Because they are your fellow human beings. Because you would want to be helped if you ever did something foolish. Because the vast majority of people disagree with you that they were acting foolishly, so you should treat your opinion on this matter with a little bit of skepticism. Because justice isn’t about abstractly righting previous wrongs, but about balancing interests and doing what’s best for everyone going forward.
Seriously, I’ve never understood how good people can embrae the meme that says: “he brought it on himself, so I don’t have sympathy for him.”
No, I run San Diego every year because it’s the most fun marathon. The people cheering for you as you run makes you feel like a professional athlete for a day.
I plan on moving to San Diego some day, but for now, I’m in San Francisco.
People who get in little sailboats alone to sail across the Ocean until they come to a storm and pray to God to live seem a bit stange. The challenge and victory are the better side of the risk, the consequences of the risk are what you deserve.
I have lots of cites. First, let’s define terms. “Marathon shape” means that a person has trained themselves to the point where they have the ability to run marathon distance safely, with a reasonable expectation of finishing with a smile on their face, and without injury, the ability to enjoy the post race party, and go to work the next day as functioning normal human being.
I’ve run a bunch and helped first timers train for marathons and I’m read on the subject.
Some people will put the number as low as 20 miles, but I think to be safe a runner needs to be running 30 miles a week fro the preceding four months to feel confident in their ability to complete a marathon. For marathon minus four months a week’s mileage might look like 10, 0, 5, 5, 5, 5,0. Or, they could do 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 0. It really doesn’t matter too much, the kick is to get in the miles. As we get closer to a marathon you’ll need to adjust it with longer runs, longer rests and a taper. Assuming between an 8 minute and a 9 minute pace, we’re looking at somewhere between 40-50 minutes of cardiovascular training 6 days a week.
As a marathoner and an ultramarathoner, I cross train. Sometimes I bike, sometimes I swim, sometimes I do intervals or what have you. On average I’m probably cross training twice a week at four months out, once a week at one month out, and not at all the month of the marathon or during my taper.
"Keep in mind that 30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a day is an excellent starting point, not an upper limit. Exercising longer, harder, or both can bring even greater health benefits.
If you are exercising mainly to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, 30 minutes or so a day will work if you’re careful about how much you eat.(14) But you may need to exercise more, or more vigorously. A report from the Institute of Medicine concluded that it takes 60 minutes a day of moderate-intensity activity to maintain a healthy weight.(15)"
My fitness regimen takes an hour a day. I mix it up, but I can run marathons or fifty milers. I am not just a runner, but generally fit. I can do over 100 pushups, bench over 250, climb a rope with my hands, etc etc.
I work at it an hour a day. An hour a day of good exercise is not extreme and falls well within the limits of maintaining reasonable levels of fitness that we all should aspire to for health benefits.
No. I was a 250 pound smoker with a bad knee when I started running. I am not a natural runner, never was. I had to work at it.
You seem to be trying to define “marathon shape” as extreme running. It’s not. To successfully complete a marathon leaves you well within the bounds of a reasonable physical fitness level.
For an elite runner in perfect health in his 20s, he is likely to hit the law of diminishing returns in mileage somewhere around 100 miles/week. To be in simple “marathon shape” you need only between a fifth and a third of that.
The health benefits of running include:
-Weight loss and weight maintenance.
-increased lung capacity
-strong heart
-lower blood pressure
-lower heart rate
-increased red and white cell count
-stronger immune system
-resistance to cancer
-resistance to depression
-stronger muscles
-reduced bone loss
-youthful appearance
-slowing of the agin process
-more active retirement
-lesser incidence of erectile dysfunction
-leser incidence of breast cancer
-higher reported feelings of happiness and well-being
-live longer
-I bet you I can kick your ass and if I can’t I can run away and you won’t catch me, so there!! http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/psychology/health_psychology/running.html
I’m not saying that’s why they should have stopped running…I’m saying that it might be an indication that it was the smart thing to do.
Considering also that it was being run on the city streets, I don’t blame the city for being concerned that people would drop dead and expose the city (meaning the taxpayers) to lawsuits.
No cites to offer so unless I free up enough time to dig I may need to defer to Scylla but …
dang I know a lot of runners who have blown out their knees by 40 to 50. And as someone who now prefers road cycling (and tri’s) to running I know of enough people who have been hit by cars or stupidly failed to beat a train to wonder if the net benefit of longer lifespan is offset by the risk of untimely death or disability associated with the activity. It can also become an obsession for some and interfere with family and other interests.
