Hi Reader
This week on the podcast I spoke to Katherine Caris-Harris, a performance nutritionist and triathlete who got in touch after I wrote a LinkedIn post about my decision to start taking statins.
What prompted the post was this. Several people I knew well - fit, active, long-term endurance athletes - have had heart attacks in recent years. One of them didn't make it. None of them had obvious warning signs. All of them looked, from the outside, like people in good health.
That spooked me. And it made me realise I'd been paying close attention to my training numbers for years while largely ignoring what was happening underneath them.
Katherine put it well. Triathletes obsess over output - FTP, pace, power, threshold. We test constantly. But the engine producing those numbers? Most of us have very little idea what's actually going on inside it. We're checking the dashboard while neglecting what's under the bonnet.
The interesting part is that this connects directly to everything we've been discussing over the last few weeks. Your body doesn't separate your training stress from everything else. A hard race block, a difficult period at work, broken sleep, nutrition habits that have quietly slipped since race season started - it all lands in the same biological bucket. Katherine made the point that burnout and overtraining syndrome are the same biological progression. Just caused by different things.
For athletes over 50 this matters more than most of us want to admit. The systems that absorbed our bad habits in our 30s aren't as forgiving now. And cardiovascular risk in particular is one of those areas where you often have no warning signs at all before something goes wrong.
Katherine's advice is straightforward. Get tested. Not just your training markers - the actual health markers that tell you what's happening under the hood. And then do something about what you find.
It's not a glamorous message. But it might be the most important one I've put in this email over the last month.
Train smart,
Wardy
P.S. If building the kind of consistency around the basics - nutrition, recovery, health monitoring - that actually keeps you in this sport long term is something you want proper support with, that's exactly what SWAT is for. Find out more Join the SWAT Inner Circle today
P.P.S. Katherine's full conversation this week covers statins, cholesterol, blood markers, and why the standard tests your GP offers may not be giving you the full picture. Worth your time if you're an athlete over 50 who's never looked seriously at what's happening under the bonnet.
If you want a great story to accompany you on your next run or ride listen here: Is your cholesterol test telling you the truth?
If you prefer a good read with your coffee you can read the full article here: I started taking statins and then a nutritionist asked me 6 questions I couldn't answer