by participating in the study and took what they got, and those points happened to be where neat clusters formed.