How Far Is Too Far? Pushing our bodies to do more can be dangerous. Even fatal (Read 1623 times)

Articles like this make me chuckle.

Wasn't there an Onion headline recently...?  Something like:

"Non-Runner dies whilst not running!"

For every runner who dies running there are probably 999,999 non-runners who die while not running.

The choice is yours.

I can confirm that anyone running marathons or ultra marathons will die.

Of course, it wasn't the Onion, it was Runners' World.

Thanks Trent.

http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/sunrunexperts/archive/2009/02/13/live-long-and-prosper-21year-running-study-results.aspx

"1000 people took part in the 'annual survey style study' that began in 1984. Half of the participants in the study were members of a national running club and over the age of 50. While the other half that formed the control group were healthy Northern Californians.

Of the 1000 participants, now in their 70's and 80's, only 284 runners and 156 people from the control group completed the 21 year study.

The results of the study concluded that the runners remained youthful and fit in comparison to the members of the control group. The runners also smoked less and out lived the members of the control group by nearly 40%. The study showed that by year nineteen, only 15% of the runners had died compared to 34% of the control group. The study also showed that the aged runners had fewer physical disabilities and were more mobile and independant."

Good Stuff Jim...

 

I doubt if many of us have to worry about pushing too far or too hard.......unless we can get our mileage in the 150 to 200 range.............I suspect were all pretty save overall.....

Ah, John...  I'd have to disagree with this though.  When you think about it, it's not some elite or ultra peolpe who drop dead in public.  It is the middle (or toward the end) of the packer who try to run a marathon based on 15MPW training; or someone who might try to do the training program that might require a couple of HARD effort workouts a week with NO joggng or "junk miles" to support those hard effort.  I'd be curious to see what kind of preparation those who had "sudden death" during the marathon (or half marathon or whatever) did prior to.  I will bet they were not the hard core who ran 100MPW to prepare; but more of a "weekend worriar". 

It is not 100MPW that would kill ya (of course, if you try to do that from 15MPW to 100 in a few weeks, it might...); but blast off 3 mile race from the start when you hadn't been properly prepared that might cause some damage to your body.

Surely, the more you run per week, the more likely you are to die running.

And I'm pretty confident that you can avoid the danger of dying while running, simply by avoiding running.

Feel free to send me money to express your appreciation of my deep wisdom herein revealed.

How about consistantly existing on deficient sleep.

True. I died on my run today after a night shift and only 4 hours sleep.

Almost.

But it did not.

  it made you stronger.