Nov. 3, 2026
24-Year-Old First-Time Marathoner Dies After Collapsing 2 Miles Before Central Park Finish Line
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RSS Feed Former Division I college athlete, 24-year-old Rachel Apa died after collapsing on mile 24 of the New York City Marathon on Sunday. Apa was all smiles passing her mom at mile 14, last texted her family “Ow, Ow” at mile 19, but kept running. Apa’s mom was waiting for her again at mile 25, but she never made it. Apa was rushed to the hospital, but was pronounced dead later that night from a rare condition called rhabdomyolysis, where your muscles disintegrate and poison your blood. Her family says the 24-year-old was in “perfect health, perfect shape” and describe her death as “unfathomable.”
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: We are just getting word that a young woman has died after running in the New York City Marathon, and she came within two miles of that finish line. Welcome, everybody. I'm TJ. That's Robes. And Robes, this is one, when you hear the details, it's tragic no matter what. And these things do happen. They're very rare. But the details of this, I wanted to be able to say, you know, she's doing something she loved or find something like that. This is just sad top to bottom.
00:00:33
Speaker 1: It's sad top to bottom because this shouldn't have happened. And it's scary to think that it did. She was 24 years old. Her name, we should just say Rachel Appa from Pennsylvania. And she was an elite division one college athlete. She had been training for months for the New York City Marathon. It was her first marathon and she was doing it in honor of her grandfather.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: So you hear those things. And what a 24-year-old elite athlete. She's in great shape by all accounts, and she trained. So you have to ask what in God's name happened. Well, Robes, we've talked about this. We've been talking about this plenty. We recalled our experience this past Sunday. And one of the things you made note of, Robes, is just how some people were standing next to you, a couple of ladies, and they were like, oh, my God, this looks so fun. This looks so easy. Robes, it's hard to convey to people just how almost impossible it is to put your body through this.
00:01:37
Speaker 1: It's true. And usually I don't start talking to strangers, but when I heard those two women... saying that jokingly, and they meant no harm by it, but they were definitely saying, hey, should we do this next year? Look how much fun they're having. I mean, I know it's hard, but how hard can it be? Look how many people are doing it. There were 60,000 runners. It was another record-setting year. And I can understand if you've never run a marathon, intellectually, you can say, yeah, that is probably really hard to run 26.2 miles. And when you see people smiling and cheering It looks so exciting. It's something you want to be a part of, but I don't think you, I don't think, I know that you don't know how actually excruciatingly hard it is until you've done it.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: You know what? Even people who train for months for a marathon, for their first marathon, don't know how hard it is until they get to mile 20. 21, because now you're in territory you've never run this far before in your life. And you actually don't know what your body is doing or is going to do because your body has never done that before in its life. Robes, it's hard to convey. And we've been talking about this not as running snobs. You know, runners, they give runners a hard time. You're all just dumping on the little, the people who are just trying to get into it or the influencers or people who want to come out here and walk it a little bit.
00:03:04
Speaker 1: No.
00:03:05
Speaker 2: No. Everybody's welcome. That's not it. But the problem sometimes, Robes, is just what you describe. I had told you story after story after story on Sunday of people talking about this marathon just being dismissive. Oh, I didn't train that hard. Oh, I only ran like a five miler in my training. I'll be fine. When you hear people not taking it seriously, we're not suggesting Rachel didn't.
00:03:29
Speaker 1: No, she did, it seems.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: She took it very seriously. But these stories of this young lady are a reminder what it's hard to get in people's heads, how difficult this is, how physically taxing it is. She is a 24-year-old as fit and elite of an athlete. And on pace robes, she was not to just have a good time. It was an elite time among runners.
00:03:57
Speaker 1: Yes, she was, by all accounts, she collapsed at mile 24 around 1.30 in the afternoon. And we can make this calculation because you crossed the finish line about 10, 15 minutes after that. And you ended up with a very good time as well, just a little over four hours. This young woman was set to, because we have her start time, she was in wave three. It looked like she might have crossed that finish line with like a 3.15 marathon. And if you don't know how elite that is, that is exceptional. I have a goal. One day, I've run six marathons, you've run four. My goal is to one day run a sub-four marathon, meaning three hours and 59 minutes. Our best time is four hours and 14. So to think she was going to compete or complete this marathon, or she was on track to a full hour before my best time, that just says just how fit, how fast and how prepared this runner was.
