Has running, just plain running, ever been an extreme sport? After this last marathon season, running may not be looking very safe. The autopsies are coming in; don’t let them mislead you. Running may be looking extreme, but running is about as extreme as carrying in groceries from the car.
During the New York Trials on November 3, about 5 1/2 miles into the race, Ryan Shay collapsed. He ended up dying, pretty much in mid stride and was pronounced dead at a hospital. This is scary to think about. Here is a professional runner, and has he died from running?
Just a month early at the Chicago Marathon, a man in his thirties died during the race. The 35-year old runner went down at the 18-mile mark and was later pronounced dead. This forced the race director to shut down one of the largest marathons in the country. This is a complete over reaction. Race directors hire and have, on site, exercise physiologists to oversee hydration and aid.
Now, early this month on March 2nd, a young man in his late twenties died shortly after finishing the Little Rock Marathon. He was a veteran marathon runner and was pronounced dead near the finish line.
Is this something to keep you from running?
Runner Ryan Shay suffered a kind of instant cardiac death. One theory says that the cause may have been a pre-conduction of heartbeats. When Shay’s heart rate rose to a certain level, his heart went into arrest. So what caused that? Maybe the biggest explanation revolves about the condition of Shays enlarged heart (Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy), which again, was a preexisting condition, separate from his endurance training.
The man who died during the Chicago Marathon did not die from heat stoke or any temperature regulation failure. He had a heart condition known as mitral valve prolapse, which has to do with an incorrect volume of blood moving through the heart chambers and a corruption of its regulation. This was a preexisting condition and it could have affected him while he was…carrying groceries in from the car.
The reason the young man died during the Little Rock Marathon is yet to be determined. More tests are under way and the results have yet to be disclosed. What is known is that he had run several previous marathons and that he was a endurance athlete.
So what is there to take from this? It is kind of tough to hear about another person dying in a marathon every few months. The benefits of running are being overshadowed by the coverage of these instances. Select cases are emerging where preexisting conditions are coincidently running together with…running. Many more cases are evident of people dying of heart disease associated with diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol.
The truth is: training for and running a marathon is not going to kill you. If more people ran, less people would die.