Running makes you feel high, but it also kills you

According to the NY Times most-emailed list, running makes people feel high. (At least for some people not me.)

The article fails to mention that running can also kill you. When something can make you feel really good, but also kill you, normally we make it illegal. But running is protected because white people like it. We only outlaw unhealthy stuff that minority people like.

Comments

[Peter]

But running is protected because white people like it. We only outlaw unhealthy stuff that minority people like.

All these Kenyan and Ethiopian runners who keep winning marathons actually must be white people with very dark suntans.

[Gannon]

Running doesn't kill unless you have an advance heart condition (clogged up coronaries). Running has a lot of health benefits and will benefit people's cardiovascular system. Long distance running real problem is that it can fuck up your knees, hips and ankles, by overusage, grinding the cartilage.

[keil]

Ban running!

[GOP Lurker]

Running most certainly can kill you even if you are otherwise healthy. IIRC, the culprit is, oddly, over-hydration from drinking water while running, screwing with one's electrolytes.

[Val]

Almost anything can kill you. I am 68 and have been jogging for more than 50 years without any problem whatsoever.

[Peter]

Running has a lot of health benefits and will benefit people's cardiovascular system.

And Gannon, there's something else you should like about it: think of a 13- or 14-year-old girl running in skimpy shorts and a tank top, her sleek youthful (and fertile) body glistening with a health sheen ... excited yet?

[Cameron]

Even if white people didn't like running I doubt it would be banned because it's so innate. Also, we would have to ban several other activities in order to remain consistent:

If we did ban running, what would stop us from banning sex? Sex is another potentially dangerous activity (heart attack, stroke, STDs) with a much more potent high.

Maybe we should ban golf too? I've read that golf players get a nice rush of dopamine every time they hit a decent shot. Also, golf can be dangerous. Players are sometimes hit on the head with golf balls during play.

[Gannon]

Traffic accidents kill thousands of people in my country every year. drving around in a car is a really dangerous activity, not running.

[roissy]

excited yet?

what straight male without a sexually repressed puritanical bug up his ass wouldn't?

i know i am.

[hugh go naught]

"think of a 13- or 14-year-old girl running in skimpy shorts and a tank top, her sleek youthful (and fertile) body glistening with a health sheen ... excited yet?"

Only if she is shaved where it counts. Of course I am referring to her armpits.

[miles]

Sigma,

I used to both run and pump iron back in high school. These days I still pump iron and merely take brisk walks for my cardo. Occasionally I'll hope on a bike for cardo.

I used to run about two miles a day, and I got to be pretty fast at it---a "slow running" pace and not a mere "jog". At about 21, I started to notice my knees and ankles and back were stiff and a bit sore at night and in the mornings. I carry more muscle mass than your average runner (I was still pumping iron), but I made a deduction then that led me to stop running:

Pounding all 200+pounds of myself up and down on pavement, all on one leg-knee-ankle-foot- at a time will have long term consequences for these joints and cartilage. Every time you land when you run, all your weight is being compacted against the road through your feet. Every vertebrae in your spine feels it "a little bit", but the dopamine release makes you not feel it after a mile, so you finish your run "feeling" invigorated.

It would be a hell of alot more healthy to alternate between swimming one day, biking the next, and "speed walking" another. Your joints dont get tore up, and you get to shake things up. I dont think long-distance running is really healthy at all for the joints and cartilage, despite the cardiovascular benefits.

[SFG]

Better your joints than your heart.

I hear swimming is the safest exercise.

[Spungen]

... excited yet?

...
i know i am.

Ew. Get a room. Remember, this is a public space.

OK, my turn then. Put HS in that pair of skimpy gym shorts ... a superior sneer on his face .. forehead beaded with sweat ... lounging supine on his couch, banging passionately away on his laptop ... straining inexhaustibly to connect liberals with yet one more evil ...

[Gannon]

"Better your joints than your heart.

I hear swimming is the safest exercise."

Yeah, that's true. Also walking (at least 60 min a day) is quiet healthy. I know people who have had run for decades 10 km per day with no trouble whatsoever. But I also know a few guys which had to stop after a few years, even a few small and thin ones.

[Gannon]

@Spungen
I'm starting to understand why you banned Peter from Bobvis by the way. I thought you were mean and heartless, considering how much Peter complained and wined about it, but now I know why.

[Gannon]

@Half Sigma: a Sport which will really make you high, specially if you reach the summit and can kill you when you are climbing down is high altitude mountain climbing. A lot of climbers die (usually through avalanches and not necesarrily fallby the high). Mountainclimbing gives real extasis.