00:04:58
Speaker 2: She was smoking it. She was absolutely smoking it. So what happened? We have kind of a timeline here and we're getting this information from her dad who wasn't in town for it. Mom was, she was the one on the side cheering and celebrating and rooting her on. Dad was back tracking with the app. And if folks don't know this, most people are familiar with it by now, right? It's one of the coolest things out there. you can track your loved one on this app.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: I had people who were spectating with me because I was tracking you. This was my first time spectating. But people were asking me, can I ask you how you're tracking your runner? They didn't know. I mean, people come from all over and they don't know how to find their runner. And they're like, I've just been texting. Wait, there's an app? And I said, yes. You just put in the name, you get the bib number, and there really is. It's got maybe a little bit of a lag time, but you can see where your runner is. And as we are reading... what her family was doing. Her mom was doing what I was doing. She first met her daughter, Rachel at mile 14. She there's video of her online smiling, looking fit and happy and healthy running and waving past her mom and going on. Her mom then ran across town like I did for you to go try and meet her daughter at mile 25. Her daughter never made it. Her dad is texting her and is watching her on this app as well from back home in Pennsylvania. It's just anyone who's run this race or who has followed someone or tracked somebody knows exactly what those moments are like. You're encouraging them, you're following them, and you're nervously watching how they're doing.
00:06:42
Speaker 2: The part about it, it's wonderful to be able to do that. And the cool part of it is you don't have to get a response. You knew where I was and knew when I was coming up, even if I wasn't texting you during the race. You can literally see, oh, here he comes on your app. And then look up. There he is. It's really cool that they provide this. So even if you're not even a family member, a fan of somebody's, you can track whoever you want to track and keep up with. So this is what the family was doing. And Robes, as they describe what their morning was like, given... Our experience over the years with this race, Robes will imagine what they were feeling is devastating because as they're tracking and they're seeing her move and move and move and move and move, at some point they see it stop. And I remember, Robes, I've gotten text messages before. You have gotten text messages before from friends and family who see that dot, slow down or stop, and they start texting, what's wrong?
00:07:41
Speaker 1: I mean, it happened in our last marathon that we ran together in 2024. My dad was sending me, and this is where I just, I put myself in her father's position and I put myself in her position. But my dad was like, you're smoking it. You might get a sub four. He was tracking us. We were on track. And at mile 22 stopped because I started vomiting and I couldn't stop. And he said, you stopped. What's wrong? Are you okay? That's what parents do. That's what family members do. Because you know, at least especially if you've been following someone training, how hard this is, how serious this is, how you're pushing your body and your mind to places you can't even imagine. So I, yes, immediately felt what they must have been feeling, but probably never imagining the worst case scenario.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: But you know something, and Rob, you did this on Sunday. You saw my times get faster, faster, faster, faster, and then all of a sudden from One mile to the next, there's an extra two minutes on the pace. Massive slowdown. You knew something was wrong. You just didn't know what. Given what I had been going through with a foot injury, what is the reaction to a loved one to see that dot do that?
00:08:54
Speaker 1: So worried. And first of all, there was a little bit of a glitch at mile three. And Nikki and I, I'm telling you, I panicked. My girlfriend and I were following. I was following you. She was following her boyfriend. And all of a sudden, I saw you stop. She's like, TJ stopped. I was like, why did he stop after that? as soon as he got off the Verrazano, what happened? And so your heart is racing, racing, racing, and you keep refreshing, refreshing, trying to see if the little dot would start moving again. You started moving again, and I felt my body release. And then when you weren't texting me, I got nervous again or texting me back. But I kept seeing your dot moving, and so I said, all right, even if he can't text me back, he's still moving, it's okay.
00:09:35
Speaker 2: So we say all that to say, That is the experience her dad and her mom were having. The dad's sitting in Pennsylvania at home. The mom is along the course. So they're watching her robes for that many miles essentially crush it. So the first, so the only look we get of her is this video out of her. Good Lord. There's this video of her at mile 14 that her mom takes. Yep. And, Ro, she did exactly what you expect. We all had that slowdown. You don't want to love on your loved one, but you don't want to mess up your time. And at some point, like you said, Ro, after 14, 20 miles, slowing down or switching that pace even a little bit could be the end of you. So we see her, Robs. How perfect did she look at mile 14?