So yes, “marathon shape” isn’t really all that hard to achieve - heck if I could do it anyone can- but more is not always better and the repetitive pounding (few other than triathletes cross train to the degree that you do Scylla) has its toll.
Feel free to read the rest of the thread. I particularly recommend Post #112 with tasty link, Post #114, and Post #145.
I can focus on my portion of the investment/returns curve and you’re free to obsess over yours. Since I’m not running on your portion of the curve, and I frankly don’t know any athletes who are, I wish you good luck with it.
I just wanted to make sure my good friend Chief Pedant is listening.
CP, I’ve just realized that this is untrue, so I must retract it and apologize. I do know someone I suspect is on your part of the curve. We call him Running Guy. However, while his returns must be diminishing, he’s clearly not injuring his health.
Note this quote as an example: “Harvard School of Public Health’s Ralph Paffenbarger tracked Harvard alumni over a period of about 40 years. His data showed that exercisers get the most benefit from an energy expenditure equaling approximately 20 miles of running per week, which cuts stroke risk in half and lowers the risk of death from heart disease. But it’s unclear whether adding to that mileage also adds to the benefits; Paffenbarger didn’t test marathoners, and the tests that have been done, like Siegel’s, have not been promising.”
Aside from the particular negative physiologic consequences of marathon running that have been studied in the runners themselves, there is another more subtle problem that is less intuitive. Marathon running selects for a certain subtype, and it cannot be assumed that because marathoners are healthier by some standard, it is the marathon training and running that is making them healthier (above and beyond what a moderate exercise level would give them). Looking at marathoners and finding that as a cohort they exhibit X evidence of better health than the guy who can’t run across the living room does not prove the extra running made him healthier any more than “proving” that lots of basketball practice makes a kid tall because pro basketball players are taller than average.
Why would Paffenbarger have excluded marathoners from his study? Surely his data set of 40 years of running Harvardians must have included several marathoners. Also, note how hard the author has to work to come up with something negative to say about exceeding 20 miles per week. “It’s unclear” and “tests have not been promising.” Promising what? They didn’t show any advantage but didn’t show any harm? They didn’t show anything statistical at all? Given the tone of the article, if the tests had shown clear harm, the author would not have kept this delectable tidbit from us.
I understand your argument here, but the health statistics on the NOVA program site linked in post #112 are pretty conclusive about vastly improved health metrics directly due to marathon training. The comparison is before/after for the same subject, so the selection effect is irrelevant. Would these people have achieved the same level of health engaging in moderate exercise? I guess that depends on how you define moderate exercise. If moderate exercise = 20 miles per week, maybe you’re on to something.
Yes. I’m familiar with that study. My cardiologist friend explains it like this: The heart s a muscle. Cardiovascular exercise puts a strain on it just like lifting a weight puts a strain on, say, your bicep. The muscle is damaged by this strain and responds by growing stronger.
This is why my mighty runners heart beats thirty thousand beats less per day than your wimpy heart while pumping a greater volume of blood with each beat. It is stronger and healthier because it has responded to exercise.
Is it possible for me to overdue the strain I put on it and permanently damage it? Yes. This is why you train and improve slowly. If you were to attempt to run a marathon without proper training your are as foolish as a man who has never lifted weights who attempts to rack 300 pounds and bench it cold.
But, you show enzymes of damage as a natural result of the exercise that strengthens your muscle.
I’m sure that’s correct. You’ll recall that 20 miles a week is what many establish as the training base for running a marathon. Those people running 20 miles a week are in “marathon shape,” though just barely, IMO.
The marathon itself doesn’t help me, and I’m sure I could just run 20 miles a week or even less and enjoy all the health benefits of exercise. Marathon training though is the incentive that causes me to do it. It’s my test to measure my efforts.
It’s interesting that you put them aside since you haven’t described them. I met an elderly man who has run the Western States 100 mile race 25 years in a row.
Here is a list of people who completed the JFK 50 mile race last year (I’m in there.)
Note how many are in the their 40s 50s 60s and 70s.
