Marathon Deaths Raise Many Questions

By now you have probably heard the tragic news of the three runners that collapsed and died during the Detroit Marathon Sunday.  That has been the talk of sports call-in shows, newspaper articles and running blogs not only here in Detroit but around the country.  Everyone feels bad for those runners and their families but there are many questions about what happened.  For example, had they trained properly?  Did they change something on race day that they didn’t try in training?  Would this have happened to these men if they hadn’t run that day?  Did they have medical exams before they entered a marathon?  Obviously, we may never learn the answers to some of these questions.  But we can learn a few things from this tragedy.  As the experts say “listen to your body”, meaning if something feels wrong stop and get it investigated.  That’s not to imply that these runners did not do that.  We don’t know. Also, train properly and know your limits.  Build up your base slowly and if you train at an 8 minute mile don’t think you can race a marathon at 6 minute miles.  Don’t be a “weekend warrior” of running.  You can’t eat junk, ignore doctors and then go jump into a strenuous activity like running a marathon and be surprised if something goes wrong.  Again, we don’t know what happened in the Detroit race and maybe those three men did everything correctly.  That may be the other lesson.  You can do everything right and when your time is up that’s it.  So the other lesson is, know where you’re going after that final race is over.  And the way to know is to know Jesus Christ.   If you don’t, then start now.