00:10:21
Speaker 1: She looked like she was actually shooting a Nike ad or what she had on Adidas, right? So an Adidas ad.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: The shoes, but I need to see her top. It might have been Nike. But yeah, she was perfectly dressed, coordinated. She looked like a badass.
00:10:34
Speaker 1: Fit, gorgeous, 24-year-old girl who just looked like she was And she was crushing this marathon, her first marathon ever. That's the scary thing. You don't know how your body's going to react. And I will even say having run six, I still don't know how my body is going to react at each marathon dependent on the weather, how I fueled, how well I've slept. All of those things are factors that can change your experience pretty dramatically. So even if you've run 10 or 20, every marathon is unique.
00:11:08
Speaker 2: And so this young lady, mile 14, this great video of her. It was quick. Well, that video is 10 seconds. She runs right by. She really didn't stop. High fives. I got stuff to do. See y'all at the next one. So mile 14, her mom sees her there. They move on then rope. She gets to mile 18. And her dad sends a message asking how she's doing. And we've been through this before. It's hard to type out full sentences whenever. But her simple response at mile 18 was, ow, O-W. I mean, it's not necessarily alarming.
00:11:40
Speaker 1: No, you'd think you've got a cramp, maybe. That's what I would think. Ow.
00:11:44
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:11:45
Speaker 1: Yes. And so it was the next mile, mile 19, she texted, ow, ow. And literally that was, it turns out her final text to anyone was, ow, ow. But she kept running. So you get that and you might think, oh no, what hurts? I don't know what her dad texted back, but that would be the likely next, are you okay? What hurts? But he ended up saying, I think final stretch. I think he was just trying to encourage her. At mile 23, I believe he saw, he's watching her dot move. So he texts her, final stretch, exclamation point.
00:12:24
Speaker 2: His heart rose. Those things are really important to runners.
00:12:27
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: You were doing it on this one, even though I had some issues I couldn't hear because of.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: My- I was like, you're crushing the Queensborough.
00:12:33
Speaker 2: And I was in sleep mode, got nothing. But when you're doing that and you turn that on, Robes, and you're getting text messages from folks, your dad is really good about it.
00:12:41
Speaker 1: I was getting, my dad, I felt like my dad was with me in a lot of these marathons because he'll text me and I have it so that it goes into my ears. So I'm like, dad says, you've got this, baby. You know, and I hear it in my ear as I'm running and it actually really helps.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: So 19- She responds back. Final text is just ow, ow. But like you said, Rope, so okay, fine. But that's mile 19. She's not texting back, but she gets to mile 20. They can see her. She gets to mile 21, 22. They can see her. Her mom was expecting her at mile what? 25. Mile 23 is when that last text you talked about, final stretch, comes to her. But at mile 24, Rope, this is a short distance. Before she gets to her mom, Rachel collapses on the course. Now, if these folks at this race embrace these runners like nobody's business, they said it was immediate. Anybody who had even the slightest medical training jumped in, and they immediately started CPR on this girl.
00:13:51
Speaker 1: Yes. I mean, they have medical tents set up throughout the course, and especially towards the end. Look, I was at the finish line. I get chills right when this was happening. Cause I made it to the finish line to watch you cross probably around 1 15, just to anticipate. So this was all just happening, but I saw several people on stretchers. I saw people being greeted with a wheelchair at the finish line. People had vomit bags. I mean, there are a lot of medical minor emergencies taking place when people cross that finish line, when their body finally gets to stop. this extreme workout for four-plus hours or three-plus hours. But they are at the ready, and there are medical personnel, and there is equipment. You're in the best place possible, probably, if you have a medical emergency, if you're along that marathon route. So she had immediate medical attention.
00:14:47
Speaker 2: And I give them credit, Robes. They say it was a couple of spectators who had medical training. They immediately... I mean, there was no delay in this young lady getting medical assistance. It wasn't any delay. So they come on. CPR is used. The defibrillator is used. They eventually get her on a cart. They get her to an ambulance. They get her to a hospital. They work on her for the next six hours.
