Exercise takes a toll on the heart

New York

DOES spending years running marathons or cycling for long distances potentially strain someone's heart?

Two major new studies of athletes and their coronary arteries suggest that the answer may be a qualified yes. Both studies find that endurance athletes, especially men, who spend years training and competing show a surprisingly high incidence of plaques in their arteries, which can be a hallmark of cardiovascular disease.

But the studies also find that these plaques seem to differ somewhat in their makeup from the kinds of plaques found in the hearts of less active people, and so may not be a cause for much concern.

Probably at least since Pheidippides ran the purported first marathon thousands of years ago in Greece and then promptly collapsed and died, people…