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Comment by ur-whale | Hacker News Reader

When you decide to subject your body to (what seems to me like) the abuse of running a marathon or and even more extreme race such as this one, I wonder what the negative effects are, short or long term.

Is this really good for your health?

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I found some research on ultramarathon runners which has this conclusion:

We conclude that, compared with the general population, ultramarathon runners appear healthier and report fewer missed work or school days due to illness or injury. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Instead of the general population, how do they compare with people who don't smoke, maintain a healthy weight and do five hours of light/ moderate cardio a week?

Someone who exercises regularly (3-5 times per week) and lead an otherwise healthy lifestyle is likely healthier (less sickness, less injuries) than ultra athletes.

I forget which BBC documentary I saw years back where an African tribesman (he was in fact male) tracked and pursued a wild animal after successfully separating it from its herd. It was a day-long marathon of sorts where, after exhausting and finally catching the animal, meat was returned to the tribe.

It was hard not to consider after watching that perhaps humans were in fact designed for this sort of thing.

The most insane part of that story is not running for a day. Its that he presumably dragged the animal back a distance equal to 1 day of running. Unless he got it back somehow else

If the animal wasnt big enough for that to be a herculean effort then its hard to see much worth from it. Although perhaps the distance wasnt that great (not necessarily a straight line from the starting point).

I just think about what a bitch it is to drag a deer a mile back to your truck. A days worth of running could be 120+ miles.

I have no reason to believe the spear man and runners behind wouldn't gut and part the animal in the field. Many hands make light work.

I seem to recall them showing him carrying it across his shoulders.

Persistence hunting! However https://undark.org/2019/10/03/persistent-myth-persistence-hu...

Probably being able to make/use tools and talk to each other was enough. And a bad day for the rest of the animals when we learned to control fire.

yeah, they (us) were also designed to breed like rabbits starting at around 13, raise whatever survives of the offspring and check out by the time you turn ~40. I'm kind of glad we've chosen not to follow that initial design.

All the research I'm aware of suggests that it was common (assuming you survived childhood) to live into your late 40s or beyond up to 180,000 years ago. That's an average, so it's very likely that some would have lived into their 60s or even 70s. As a relatively modern (and admittedly exceptionally) datum, Emperor Justinian I lived to 83.

Life expectancy dropped from it's pre-historical peak as we started living in larger communities due to disease (more communicable due to proximity and more prevalent due to greater quantities of local rot/sewage/permanent structures where e.g., rats can live), warfare (more prevalent due to desirable wealth amassed in cities, more deadly due to improved weaponry, the tendency to raze cities, etc.), the worldwide rise of slaves as the motive power of industry (both the taking and use of which reduced life expectancies), and food insecurity (more likely vs sparsely populated, nomadic hunter gatherer groups due to crop failures, warfare, and taxation by sometimes multiple layers of ruling class). The improvements in these categories, plus the role of modern medicine in reducing infant and maternal mortality, are largely responsible for our current increases in average life span, in my casually informed understanding.

> Emperor Justinian I lived to 83

i'm responding to the comment about hunting deer on foot to escape death from hunger. I'm pretty sure Justinian I didn't depend on that for his daily survival.

Based on this link*, expected age of death at 15 (past the childhood phase) for hunter-gatherers is somewhere around 51-56, which is some 25 years fewer than today, so no, not great

* http://www.unm.edu/~hkaplan/KaplanHillLancasterHurtado_2000_...

Maybe not great compared to now, but in line with my post, not "dead at ~40", and a damn sight better than the bronze age/middle ages.

I would say the average ultra runner is probably less hard on their body overall compared to someone training for / regularly running fast marathons (~3 hour and below). Both are probably running a lot of base milage at an easy pace. Marathoner is probably putting in more speed workouts, running on pavement / asphalt / concrete. Ultra runner is probably spending more time on soft surfaces and running with less repetitive motion on trails and is more likely to be doing some supplemental strength training and hiking hills.

Anecdotally for me, running ultramarathons has been a net positive. The 50+ mile races themselves are probably not good for you (potentially loss of sleep, operating into and past exhaustion, running high calorie deficits while cramming mostly junk food in just to get enough sugar and electrolytes to keep moving, risk of hyponatremia or dehydration, etc.), but the training leading up to it is. Regular checkups and a visit with a cardiologist for an unrelated (genetic) condition point to me being quite healthy despite not going to a lot of effort in other areas of my life. Heart is in especially good shape.

In my experience, the ordinary recreational runner can't run hard enough to incur real health risks.

For a bit of anecdata, I ran at least one marathon under three hours ever year from 1980 through 1986. Nowadays my "long" run of a weekend might be eight miles, which I do enjoy. I see the young glide past me when I think I'm running a decent pace, but more with amusement than regret.

I should say that it is very easy for a runner to sustain heat injuries. This can be the moderately fit guy at the end of a 10K, or Alberto Salazar in danger of his life after winning a race on Cape Cod.

Generally yes but the joints will suffer over time and they tend to be immuno depressed after hard efforts.

[1] OTOH they actually know how to run correctly to not hurt themselves too much, not like the casual runner

It is well established that marathon running induces acute renal damage, which typically resolves in two weeks after the run. What is less clear is whether repeated insults result in accumulating damage to tubular structure / decreased filtering capacity.

It's definitely harm to the body. But might be the only thing that works for you if you are trying to fight alcoholism or stop using drugs.

Professional marathon runners have heart enlargement issues, which can cause problems. But afaik it stops being an issue once they retire.

Generally the participants train for these events and are in pretty good physical condition. One might imagine these events as analogous to a multi-day battery of difficult leetcode whiteboard interviews.

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