00:15:10
Speaker 1: I mean, the woman who first got to her immediately said when she first felt her, there was no pulse.
00:15:14
Speaker 2: They worked on her for six hours trying to save this young lady's life. And she eventually was... Was declared dead at 9.40 p.m. Rose, I told you before we knew about this, I said it's something I've never seen before at a race. It's because of my condition, my injury, I ran in the extreme right side. That's the bus lane and the bike lanes. Most people are in the street being next to the crowd doing.
00:15:41
Speaker 1: No, I'm So I missed you at mile 16 because you were in the extreme right lane and we were on the left side with the spectators.
00:15:49
Speaker 2: Not paying attention to anything else focused on my foot and what's going on. I had to look up and had to move pretty quickly out of the way because coming towards me in that essentially bus lane, free lane on the right, was an emergency vehicle with the lights on. I've never seen that on a course in any races. We have seen plenty of people have to be put in carts or even go on stretchers and all kinds of things. Robes, I said, what in God's name is going on? Because they didn't seem to give a damn that they were about to come hit me. They were, get the hell out of the way. Robes, ambulance lights on essentially what is a golf cart, and there was a person being carried off. I was like, what the hell? That was my thought. I go a little further, Robes, and here comes another similar situation, but they didn't have the lights on. But it was, that was a guy in the back and they had a neck brace on him. And then I saw one last person in that last stretch was literally laid out on the ground getting medical attention.
00:16:45
Speaker 1: That was almost certainly her.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: Robes, because the timing you described, we are in the exact same spot. She started an hour after me, but her time was an hour better than me. So it makes sense. It was that exact stretch. Because it freaked me out when I saw the lights on that. I was like, God. That must be bad. Oh, good Lord.
00:17:22
Speaker 1: To think that you ran right past where she dropped. I mean, you did. There's no way. You crossed the finish line around 140-something, and that would have been, you would have run right past her.
00:17:38
Speaker 2: Ropes, it is so scary. We just saw an injury in football. We talked about this this morning. When a football player has to see, right, a teammate go down with a neck injury and they're on the ground not moving. And then those guys got to get up and continue to play a football game. Ropes, you talked about, we've been talking about it all morning with running. Like, you're scared now. Like, I don't know what my body's doing. Is that pain? Do I need to stop? Ropes, every single marathon, don't you push your body beyond a pain you've never experienced before?
00:18:07
Speaker 1: Yes. And look, I think it is nerve wracking when your body is experiencing that much pain to know when is this dangerous and when is this just mental? How much do I push myself? And for me, my Because I do tend to start, when my body gets dehydrated and starts to break down, I do start to vomit a lot of times. And for me, you start to get dizzy and you think, I don't want to mess with this. I don't want to collapse. I don't want to faint. I'm afraid of, like when your body's, showing massive signs of distress, that's understandable when you're running a marathon, but at what point is it dangerous? And I think that's the scary part when you see a story, when you hear a story like this. This poor young woman obviously was pushing herself, but so was everyone in that marathon. So how was she to know that she was in a life-threatening situation? Yes, your legs hurt. Yes, you get cramps. Yes, you have all sorts of things that are happening to you that you weren't experiencing before. And We don't know how far her training runs were leading up to her first marathon, but if she followed the standard marathon training program, your longest run before your first marathon is 20 miles. That is pretty standard. Some people have you run 22 miles, but most of them 20 miles is the most. So that last 6.2 miles is uncharted territory. So you don't know how you're supposed to feel. And everyone tells you, you'll hit a wall at 20. You'll feel like you can't keep going. You'll feel like your legs can't move. Sometimes you cramp up. I've had friends tell me that they basically hobbled over the finish line because they couldn't move their quads anymore because they seized up. So you're hearing all these stories. So if you're experiencing these pains or these cramps or these you might think, wow, this hurts. But you might also think, this is what happens.
00:19:54
Speaker 2: This is what's supposed to happen.
