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Am I going to die if I run hard?

Silhouette of an tired sportsman at sunset

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“I am training for Boston marathon,” I explain to the man who inquired, incredulous, what was I doing out in my tights and light jacket in -24 C weather. Ah, he knows about marathon: the first Greek guy who ran it dropped dead!

I sigh, silently.

The legend of poor old Philippides (or Pheidippides, depending on the source), had been misused so many times, I’ve no strength left to even roll my eyes. Mainstream media relishes in republishing it every time there’s negative news about the marathon, or endurance running in general. Someone died at a race? Remember Philippides! A study found tissue damage in ultramarathon runners. Remember Philippides! And so on.

As far as the legends go, the story of Philippides is a romanticized tragic tale of victory, endurance, perseverance and ultimate sacrifice: the guy, supposedly, ran from Athens to Sparta – about 240K – in two days, then capped it up with a 40-ish kilometre run from Marathon to Athens where he finally expired. Great story, eh? Too bad it likely never happened. Historians Magill and Moose (2003) suggest that the story is probably a “romantic invention” by the poet Lucian to imbued power to his verses. His poems, written a century after the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, are the oldest written documents in which all the elements of the legend as we know it today are present. Herodotus, who based his chronicles of the battle on eyewitnesses’ accounts 50 years earlier than Lucian, never mentions any runner. Nevertheless, the story haunts distance runners since the marathon was introduced to the Olympics.

But the Curious George at the intersection with his remarks about Philippides isn’t what unsettled me. Back home with a well-deserved cup of hot chocolate, I came across the title Fast running is as deadly as sitting on couch, scientists find from The Telegraph. Deep under the pile of sensationalistic lingo is the actual unsettling study that made me pause. Researchers from Denmark found that light joggers were about 78 percent less likely to die than those who were sedentary.

So, why suffer needlessly on long, hard runs, when I’ll die just the same if I sit at home and watch Netflix instead? If I wasn’t so addicted to joys of the long run and the atmosphere of the marathon races, I could scale back to fit into the “light jogger” category above. But, since I am an addict, I can only find the consolation in this quote:

Other experts stress that more research is needed to determine whether there really is an upper limit on how much exercise is good for you.

Life longevity is a nice health-goal to “lightly jog” toward, but for me there’s more to running. There’s the indescribable joy of flying on my own legs for hours, freedom of moving outdoors closer to nature and yes, even the sweet pain after a long run. It makes me feel younger and more energized than the men my age. It helped me lower my cholesterol to healthy normal and lose extra weight. No one can convince me that all that is slowly killing me!

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