Saturday, December 22, 2007

Marathon running is safer than you think

What is already known on this topic:
Running a marathon can lead to sudden death, as documented 2500 years ago
Such fatalities at sporting events attract broad attention in modern media

What this study adds:
The absolute risk is much lower than estimated by small studies provoked by signal events
The relative risk is smaller than the risk of a motor vehicle fatality on the same roads during the same time intervals
The final 1.6 km of the marathon represents less than 5% of the total distance yet accounts for almost 50% of the sudden cardiac deaths

3 comments:

Rainmaker said...

That's an interesting note about the last little bit accounting for the most incidents. I wouldn't have guessed that actually, I would have figured somewhere in the 20-22 arena.

Bigun said...

no more kicking it to the finish! I'll be happy if I"m not crawling...

Herself, the GeekGirl said...

Plus, I figure that my risks from sudden cardiac death are higher being a big giant sedentary fatass than they will be running a marathon.
Happy Solstice to you, too. I missed running yesterday because of a dry, hacking cought and the sub-freezing, high-altitutude weather here, but I've got the treadmill all set up now, so I'm ready.