00:19:54
Speaker 1: This is what your body is supposed to feel like because not 1% of the world has finished a marathon. So it's pretty extraordinary. It's very rare. And there aren't a lot of anecdotal, this is what's supposed to happen, or this is how you're supposed to feel. It's individual. It's unique with each marathon. And I know this one, you might even think we had perfect weather. Look, we didn't, it wasn't too hot. I mean, that's, I think people are more aware. At least I am when it's hotter. I know that my body's going to be under more stress and I'm more aware of what I need to do to offset the heat or what my body's up against. This one, she might have been lulled into this feeling of, oh, this is perfect, perfect weather. I'm perfectly conditioned. This is just some pain I'm going to have to get through.
00:20:46
Speaker 2: The other thing I think about that, Robes, is she didn't have enough experience to know what she was experiencing.
00:20:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:20:53
Speaker 2: There are times we flat out said to you, baby, something's wrong. Like I've done this enough to know, okay, that's not right. That's not okay. I need to stop running.
00:21:03
Speaker 1: That happened after a half marathon this past year in Mystic, Connecticut.
00:21:07
Speaker 2: Changed my life. Ropes, that moment changed how I run, how I prepare and what I think physically. Ropes, I don't know how bad that could have been. I don't know what was wrong with me in that moment. It was explained. We We Googled it. We figured it out. Maybe I should have gone to a hospital.
00:21:26
Speaker 1: Yes. And just to let people know what happened after that, we did a half marathon in Mystic, Connecticut, and you basically did not fuel beforehand and you did not fuel afterwards because we were going to a brunch, but a couple of hours passed. And by the time you sat down to eat and you started eating, it I believe the glycogen or just the rush of sugar and carbs that your body was desperately needing hit you all at once, and you basically fainted.
00:21:56
Speaker 2: It was the scariest thing I've ever experienced.
00:21:57
Speaker 1: The whole restaurant got up.
00:21:59
Speaker 2: It was scary because it's rare, but your body did something that you can't control and you can't understand. I had no control. I had nothing I could do about it.
00:22:08
Speaker 1: You said, babe, I think I'm in trouble, and you started sweating. Yeah. And I think anyone who's ever fainted or near fainted knows what it feels like. You get a wave of nausea, a wave of heat, and you started to go down. I had to hold you.
00:22:22
Speaker 2: The first thing I said to you, baby, I am in trouble.
00:22:26
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:22:26
Speaker 2: Because I know my body. And I had to listen to it in that moment. We don't know what she was experiencing, Rose, but whatever her body was experiencing was experiencing for the first time ever. So what did happen here? Probes, I had not. And we're getting this from her dad who talks to the New York Times. I'd never heard of this condition.
00:22:48
Speaker 1: I hadn't either. It's called rhabdomyolysis. And it's a condition, it's a rare condition. We should make that very well known.
00:22:57
Speaker 2: Like extremely, right?
00:22:59
Speaker 1: Yes, extremely rare. But it's a condition that causes your muscles to break down and it usually occurs, they actually list this if you Google it, in marathons. But basically when you have extreme... an extreme fitness situation, basically, where you're pushing your body beyond what it's used to, but it literally causes your muscles to break down, which leads to muscle death. And it says, when this happens, toxic components of your muscle fibers enter your circulation system, like your bloodstream, and go into your kidneys. That can cause kidney damage, or in this case, kidney failure.
00:23:37
Speaker 2: Your body is poisoning itself.
00:23:38
Speaker 1: Yes, muscle fibers. Look, I've talked about my, my father's a food scientist and talked about glycogen levels in your muscles. And once you get past mile 20, the reason why marathoners call it the wall is because it actually is a physical situation where your body has no more glycogen reserves. So what does your body have to do to keep moving? It has to go into your muscles to pull fuel out of it. And that creates muscle deterioration, muscle atrophy. And yes, in some rare cases, muscle disintegration.
00:24:09
Speaker 2: Muscle death. Muscle disintegration, Jesus.
00:24:13
Speaker 1: So I wonder, this is why, and it's always this delicate balance of trying to keep fueling yourself. You see runners with those packs, if you've ever been along a race or the aftermath of a race, you'll see a bunch of packets where people are sucking down And it's just a big boost of carbs and energy and fuel so that your body, you're trying to prevent your body from doing that, from going into your muscles. So if you keep, because literally you have no gas in the tank after, I believe, mile 20, which is what, a couple hours for most people. And so if you don't have that fuel and that water, your body's going to do what it needs to do. And unfortunately, it attacked itself in her case. Oh, my God.