Bullshit. I ran because I was unhealthy. My goal was to get healthy. Go hang out or join your local runner’s club and you will find that the #1 reason why people run is to be healthy. You can measure clear physiological differences before people begin running and after they have been running. Lung capacity increases. Arterial elasticity increases, heart capacity increases, Max VO2 increases. Bone density increases, blood pressure goes down, Cholesterol goes down. This is the same people, before and after. This is well-documented and repeated and you’ve already been provided several links stating just this.
That’s not what happened. They measure against control groups. To continue your analogy, take a homogenized group of kids and divide them randomly in two. Teach group A basketball and don’t do anything to group B. If group A grew a foot taller on average than group B than you would have an argument that basketball makes people taller.
We have this sort of link from repeated and repeatable experiments. This is why doctors tell fat people who are out of shape to eat better and exercise more. Direct evidence supports the link between running and the health benefits that go with it.
Pretty close, my dictionary lists synonymns as “mean, nasty, malevolent; bitchy.” It takes a certain kind of ass to say “I don’t care if they just raised $400,000 for prostate cancer! It inconvenienced me bacause I had grocery shopping to do and I didn’t plan ahead.”
Part of being a “community” means sometimes giving up a little convenience so that you can host a large scale community event and either raise funds for the greater good or celebrate the Community. Streets get closed once a year for all kinds of large scale events. Here durng Caribanna, Gay Pride, and then all the neighbourhood street parties like in Little Italy, Greek Town etc. major arteries and expressways even get closed down, sometimes for a couple of days.
Here, a major expressway gets closed down for the better part of the day so that any man woman and child who wishes to can ride heir bikes down four lanes of uninterrupted highway to raise money for charity. The “special” part of the “special event” is the closed highway. Your 4-year-old gets to own the road on his biig wheel for a morning. It’s pretty cool.
The whole point of the Toronto Waterfront Marathon is that visitors from all over the world can run around the streets of Toronto by the waterfront. The “special” part of the special event is in part, a huge reason why people participate. Sure they could host it at a track filed, but that’s not what makes it an enormous event for thousands of people.
These events benefits the community in all kinds of ways.
For someone to say “You guys raised $400,000 for cancer, but you’re assholes because you got in my way” is pretty bitchy in my book. Most people just listen to all the advance notice and plan ahead, so they don’t get stuck on the way to the grocery store.
This I acknowledged in an above post was a shortcoming of the entire event (runners included) who should have called the race or stopped running earlier on when it appeared there would be a problem.
There are several long races that take place in summer where temperatures are certainly higher than they were in Chicago, but if 300 people keel over, something is really wrong and your event is out of control (whether runners are succmbing to the heat or you have a marching band passing out in a parade.) They should have called the event and people who were not prepared for the heat shold have known when their bodies said “Stop, I mean it!”
Scylla, your comment about control groups has it right, and that’s what doesn’t happen in comparing marathoners to everyone else. It’s not a prospective study where the benefits of marathon-level training are compared in identical cohort groups. Marathoners self-select, and the large sub-population of wanna-bes for whom the training is the most harmful drop out from injury or other negative consequences. That’s why you can’t look at marathoners and ascribe their health to extreme exercise. To assess the overall consequences of this level of exercise you’d have to take two identical control groups at the start and when evaluating the “marathon-exerciser” groups, include the drop-outs as well.
I looked at your link for the 50-miler but I wasn’t able to figger out how many folks were in the older age group. May I assume that since extreme running is so good for you, the number of runners in the older age group parallels their demographic representation in the population at large? There are about the same number of 45-54 year olds as 20-29 year olds, for instance, just like the overall population? I’d hate to think there is lower representation in the older age group because it would make me wonder if running-related injuries was causing a dropping out of running as you get older. Hmmmm…
Moderate exercise is definitely beneficial. Running up to 3 miles/day if you have the right body habitus and genes is probably good for you. For most people the musculoskeletal wear and tear plus accidental injuries renders this choice of exercise less likely to confer a lifetime benefit, despite short-term benefits. Running marathons as an ongoing lifestyle self selects for those predisposed to be able to do it without major harm, but has not been shown–even in those individuals–to confer additional health benefit compared to a more moderate running program.
But I fear we’ve hijacked a Pit thread to a Great Debate one. Scylla and BB, I consider it unlikely I’ll divest you of your opinions.
Go run and enjoy. Double up, even. If some is good, more is better and a lot must be great. Report back in 30 years.
