Oh I agree, but most Marathon runners are doing 1 Marathon a year, if that. For many people a Marathon is a once-in-a-lifetime thing that they do and move onto the next challenge or goal. That list is ridiculous, you could make a list of worst-case risks for any activity and not do it.
The top athletes in any sport won the genetic lottery to be well-adapted for that sport. Basketball players don't train to get that tall... It's not reasonable to compare their training and competition volumes with average people. Even a full time professional Marathon runner only competes a few times a year.
Incidentally, if you show up to a Marathon (or a half-Marathon or even a 10k) and look around you, you'll see that 99% of the crowd look perfectly ordinary. If you saw them (us!) in street clothes, you wouldn't think they were anything unusual, certainly not super-athletes. A Marathon is not at all out of reach for the average person.
I think the ability of any person to jog a marathon even after being couch potato for long periods of life shows how well genetically predisposed people are for running.
Karno has amazing endurance and recovery but he's not a competitive Marathon runner - his best Marathon time is 3:00:30, compare that to Haile Gebrselassie in 2:03:59. Geb competes once every couple of months on average.
The top athletes in any sport won the genetic lottery to be well-adapted for that sport. Basketball players don't train to get that tall... It's not reasonable to compare their training and competition volumes with average people. Even a full time professional Marathon runner only competes a few times a year.
Incidentally, if you show up to a Marathon (or a half-Marathon or even a 10k) and look around you, you'll see that 99% of the crowd look perfectly ordinary. If you saw them (us!) in street clothes, you wouldn't think they were anything unusual, certainly not super-athletes. A Marathon is not at all out of reach for the average person.