00:24:54
Speaker 2: And those scenes, I remember Roge was talking about losing control in muscles. There are videos out there of people. And one guy did it to me to where he almost kicked me and knocked me over. He lost control of his body. He was trying to make his legs move. He was just doing this. He couldn't do it. Like he was seizing. He had nothing he could do to tell his body to take another stride.
00:25:17
Speaker 1: I know, and that's why training and practice and knowing your body and knowing how to fuel and knowing how to handle the weather. I'm always struggling with how much water because you know what you do if you're in this condition and you get an IV fluid. It's all about flushing it out, flushing it out, getting water in you. It's this delicate balance. If you get too much water in you, you get nauseated and start vomiting. That's always been my problem because I'm worried about dehydration. So I try to get water in me and then boom. So it's just this, it's this delicate dance. Most runners are trying to just find this balance so that they can have optimal output with minimal input.
00:25:56
Speaker 2: Well, the symptoms here, like how is anyone supposed to know, right? weak muscles, muscle stiffness, muscle pain. And then the key one they always list is a change in the color of your urine, dark urine. You're not going to know that. Certainly that. So what are you supposed to listen to in your muscles? Yes, your muscles are going to hurt. They're going to be screaming. We ain't going nowhere else. At what point did you know, okay, I need to stop? And wrote the last thing anybody who trained for five months wants to do at mile 24.
00:26:30
Speaker 1: Is go get IV fluids at the medical tent?
00:26:32
Speaker 2: Stop.
00:26:33
Speaker 1: No. You don't. And look, to the point where you are putting out so much, it's interesting. I've started a race having to use, like having to pee. But once you start going and you're exerting all this, there's no fluids left inside of you. So it's not as if she would even have had the opportunity to know that she was having an issue with her pee color or any sort of change in her fluids. She wouldn't have known. I found it so shockingly abrupt that she would just literally drop dead. I mean, I know they kept working on her and I know they kept trying to flush out her system and they're giving her CPR. But to hear that woman who had medical experience say the first thing she did when she was giving her CPR is take her pulse and there was no pulse.
00:27:22
Speaker 2: I would like to hear more because you just said that phrase, drop dead. Like, in an instant, it was over. She's running one moment, and the next moment, she's on the ground, dead. This is a horrific story. There are lessons and things to learn, and we all have to pay attention to for runners and non-runners and runners, people who love runners that are in your family. Rosie, if you're thinking about getting all kinds of stuff, baby, but this 24-year-old young lady, what's her dad's quote here? It's unfathomable, perfect health practice. Perfect shape, 24 years old. And that's true. Her fiance, he was out there as well. It was an awful, awful time.
00:28:07
Speaker 1: It's just like, it's worst case scenario. Like I said, when you see your runner stopped, or I know when my family saw us stop, you're worried that they might be sick or hurt or injured or might need medical attention. I don't think any of us immediately jumped to death, but I will tell you after you finished this year and knowing what happened after the half marathon and knowing how I actually have scared myself with not being able to stop vomiting after a race, you also had that situation where you just kept vomiting, kept vomiting. And then when we finally got home and, And we had plans to go out and celebrate and you just dropped on the couch on my lap and fell asleep for two and a half hours. I started Googling. I didn't tell you, but I got nervous. Should I be worried? Should I wake him up? I was thinking about people who get concussions or have some sort of, like you don't want them to fall asleep. Because maybe his body is shutting down. I just, I got a little nervous and they said usually it's accompanied with a high fever. So I was literally Googling symptoms of when I should be worried or should I wake you up or yes, because I think when you've had worst case scenario situations happen in your family or in your life. The statistics don't matter. You tell me it's rare. It doesn't matter. I had a 1% chance of having breast cancer at 40. Like when stuff like that happens to you, you start thinking, you know what? I could be the 1%. He could be the 1%. And so you start getting nervous because I think those of us who have run recognize just what this does to our bodies. but even this story and this situation shocked the hell out of me.
00:29:54
Speaker 2: We have to pay attention to this and it is rare. Deaths are Extremely rare. Or we put in here from JAMA, the study. They studied for 13 years, 29 million marathon and half marathoners from 2010 to 2023. 179 cardiac arrests out of that. 179 cardiac arrest robes out of 29 million people that ran. That's a really low number.