[Peter]

@Spungen
I'm starting to understand why you banned Peter from Bobvis by the way. I thought you were mean and heartless, considering how much Peter complained and wined about it, but now I know why.

There's quite a difference, Gannon. My offense at Bobvis was what I now recognize to have been an excessively ... vehement defense of the male nerd demographic. In the course of which I wrote some things I now rather regret.

What I'm doing here, to which you take umbrage, is ridiculing your prurient interest in girls who are in their early teens. And that most definitely IS an unhealthy interest well deserving of ridicule. Not to mention the fact that it's something that gets men hauled off to prison if desires become reality.

[Gil]

Actually, I remember reading an article once where a doctor didn't recommend jogging but cycling instead.

[Kirk]

Actually, I remember reading an article once where a doctor didn't recommend jogging but cycling instead.

I used to have a subscription to a bicycling magazine. It mentioned that some bicyclists get very weak bones, due to the fact that their skeletons don't get stressed during the activity.

That's a good thing about weighlifting: you get denser bones (and stronger ligaments, tendons, and cartilage) without the jarring motion of running. As for biking, walking, or using an elliptical, those are good for cardio but won't help you avoid osteoporosis.

@Half Sigma: a Sport which will really make you high, specially if you reach the summit and can kill you when you are climbing down is high altitude mountain climbing. A lot of climbers die (usually through avalanches and not necesarrily fallby the high). Mountainclimbing gives real extasis.

In any given year, the death rate for climbers in the Himalayas is about 1 in 30. (Not to suggest that the Himalayas is the only dangerous range. It's not.) Some of them are done in by odd things like pulmonary or cerebral embolisms, which can cause one to drop dead in minutes from their onset.

I still remember seeing a picture of some people scaling the "Hillary Step," which is a small cliff that is very high up on Everest. The rope on the left had the people featured in the story. The rope on the right still held the body of a climber from the year before. That rope was frayed, and the climber's jacket was getting worn. You could tell he was dead, even without the caption.

Live climbers pass their dead bretheren all the time. (Doing so on a descent makes sense, as you have to go down. But going up? One would think these people would get second thoughts...)

Due to the lack of oxygen, everything gets preserved up there. They even know how long people have been up there due to their clothing.

Anyway, I do enjoy reading about this stuff. If you get a chance, read "Into Thin Air," by John Krakauer. It's a good primer on the subject.

Because it's there... Mallory Found

-- Kirk

[PA]

One risk of cycling for men is sexual/reproductive damage from the bike's seat pressing at the crotch.

[Gannon]

@Peter: I'm not interested in early teens Peter, only in middteens (15 and above) of HS age, which are legal in a lot of countires, including some of Europe and Canada.
And I have stated that quiet a lot, so it bothers me when you try to associate me with younger middle school teens.

[Gannon]

@Kirk:
I have climbed the Aconcagua and the Ojos del Salado. Relatively easy climbs, but still pretty high (6800). Death through avalanche is a real risk on the Aconcagua by the way.

[anon]

Kenyans only win marathons because they often come from a foot-oriented environment. It has nothing to do with genes. Pygmies could win marathons if they were given an adequate environment through government intervention. Africa would be a utopia if it wasn't for colonialism. My sociology professor taught me that.

[Vim]

That's weird, my sociology professor taught me that every major aspect of ethnic variation has at its root a genetic difference which reinforces my most craven steotypes: whether it's Jews like money(they are evolved to), blacks excel at sports(they are only maginally removed from monkeys) or whites naturally excel at the challenges of the modern world (due to the amazing parallels between enduring winters and building satellites).

[anon]

Hmmmmm.....you must have gone to school in the 1940's then.

[PA]

Kenyans only win marathons because they often come from a foot-oriented environment.

Not exactly. Key factors in marathon running are having a slight frame, and an efficient cardiovascular system, primarily a high oxygen-carrying capacity of red blood cells.
Cardio-fitness can be improved to a point with excercise, high-altitude training, and (illegal) blood-doping. But genes do set an upper limit to one's potential as a long-distance runner.

[Anon]

It's called sarcasm.

[PA]

Doh! you're right. I missed the Sociology Professor and the colonization parts.

[Vim]

anon:

"Hmmmmm.....you must have gone to school in the 1940's then."

True. Sociology is faddish. I hear pseudo-scientific bigottry is coming back.