London Marathon Woman dies

My regrets to the family of the woman.



But lol to the OP.....hardly the same thing.

do they shoot the horses?

Would make the last leg of the London marathon more interesting if the knew there were a bunch of blocks loading shotguns to take out the last few hundred :p
 
Wow at this thread
The chances of dying increase as you approach death, it's not uniform.
So it's not a 1/30,000 chance of dying each day.

The chances of dieing also increase due to factors such as exhaustion.

Marathon running puts a huge strain on the body, t is not a particularly healthy thing to do, it has risks associated with it like most sports and hobbies.

However, relative to other sports not many people die, it is still fairly safe. E.g., you get much more injuries from martial arts, boxing, ski racing etc.
 
Cardio is not very good for you. Walking is good, but extended running and the like is actually quite bad for your heart. The incidence of heart damage (abnormal hypertrophy, tears, scar tissue, etc.) in marathon runners is 3x more common than in normal people.
 
That means that on average someone will live 30,000 days. On average someone has a 1/30,000 chance of death on any given day.

I really hate to add fuel to the fire but this is just completely wrong. For a start, your assumption that it is a uniform distribution is incorrect. You are far less likely to die on a given day when you are 33 than you are when you are nearing 30,000 days old, an age which will encompass almost none of the runners. The demographic of the London marathon is by no means average.

Secondly, the likely cause of death in the marathon isn't old age and associated ailments, which is a key aspect of life expectancy.

My condolences to her family. She is by no means a statistic and died doing something she believed in. RIP.
 
They don't nessecarily have to ban the London marathon, but they should probably limit it to walking, where you have to maintain foot-ground contact all the time.

 
Amazing how her donation page was sitting at £500 and is now £212,434

Warms the cockles of your heart.

Wow at this thread
The chances of dying increase as you approach death, it's not uniform.
So it's not a 1/30,000 chance of dying each day.

We're more interested in maths than some random stranger we've never met?

Bunch of joeys, no surprise from some of the freaks on here.

ok lets talk about the TT races where I live here :p more deaths than any sport i think?

tbh clipping a brick wall at 180mph is not going to end well.

I watched TT Closer to the edge last year and those speeds, when Guy and Connor crash :eek: so lucky
 
SpeedFreaks logic sounds correct to me based on the assumptions he stated, however those assumptions were pretty extreme, obviously the demographic would be heavily skewed, and the cause of death would likely be induced by the stress of the marathon rather than natural causes. His point seemed clear to me though, if there's 35,000 runners, it's not suprising that one will die every few years, not quite sure why everyone has taken such insult to it :confused:

Anyhow it's very sad, 33 is no age to go at. Glad to see the public donating though, I'm sure it'll give some meaning to the family, most of us will unfortunately pop our clogs barely improving the lives of others at all!
 
There were 35000 runners and the average person lives for around 30,000 days therefore on average one runner of the marathon will die on the day they run it (assuming an average demographic)

I openly admit that I am mathematically challenged, but that seriously does not compute. There is no correlation between the figures you compared.
 
Strange to see that she's a friend of a friend on bookface, for some reason that brings it home a little more.

Awful.

One of my bookface friends is a marathon runner too and the first thing I thought was 'OMG it had better not have been her', but no she is in her 40s or something old.
 
There were 35000 runners and the average person lives for around 30,000 days therefore on average one runner of the marathon will die on the day they run it (assuming an average demographic)

This is not correct. The statistic for life expectancy and the count of people running the marathon cannot be used conjunctively to calculate the probability of any one runner dying during the event.

Aside from being mathematically flawed, your statistic fails to illustrate the true probability of mortality which is closer to 1 in 77000.

Sources: 1, 2.
 
Notwithstanding your bunching of all horses into one lump (a general cob for example with a thoroughbred racer) you appear to miss the fact those same horses you mention will probably really enjoy their daily ride and love to gallop. But no, they all want to just spend their days eating grass!

I loan a thoroughbred gelding and he nor any of the other horses at any stable I have seen will gallop around the field for miles of their own accord. They spend 95% of their time eating grass or sleeping and a relatively short amount of time playing or running.

You shouldn't base your knowledge of animal behaviour on horse races where they are whipped to run to the point of exhaustion. Emperical observation of equine behaviour gives a much better picture of reality.
 
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This is not correct. The statistic for life expectancy and the count of people running the marathon cannot be used conjunctively to calculate the probability of any one runner dying during the event.

Aside from being mathematically flawed, your statistic fails to illustrate the true probability of mortality which is closer to 1 in 77000.

Sources: 1, 2.

From the second link, 1 death in 67k people and around 32-36k racers a year, then you expect a death at least every 2 years, so it I to really surprising the sad news of the woman.
 
I don't get how so many people are still having an issue with SpeedFreak's comments. With the proviso he included about assuming an average demographic, it's absolutely correct.

I really hate to add fuel to the fire but this is just completely wrong. For a start, your assumption that it is a uniform distribution is incorrect. You are far less likely to die on a given day when you are 33 than you are when you are nearing 30,000 days old, an age which will encompass almost none of the runners. The demographic of the London marathon is by no means average.

I'm not making any assumption of a uniform distribution - I'm saying on average someone has a 1/30,000 chance of death on any given day, which is perfectly correct. Everything SpeedFreak and I have said contains the proviso of an average demographic.
 
What isn't correct is the fact he tried to use two statistics in conjunction with each other which bare absolutely no resemblance to one another. It's just plain wrong, you don't have to be good at statistics to be able to see that the two figures don't relate.
 
Why you all going off at speedfreak?, punch a pillow or something guys, he was just just basically saying it's not all that surprising considering the amount of people that take part, you don't always have to be factually correct to make a valid point, there seems to be no pattern as to who we decide to sink our teeth into on here.
 
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