In the last few weeks many have my friends have sent me a article about how a medical research has discovered that by running farther, and longer can kill you. Of course my friends knew how I would respond, and well here we go:
It's complete horseshit. That's it.
If you take a look at the article, written by Dr. James O’Keefe, head of preventive cardiology at the Mid America Heart Institute at Saint Luke’s Health System, says that extensive working of the heart causes damage, and scar tissue and releases dangerous chemical that is released during heart attacks. Dr O'Keefe believes that the heart was not made to work at that volume for long periods at a time, and that can causes serious damage.http://todayhealth.today.com/_news/2012/12/03/15625246-running-farther-faster-and-longer-can-kill-you?lite
Now, I could go further in the article and find it's major, major faults in it's scientific reasoning, I'm not going to do that, but I'm going to post the article that does scientifically rebuke's Dr. O'Keefe's article: http://www.runnersworld.com/health/too-much-running-myth-rises-again
What bothers me is not only the laziness of the article itself, but really bothers me about Dr' O'Keefe's article is it's bland mediocrity when it comes to running. It's clear he doesn't like running very much. That you can should run only 1 hour of running a day, any more is too much, doesn't really makes sense. Even Dr. O'Keefe cannot say in his article what is deemed to be strenuous.
So what's the point of the article? To scare you to death, and to give some of those non running friends some ammo at Christmas dinner about how running kills you, this is of course, after you pass them the potatoes. For a lot of people who we know, runners have a death wish. And for those of us who know people who make fun of us, or joke, about our running, they have to feel better about making the wrong decisions.
But why pick on running, it has an extremely low death rate. The overall mortality rate from running the London Marathon in the 20 years is one in 67,414, or roughly one death for every two million miles run. That's unbelievably low when you consider that nearly 600,000 people died of heart attacks in the US in 2011. Thanks, but I'll take the run, over Lipitor any day over the week, thank you very much.
I run to be free to compete, to test myself, to push myself, and to leave it out on the road. I don't give a rat's ass about my heart rate and is what I'm doing is enough, that answer belongs to me alone, not to some doctor telling me to back off.
And another thing. No one ever said that running was the key to the fountain of youth. We're all going to die. Runners die of the same issues as the rest of the population, heart attacks, cancer, and strokes. Ultramarathon legend, Micah True died of a heart attack this year during a training run. Marathon great Alberto Salazar almost died of a massive heart attack, and was without a pulse for 14 minutes. He survived, and he still runs.
So why do I do it?
Because it's about the quality of life, not about quantity, It's about getting to an older age and looking back, and having no regrets. It's about climbing the stairs to the "L", and not being out of breath. It's about a fear of being pumped full of meds sitting in an retirement home. It about choice. I choose this life and my fate. I choose to run whenever and whatever.
That's for me to decide.
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