Good News! Running Won't Kill You!

File this under News of the Obvious: Researchers spend great sums of money to prove what was already self-evidently true. In this case they have found that running in general and marathoning in particular are not likely to kill you. Sort of makes sense, doesn’t it? Something that strengthens your heart and lungs while purging your body of cholesterol might actually be good for you? But long-distance running has received some bad press lately. As the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports:

Since September, at least half a dozen participants have died while running half marathons held in Virginia Beach, Va., San Jose and Detroit, where three men died in the same race.

Which is tragic, but not necessarily representative of a greater trend. The story continues:

Medical experts say long-distance race deaths are widely reported because they are dramatic. Victims tend to be young and athletic. Race training also requires weeks of long-distance preparation runs, which often leave people asking how weeks of training could end in a runner's death.

Still:

Despite the anecdotes, research indicates few people die during long-distance runs.

Dr. Jeffrey Brand, attending cardiologist at Loma Linda University, said there doesn't appear to be any risk of an immediate cardiac episode for runners. Brand, who is 38, said he started running while in medical school and has run several marathons in Los Angeles.

"The risk of dying is pretty low," he said, adding that the fact that three runners died during the Detroit race "is completely out of character."

In 2007, University of Toronto researchers found 26 runner deaths after studying 3.3 million runners in 750 marathons held during a 30-year period. They determined that the risk of death was 0.8 per 100,000 runners.…

Meanwhile, researchers at Duke University in Durham, N.C., have discovered that aerobic exercise, such as running, without a change in diet can improve people's health and affect levels of good and bad cholesterol and insulin resistance.

I must admit that I’m posting this story primarily for the benefit of my mother, who’s convinced that running is going to do me in. She even bought me a GPS watch with a heart monitor, hoping that I’d get sufficiently advance notice of the Big One. Hopefully this will make Mom feel better. It makes me feel better, anyway. Tragedies like those from the Detroit Marathon may be rare, but they still ought to give the runner pause. There’s a reason why race organizers make you put next-of-kin info on the back of your bib, and why I always add to mine, “In case of life-threatening injury, contact a Catholic priest.”

Running a marathon is, I guess, kind of like flying commercially. I know, statistically, that it’s very safe, but just the same, I like to get to confession beforehand.

H/T: Runners Write