Running 'Kills': Why Science Is Sometimes Best Ignored

The last few decades seemed to be witnessing a smattering of scientific studies, claiming a certain degree of ill effects or even fatality derived from activities usually deemed harmless.

So exercise itself didn't get spared; a recent news report cited a research which claimed that running fast (exceeding 11km/hr) for more than 2.4 hours and a frequency of three days weekly could make retiring from life sooner. That same article also noted of an earlier study, from the Ochsner Health System of New Orleans and the University of South Carolina, concluding better chances of self-preservation if one could keep himself below 32km and not more than two to five times a week.

Those findings will undoubtedly draw a  collective gasp from the running community. And while the world is always supportive of science to explain cancer and global warming, science to warn people the health threats of running sounds close to an oxymoron.

Telling a ultra-running friend or a Boston-hopeful pal that his weekly mileage is escalating his trip to the grave, may get you laughed at... if you are lucky. I suppose there are those who think they finally found a reason not to exercise at all, not because of credible science, but simply, a convenient excuse.

Don't get me wrong; generally, it's accepted that a normal training week shouldn't be all about intense workouts, which is not advisable to begin with. Somebody once said that weekly sessions should be 90% easy and 10% hard, or somewhere along that line.

But encouraging us lively feet to jog at a dismal number of times within a period of seven days is not good training advice. It should, instead, be conveyed to those who intend to do a three-hours leisure stroll on the treadmill while watching banal reality shows in one of those overly-equipped gyms.

How confident are you to tell a person that with 2.5 hours of training a week, he should be able to breeze through a 100km race in the mountains?

Exactly. So don't give that advice.

And seriously, if being fitter can spare you much of the heartbreaks from ailments such as diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, why not more?         

By the way, those studies. Are they sponsored by a company developing plushy recliners fitted with fat-burning 'vibrator' belts?