Fitness versus Health: Marathons Test Not Just Endurance but Logic Too

Safer on the sidelines?

The mortality toll of the 2011 Philadelphia Marathon was two runners out of approximately 25,000, a death rate that proponents of the event might represent as less hazardous than the risk of commuting the distance by car. And probably much safer than couch-bound obesity. Even when we take into account the many people who require first aid for dehydration or suffer orthopedic injuries, the hazards of marathon participation might strike many as relatively low. Life is risky business, after all, and testing human limits -- for pleasure or heroism -- often comes at a price.

Nonetheless, it is curious to observe how sanguine health experts and the public have become about tests of endurance that can result in needless death, and how little discussion we hear in the aftermath about the wisdom or health value of marathon participation. That’s because marathons -- once considered an “extreme sport” for the very few -- are now an icon of our fitness culture, attracting virtual hordes of runners in cities across the country, more and more of whom run the full distance each year.

Marathons are a spectator sport and a badge of fitness honor -- not to mention a source of mood elevation for those addicted to long-distance running. And for the cities that host them, they are also very much a business that creates dollars, press, and caché. When endurance events like marathons and triathlons are promoted by health celebrities and fitness missionaries like CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, they gain more credibility and many more converts.