...sucks....
This is not an uncommon event at marathons.....yet where is the media on it.
Imagine for a second if a few people died from being shot at every marathon.
Yikes. As a runner & half-marathoner myself, this scares me. I should get a cardio work up but I’m pretty sure my health insurance wouldn’t feel that’s indicated. Gotta love how the government regulation of the health insurance industry has basically cut us all off from accessing care. Wasn’t the focus of health reform supposed to be preventative medicine? What a joke.
"While the deaths are statistically uncommon, races in the Rock n Roll series have been marred by such tragedies at least 12 times since 2005, including the two in Raleigh on Sunday. Race officials identified the runners who died as men ages 31 and 35."
"While runners deaths at races receive widespread attention, they are relatively rare. A study released in 2012 by the New England Journal of Medicine found that of almost 11 million registered participants in marathons and half-marathons between 2000 and mid-2011, there were 59 cardiac arrests, 42 of them fatal."
If the race has been averaging more than 1 death every year, it sounds like something unusual is happening in Raleigh. (Using the figure of 12,500 signed up to run in Sundays races as average for the last 9 years. my calculator comes up with the 18.6 times the chances of dying in a race at Raleigh than everywhere else.)
Perhaps because of the runners Raleigh attracts, or because of something about the course -- or courses, the half marathon and full marathon must have used different courses. This certainly sounds like something that begs to be investigated.
I cannot conceive of anything so unappealing as to put on a pair of shorts and go out to run in a crowd of hot, sweaty people.
At 70 years old, my idea of a RnR marathon is no stop playing my 45’s from the 1950’s!
There is a group of people who’s bodies do not respond well to that kind of distance running. I was in that group. I ran marathons and half marathons for years. Little did I know that my heart walls were thickening from the daily strain being put it on my body. Finally, in 07 I went into Vtach and almost died. Had I been out on the road or at a marathon at the time, I most likely would not have survived.
After stopping all running, my heart went back to normal shape, but the damage was done. I just had my third cardiac ablation last month that they think finally cleared up all the Vtach, but now my defibrillator is infected. Yeah. I go in Wednesday for a full extraction, 4 days of antibiotics and then a brand new device.
I told my wife that after this is all over I will be ready to start running again. Her response was she will have the lawyer contact me with divorce papers and she will pack up my things for me.