Book review: The Haywire Heart

The Haywire Heart has one of the best subtitles I’ve ever seen: “How too much exercise can kill you, and what you can do to protect your heart.” Technically, the subtitle is perfect. It draws the reader in with its threat of death. It also promises to help the reader avoid death. But, I avoided this book for a while because of that perfect subtitle. I didn’t want to hear that what I’m passionate about is bad for me. Maybe smokers reacted the same way as scientific studies first started to emerge showing that hacking butts is bad for you. Exercise, like riding long and hard on your bike, is good for you, right? And it’s fun. What’s with this it “can kill you” stuff?

Well, the good news is exercise isn’t the new smoking. I can also tell you that you don’t need to worry about all the riding you’re doing. Maybe. Well, it depends. OK, it’s complicated.

You see, the heart is a pretty complicated device. In a way, it’s appropriate that Lennard Zinn covers the chapters on how the heart works. The organ has components and functions that are biological, mechanical and electrical, much like a rider on a bike. Zinn is an expert on the latter two subjects having been a high-level cyclist for years and having written the Zinn and the Art series of bike-maintenance books. Zinn is always in his element when he talks tech, even if that tech is the human heart.

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Zinn also has been diagnosed with multifocal atrial tachycardia, a form of arrhythmia in which the heart has an irregular beat. The diagnosis meant no more cyclocross races and no more chasing Strava KOMs over mountain passes. He has a very good chapter on life after being a hardman master cyclist.

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Now back to whether or not you should worry, especially if you’re a masters rider. If you have a history of health issues and now you’re addicted to training really hard, you should definitely take a good look at your training levels and monitor your heart closely. The book gets very technical about the heart, the problems it can have and the relationship of endurance sports to the ticker. If your knowledge of physiology is rudimentary, or even if it’s good, this isn’t a book you can skim. Zinn and fellow authors Chris Case and John Mandrola, a cardiac electrophysiologist and cyclist with atrial fibrillation, do a good job of looking all the angles. There’s a lot of nuance there that isn’t in that provocative subtitle.