Sorry to disagree, but I think you are grossly underestimating the effort required to complete a marathon - certainly at anything under 5-6 hours. I also have run for years, and have run one marathon in just over 4 hours. Of the many runners/marathoners I train and socialize with on a near daily basis, I can’t imagine a single one of them suggesting a marathon is anything less than a pretty major accomplishment, requiring a pretty incredible level of dedication and effort.
The 20-30 MPW you suggest is what I understand to be the baseline before one can begin training for a marathon. If nothing else, you will need to start adding one long run per week if you don’t want to run into a world of pain somewhere around mile 20. A couple oftraining schedules.
Yes, there are a relative few who are genetically gifted such that they can run marathons or longer distances with less effort, or into their advanced years. But in my experience, they are by far the minority.
You highlght the quote:
As you cite, most studies recommend a minimum of 30 min of exercise, 3-4 times a week (90-120 min/week). And I’ll agree that these standards are intentionally set low to encourage the average lardass couch potato to get off his ass and get get SOME exercise. (Hell, they wouldn’t need to even suggest such minimums if more people would turn off their TV, eat healthier, and walk/bike places or engage in more active recreational activities. ) But I don’t see anything proving that doubling (or tripling or more) the minimum recommendation is necessarily twice (or 3X) as good for you.
Even your (IMO unrealistically low) 20-30 miles at 8-9 min pace equals 160-270 min/week - double the minimum. Is twice the minimum necessarily twice as good? Then how about three or four times? And even tho exercise admittedly has considerable health benefits, what risks of injury - if any - increase when the amount and level of exercise is increased?
A final point, realize that just about everyone who sings the praises of marathons (or extreme endurance contests) is a marathoner - IME, the most “hardcore” of runners. IMO, many if not most of these folk aproach running/exercise almost in an addictive manner. Sure, they might get various physical/psychological benefits from their training, but I seriously question whether their experiences can be exapanded to the population at large.
I like a hybrid approach, balancing more routine shorter runs (5-10K) against fewer longer runs (15-30+K).
It is good to divide speed training versus endurance training, and to run a good mix of flat/fast versus hilly/hellish courses.
Cross-training is good also - weights and rowing are good.
It is essential to make Mile 10 absolutely routine - if Mile 10 hurts, you’re fucked. The 15K events are good for making the transition beyond the 10K mentality. It’s essential top be reasonably comfortable with the 13-17 Mile distances. As for pushing 20+, it’s a good idea.
We’re not talking about A study. We’re talking about tons of them. Running is the oldest sport on the planet. They run races in The Iliad. People have been training and studying the effects for thousands of years so that they can run faster and win prizes.
There are studies of runners using all kinds of control groups. We have linked to several. They do not all self-select. More importantly, the rules of physiology do not change based on whether you are a runner or not. Genetically, or by build, I am not a runner. My legs are short, I’m close to two hundred pounds, and I carry most of my weight in my upper body. I am not gifted. I am trained. Anybody who is in reasonable health can do the same thing. For most of those it will be a lot easier than it is for me because of my physiological disadvantages.
If we are talking about marathoners yes. They often self-select. Few are forced to become runners. Note though that the Nova piece that has been cited to you is a case where they do not self-select. There are many other studies. These studies take two control groups and randomly put half on a moderate running program and observe the differences. There are still other studies that take a pool of moderate runners and have half increase their activity and so on and so until you have a clear chain of data all the way from sedentary to ultramarathoning and have a clear idea of what happens to the body at all these various levels.
This is how they get the information that determines physiological effects across such a wide span of diet and exercise and make it consistent so they can extract data. Their is tons of this shit out there. Sports medecine is huge. There is tons of new stuff every month. I read a bunch of it in Runners World and from other sources, so that I can extract better training methods and know what sort of mileage and pace I should be doing to improve without injury.
You simply could not be more wrong, and you simply have no clue what you are talking about with this.
As for injury, yes it’s possible to get injured. Most commonly is an overuse injury from escalating training to fast. There is no reason why it has to happen if one does research, follows a plan and trains intelligently.
Such things have been done as has been cited to you. But, no, you don’t have to do it that way. You can normalize and use regression analysis among different groups across the scale and extract accurate data.
There’s a column for age fer chrissakes.
No. There are not the same number of 45-54 year olds as there are 20-29 year olds.
Listen closely There are a lot more people in their 40 than there are in their 20s. The average ultramarathoner is well into his 40s.
