Deaths like these raise the question of whether such an intense physical feat as a marathon can possibly be dangerous, or at least unhealthy, for the heart. We asked scientists who study marathoners about long-distance races and heart health, plus what runners can do to keep themselves safe.
Of course, training for a marathon—which can take months or years of steady increases in endurance—is different from the act of running the race itself, says Daniel Muniz, senior lecturer in exercise physiology at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K. “Running a marathon is a big physiological stress. You're going to hurt after…and if you look at markers in your physiology, everything is going to be all over the place.” Markers of muscle damage and heart damage are elevated, at least for a little while. (Oxborough, who has studied some of these elevated markers, says that they come back down swiftly and don’t seem to be linked to long-term damage.)
Why do people die running marathons, then?
Dying during a marathon is extremely uncommon, says Oxborough. What’s more, it doesn’t seem random. People who die during endurance running events tend to fall into two categories, often identified after the fact: either younger people who have undiagnosed genetic heart problems, or middle-aged men who have heart disease without any symptoms.
“You should, absolutely,” says Oxborough. “We do pre-participation cardiac screening for young people in competitive sport. We have charities in the U.K. It's now becoming much more accepted in the U.S., and it wasn't before. This is a simple 12-lead ECG and a questionnaire to young people.”
What about older people?
The problem with coronary artery disease is that many people have no symptoms in the early stages.
Not all of these are required, but “a baseline test of risk is really important, and that you can do at your GP,” he says.
Can anyone run a marathon?
This is not a physical challenge where you can go out and achieve it tomorrow without practice. “But if you start training and you start running for 20 minutes, or run and walk, and then transition to run for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and then you do that for a number of months, I think most people should be able to eventually run a marathon,” he says.
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