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Comment by karzeem | Hacker News Reader

By listing only negative effects, you can make anything sound bad (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax).

It doesn't seem crazy to think that there's such a thing as too much exercise, but there are a couple problems with this top ten list you cite.

First, maybe there are right and wrong ways to run a marathon and the people doing it the wrong way have skewed the results of these studies.

Second, if running a marathon is bad, then surely running half a marathon is still not good, right? What about a quarter-marathon? One mile? Etc. I think everyone agrees that there is some amount of running that does more good than harm. But it's not that helpful to simply say that marathons cause harm without looking at the good (if any) they do and then trying to find the distance that properly balances good and harm.

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The main difference I can think of between a marathon and shorter distances is the glycogen 'wall' - something that won't happen on a run of less than 20 miles. There's also the whole fact that four hours of stress and strain on your joints and muscles and feet is somewhat worse for your body than ten minutes.

(Having said that, I don't see the point in twisting statistics to lambast marathons either. I plan to run my first one next year regardless!)

And by listing negative effects, you can also make bad things sound bad.

Lots of people kill themselves with marathons. Maybe there's a right way to do it, but obviously it's easy to do it the wrong way. Which makes marathons dangerous until someone figures out your right way.

"if running a marathon is bad, then surely running half a marathon is still not good, right?"

No. Does not follow. As you say, there are probably distances where the good far outweighs the bad. 26 miles is not that distance.

No, "lots of people" don't kill themselves with marathons. A few people who try to go from couch potato to marathon in 12 weeks or who chug ridiculous amounts of water over the course of a 5-hour walk-jog kill themselves with marathons. (It's possible to drink to the point of excessive dilution of the sodium in your bloodstream, which can kill you just like dehydration can, but this is basically impossible to induce below an Ironman triathlon distance if you're reasonable about water intake.) That's not "lots."

Distance running is what humans evolved to do, according to a good deal of evidence. Admittedly, running on asphalt and concrete with awful form created by a lifetime walking and running in awkwardly built shoes and sitting in chairs all day is not what humans evolved to do.

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