“What makes you so hellbent to ride so hard in your 60s?”

The question caught me off guard, so I shrugged, asked the guy about his wife and kids, and the subject never came up again. But on my next ride, I gave the question more thought.

Training to reach race-winning fitness, not only at my age but also because an accumulation of injuries has lessened the likelihood of that happening again, does seem pointless - if the only point to it is to increase the odds of winning races.

But it’s not, so it isn’t.

A more important point is one Mark Bittman makes in Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food from Sustainable to Suicidal (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) to criticize Western science for needing centuries to accept “everything is connected - the body, the natural and spiritual worlds, the wondrous and the inexplicable and the irrational.” Without hitting you with too big a dose of Dr. Phil, Bittman’s words help explain why I still take two rides each week to my redline.

Riding really hard leads to more than better racing results. It creates a positive spillover effect.

It boosts my mood, yet keeps me mellow; settles my mind, yet keeps it sharp; makes my food taste better, and allows me to eat more of it; and most certainly enhances my health (though a little thing called crashing can put that on hold for a while).

That’s my reasoning as well as your bit of Zen for the day. What comes next are some other health spillovers for you to consider.

Sleep too little, eat too much

The negatives are irrefutable. A lack of sleep compromises your physical and mental capabilities. However, you burn more calories awake than asleep, so shortchanging your sleep one night should create a slightly greater calorie burn and a bit of weight loss.

But it doesn’t.

In fact, shortchanging sleep for just one night can cause you to burn up to 20 percent fewer calories the next day. And the news gets worse.

A study first released at the American Heart Association’s 2012 yearly conference and covered by Michelle Castillo for CBS.com found when study subjects between the ages of 18 and 40 slept about 33 percent less, they ate an average of 549 calories more the next day. This study also confirmed prior research showing people who are awake for too long do indeed burn fewer calories because their basal metabolic rate slows.

In addition, a 2010 study conducted at the University of Chicago found that insufficient sleep undermines dieting. Compared to those getting enough sleep who lost weight, the subjects who didn’t get enough sleep while losing weight lost 55 percent less fat and 60 percent more muscle mass.

Muscle burns far more calories than fat. The loss of the former increases your odds of regaining the latter - plus more - a year or so later.

Sleep well, help your heart

If you go from getting an inadequate amount of sleep to a sufficient amount considered high in quality, you really reduce your odds of a heart attack.

Researchers led by Dr. Lu Qi, a professor at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, reviewed data already accrued over a 10-year period on the sleep routines of more than 400,000 adults between the ages of 37 and 73 living in the United Kingdom. They found those who reported a consistent high-quality of sleep - seven to eight snore-free hours a night that leads to waking early and rested, and feeling no daytime grogginess - were 42 percent less likely to develop heart failure during the length of the study than those with the worst sleep habits.

Help your heart, help your brain

The Mediterranean diet first gained prominence in the U.S. because of the low rate of heart disease of those native to the area. A study performed on rats published in the November 2017 issue of American Journal of Physiology: Heart and Circulatory Physiology provides insight as to why that occurs. The vegetables, fruits, olive oil, whole grains, and fish featured in the diet produced a metabolite in the gut of the rats that is known to help ward off hypertension and other heart problems.

Serendipitously, Americans who replace typical fast-food fare with this style of eating to improve heart health invariably drop body fat.

And the improved-health spillover doesn’t end there.

A comprehensive review in the September 2017 issue of the journal Nutrition Today found the Mediterranean diet reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, breast and bowel cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and the neurodegenerative diseases that lead to cognitive decline, such as Alzheimer’s.

More recently, a German study published in this May’s edition of Neurology found the composition of the Mediterranean diet seemed to reduce the plaque buildup and brain shrinkage found in those afflicted with Alzheimer’s - even in subjects already at a higher risk of developing it - as well as produce better scores in tests to assess cognitive decline.