Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Recent scientific studies on running

Hot off the presses, yet-another-in-a-long-line-of-studies demonstrating that the more time you spend off of the "couch of doom", the less likely you are to develop conditions like metabolic syndrome. As one of the other cardiology fellows and runners put it, "20 years from now, I may be getting bilateral total knee replacements, but at least I won't have diabetes."

In another recently published study, it would appear that triathlons are more dangerous than marathons. Specifically, during the swim portion of the race, the rate of sudden death is about 1.5 per 100,000 participants while a second study estimated the risk of sudden death from running a marathon to be about 0.8 per 100,000 runners.

Actually, the goal of the second study was to estimate how many lives were saved by closing roads and reducing car traffic. They figured this out by looking back at sudden deaths during marathons and comparing to car fatality rates. They estimate that for every runner who died, 1.8 driver's lives were saved. So running road races may save your own life, and even the life of a total stranger (unless, of course, you are one of the runners suffering sudden death).

Enough science for now. My knee is still doing okay. It's kind of interesting because I am paying so much attention to it while running that whenever I feel something there, I have to remind myself that just perceiving a sensation is not the same as having it ache from being inflamed, which reminds me I need some more ibuprofen.

Today: 2 miles on campus in 16 mins
4/14: 2 miles on the dreadmill in the same time

No comments:

Post a Comment