Extremely weird take. 1) the paper refers to high intensity activity like sprinting which which many lifelong runners don't do. 2) your personal experience is a random sample which is probably not representative.

Many non-life-long runners die from cancer too.

The paper suggests you need to be at 80-85% max effort to get maximum benefit, the runners I know tend to concentrate on distance and the social aspect (so are running at an effort where they can sustain a conversation), rather than getting to the end of the run as quickly as possible.

The summary says the human studies used 3000 people over twenty years and the 72 percent less compares the humans who did high intensity exercise versus those who did not - it did not state the rate was zero, it was just significantly less in those who did high intensity exercise.

Anecdotal, but related: https://seema.page/

Related HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30597187

anybody who lives long enough succumbs to cancer. anybody. not one exception. you can have the fittest heart and safest lifestyle, but your cells will always replicate with less and less accuracy, the sun and other sources of genetic damage will keep inundating you.