First place was a 36 year old. 5th place was 43. Fourteenth place was 52.
44 out of the first 100 finishers were 40 or over. 24 out of the first 100 finishers were in their twenties or younger. It is in fact, the opposite. More older people are running than younger.
Also bear in mind that we are looking at the top 100. We have a disproportionate number of younger elite runners in this group.
There were over 1000 finishers. If we go to the middle group, numbersw 450-550 we find only 14 out of those hundred in their 20s or younger while 65 out of 100 were 40 or older!!!
Ultramarathoning is an old man’s sport, not a young man’s sport!
Total bullshit. I’ve been studying this and doing it and reading the literature for over seven years. You’re just making stuff up.
I trained for and completed the Twin Cities Marathon this past Sunday. It was my first marathon. One year ago, it was in the news for its 25th anniversary; my 30th birthday was coming up, and I decided that I wanted to do something memorable for this year and I wanted to get into shape.
I recall a post that Scylla made years ago – probably before his '01 marathon – and I’ll certainly botch it, but paraphrased, he said something along the lines of “I decided to run a marathon because I wanted to get into shape, and I never saw an obese person run across the finish line of a marathon.” For what it’s worth, S, that observation of yours rattled around in my mind for the past few years until I finally got off my ass. Thank you. (I bet you didn’t expect anyone to recall your thread about your first marathon.)
I spent a year at it, starting with coolrunning.com’s couch-to-5k program, then running 10-15 miles per week for a few months, and then using the Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer as an aid for the 16-week training regimen before the actual marathon. My only goal was to cross the finish line. No time goal, just to see it through to the end.
Someone once told me that no one runs two marathons. They either run one and decide that they’ll never do it again, or they decide that they love it, the exercise, the exhiliration, the sense of setting a goal and accomplishing it. I’ve already decided that I’m going to run the Twin Cities Marathon again next year and beat my current time. I’m thinking about running Fargo in May, or Duluth in June. Someday I’d like to run New York, Boston, Berlin, London … the list goes on. For now, though, I’m proud beyond words that I finished my first, and I can’t wait to get back to activity.
Diogenes, I’m kind of surprised at this post of yours. I’ve respected your opinions many times in the past, but I think you’re really off-base here.
catsix, well, I never really respected you in the first place. Do I get to be the recipient of yet another shrill and pointless screed?
Yes, but we are a self-aggrandizing bunch, aren’t we? The truth is the marathon is not that terrible.
The first link only shows the long runs. The second link doesn’t show a schedule. Typically a long run wil have a day of rest before and after it. For, say, a fifteen mile training run bracketed by rest days, you are still only averaging the five miles a day I was talking about. Typically, I will recommend 2-4 training runs of about 20 miles prior to a first marathon with lots of rest on the days before and after. If you read you Runner’s World, current studies are showing superior results from barbell training with lots of rest, short fast runs, and only the occasional long run. The only real purpose of the long run is to get your body prepared for the metabolic shift that occurs as you start to metablolize body fat directly when you “hit the wall.”
The days when you have to rack up huge weekly totals to run distance are long gone. People who were doing that were running a lot of “junk miles” and actually slowing down their improvement and increasing their chances for injury. You don’t get better on the days you run. You get better on the days you rest after you run.
You too, should look at the ages of the finishers in the JFK 50 I cited.
The cite says about an hour a day for fitness and weight maintenance. Earlier this year the NYT reported that the expert consensus recommendation for fitness was an hour of cardiovascular exercise a day.
Frankly it depends on your starting point. When I started I had real trouble jogging 20 minutes at 10:00 pace 3-4 times a week. I improved steadily and slowly. As I improved I gradually and slowly raised the bar. That’s in one of my cites as well. People plateau and actually go backwards a small amount if they don’t challenge themselves. For a workout to be benefical, it should be difficult.
The point of diminishing returns for an elite runner in his prime is about 100 miles/week. For us mere mortals we probably aren’t helping ourselves over 50-60. For some people it will be lower. It depends on recovery time.
The problem my friend is not increasing your time. The problem is increasing it too fast and not allowing for recovery. People get impatient and they get hurt.
I find it to difficult to hear you say that with a straight face. The major health problems of this country relate directly to obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. I am quite certain that an hour a day of exercise would do the population “at large” (irony intended) a world of good.
