HOW DANGEROUS ARE MARATHONS, ULTRAMARATHONS AND THE IRONMAN TRIATHLON?

Those two ultramarathon incidents that recently occurred seemed more appropriate for today, so I'll post on Part 2 of SETI tomorrow.  When I taught at the University of Hawaii, my next door neighbor on the Manoa Campus was Gordon Dugan, who ran races of long distances, up to 100 miles.   We team-taught Environmental Engineering a couple times, and we still get together for lunch every so often.   He is a hall of fame star, sitting in the middle of that photo.  He is still alive.  I mention this because that is the theme of this article.

A third of a century ago I had a golf foursome on Saturdays.  The other three all ran marathons.  One of them never trained, just showing up that particular Sunday morning in December for the Honolulu Marathon.  Did this for several continuous years, almost dying each time.  Once I was there to watch and he was coming down the home stretch, the crowd was cheering, there was someone ahead of him, so he ran faster to pass that person.  The crowd booed him because the one he beat was really old.  Not quite 100, but close.  I too thought about doing the marathon, so at the age of 48, during my annual physical, I indicated to my doctor that I was planning to train for two years and run the marathon at the age of 50.  He said WHY???  I responded, you're right, and never did so.  All three are also still alive.

A third story had to do with Judy Collins, who worked for me at the University of Hawaii and one day told me that she, her husband John and some friends were planning for a three-part, back-to-back, race where they would swim 2.4 miles near Waikiki, get on a bike around a portion of Oahu and finish with a marathon.  I expressed some fear about killing someone.  They went ahead anyway and in 1978 eleven completed the first real triathlon.  Eventually their entire family, including two children also finished.  It was a pain to hold this in Honolulu, so the attraction was moved to Kona as the Ironman Triathlon.  Last I heard, they too are well, and are either living on a boat in Panama or back in San Diego.

Well, this past May Gansu province in China held a 100 kilometer (60-mile) long-distance race called the Ultra Gobi, which was halted when 172 runners got lost because of cold rain and visibility.  Twenty-one racers died, including Liang Jing, an ultramarathon champion.  A 22nd death if you count Jingtai Party Chief Li Zuobi, who committed suicide.

The weather was warm the day before and this was summertime.  However, the path almost reached an elevation of 10,000 feet, and an unpredicted sudden storm bringing freezing rain and gale force winds doomed the runners.  Ultramarathons are now banned in China.

Then yesterday another ultramarathon race, this one one 50 miles long, in Utah's Davis County, ran into a foot of snow and wind speeds of 30 miles per hour.  Like in China, the race rose to elevation, 11,700 feet.  Again meteorologists were surprised with the snowfall.  All 87 runners were, however, saved.  The week before, in the Utah St. George Marathon, 22-year old Hayden Holman had a heart attack and died.  No weather problems here.

The question then is, should marathons be banned?  No doubt there are too many cases of hypo-whatever, hallucinations, psychological disorders and damage to all parts of your body.  The incidence of exercise addiction and depression is very high.  The main cause of death is a sudden cardiac attack.   

In 2018 600,000 people ran the ultramarathon.  The number of reported deaths is not generally known, although western Europe reported 51 deaths over the past decade.

The death rate of the standard marathon is one per 150,000 participants.  As approximately 11 million run the marathon annually around the world, the number of deaths per year must be around 73.

The death rate from the triathlon is 2.55 more than the marathon.  You would think that an ultramarathon death rate must be at that upper range.

Here is a useful quote, which shows a lower death rate, but that is only for heart problems:

...the risk of sudden cardiac death on any given day, for the general population the risk is 0.1 to 0.27 per 100,000 per day, while for athletes in a marathon it is one per 100,000 and for triathletes it is 1.7 per 100,000.

From Forbes:

A study reviewed this data and found that twenty-eight people died within a day of running a marathon between 2000 and 2009. That’s roughly .007% of all total marathon runners [1].

To put this into perspective you’re one hundred times more likely to die in a car accident on any given day [2].

So should these long distance races be banned?  There is risk in anything you do, some worse than others.  Hang-gliding, travel into space, NASCAR, football, driving, whatever.  Freedom of choice should prevail.

Went golfing this past week at the Makalena Golf Course.  Took this photo of a flowery tree:

Also, my water lily plant had its first bloom of the season.  Rarely do two flower at the same time:

My meal of the week occurred last night featuring pork tonkatsu with ahi sashimi, giant pile of sliced cabbage, and an assortment of drinks highlighted by a purple cup of gin martini with cognac instead of vermouth, plus jalapeno olives.

Wow, my chair shook as I was completing this posting.  My first thought was whether I should move indoors, as I'm located right next to the exterior wall that is all glass.  It lasted only a few seconds.  Reports show a 6.2 earthquake occurred  just south of Naalehu at 11:48 AM.  I'm 214 miles away.  The quake must have been close to Loihi (lower image), that young island still underwater and perhaps 200,000 years from reaching the surface.

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