Is the endurance athlete's diet a risk?

As part of my triathlon training planning, I've been giving a bit of thought to my diet. I've been led to believe that it should include high proportions of carbohydrates, proteins and fats (from what I think I can recall - I haven't got the info in front of me!): many of these would be considered 'bad' in terms of a 'healthy' diet for people not pursuing endurance training. But does such a diet not cause problems, especially for circulation? Triathlon has only been around for thirty years or so, so I suppose there is limited info available about causes of death among endurance athletes - but I did read recently of a former record-breaking cyclist who, sadly, died of a heart attack. Am I mistaken to read any correlation between this sort of diet and heart problems? Exercise is supposed to be good for the heart, after all.

Many thanks for any thoughts!

never seen any warning or evidence of correlation tim.

i don't beleive the ideal diet includes a great deal of fat though.

there are many books covering triathlon training and nutrition.. not that i've read any!

The nutritional requirements of an individual are easily estimated based on their weight in Kilos, an athletic person need to get approximately 70% of their calories from carbohydrates to ensure they have the energy to train and to help recovery this is 6-10 grams / kilo of body weight. Protein requirement for an athlete lies between 1.2g and 1.7g / kilo, which equates to approximately 15% and fat would make up the remaining 15% roughly 0.5 to 0.6 grams / kilo the grams for fat are less than the protein as fat has more than twice the calories / gram than protein or carbohydrates.

* Protein = 4.1 calories / gram
* Carbohydrate = 4.1 calories / gram
* Fat = 9.3 calories / gram