00:30:15
Speaker 1: It's small.
00:30:15
Speaker 2: In those 179 cardiac arrests, there were 59 deaths that were in their robes. That equates to one in 500,000 runners that have died in marathons in that stretch of 13 years.
00:30:36
Speaker 1: It's incredibly rare.
00:30:37
Speaker 2: It's so rare. And this thing, Robes, this Rabdo, please say it again for me.
00:30:41
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I actually have it phonetically, Robdomyolysis.
00:30:44
Speaker 2: Robdomyolysis is even rarer. Robes, what, 25,000 or so are diagnosed within the country, but the deaths from that every year.
00:30:52
Speaker 1: Five to 10? Yeah, very small.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: Very small number. And so many people who do end up with this end up, it has to be diagnosed. You got to go to a hospital and they have to tell you what's going on with you and then they can treat it. But most people don't dial this.
00:31:06
Speaker 1: Yes. There are marathoners who go to the hospital after races and get diagnosed with this. That's a lot of that number, but they're all treatable. They get IV fluids in them. They flush out their system. They flush out their blood. They get that It's kind of awful to think about, but your muscle fibers get flushed out of your system. So the toxicity levels go down and they're able to fully recover.
00:31:30
Speaker 2: What was the timing for her? Like when was she in trouble?
00:31:33
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like we can only base it off of mile 18 when she first felt a pain. Because at mile 14, she looked like she felt great.
00:31:42
Speaker 2: Rose, how many times? You say owl. It's not the end of the world. It's not alarming. Seeing the owl text doesn't signal to me that she was in trouble. She's just acknowledging maybe how she felt. Or, oh, it's because this is her first. Maybe she was in trouble at that point. But I just wonder, when was she beyond the point of getting help? At what point in her race?
00:32:07
Speaker 1: I was wondering, what if she just... I know no one wants to walk. We didn't want to walk in, especially if you think you're going to get a sub-330. They call this, when you're a mountain climber, summit fever. So people die on the way up Everest, Mont Blanc, you name it, because they've focused, they've trained so long and so hard. You're so close. There's no way you're giving up. And you lose your perspective and your... like ability to reason. And that same thing could be said for folks when you're right near the finish line. And just when you think you can't go another step, you're like, but I'm so close. And you just push and push and push. If it had happened earlier, maybe she would have stopped. If she wasn't, if she didn't have a goal in mind, maybe she would have slowed down. Maybe she would have walked. Maybe she would have gotten gone to the water station. I mean, people don't go to the water stations cause they don't want to lose time in seconds. You just think about all the what ifs. It's just a cautionary tale and a reminder about how serious this is, how taxing this is to your body. And my God, our hearts go out to that family.
00:33:13
Speaker 2: And please, you all respect it. If you're wanting to get into marathon running, excuse me, if you want to enter the New York City Marathon, because a lot of people do want to enter it and don't necessarily want to run it. They don't necessarily want to do the training to run it. or they want credit for running it without doing the six or five months training at a time. That's fine, but please respect these folks who are putting it in. Please respect for your own safety. Robes, respect what you have to do. Robes, it's almost impossible to get somebody to understand what you feel like at mile 20 and what that is.
00:33:50
Speaker 1: You know what I would equate it to? And you'll laugh because you won't understand, but every woman out there watching, listening will. It's like explaining what it's like to give birth. And by the way, if you've done it more than once, each experience is different, but you can't explain that kind of pain. You can't explain that experience to someone who hasn't gone through it. And I think it's very similar.
00:34:13
Speaker 2: To- Looks like you guys are fine. People having kids every day. Everything seems to work out.
00:34:17
Speaker 1: Some cases you get a baby, some cases you get a medal, but either way, you go through hell to get it.
00:34:21
Speaker 2: But no, that's a very good point to make. No matter what, I'm sitting over here and I'm saying, yeah, women have babies all the time. What's the big deal? It's fine. Okay, go through some pain.
00:34:29
Speaker 1: Got the baby. We good.
00:34:30
Speaker 2: I'm not dismissing. What I'm saying is it's easy.
00:34:33
Speaker 1: To sit here. We take it for granted.
00:34:34
Speaker 2: I still, there is something I will never be able to understand. Right. No matter how much you explain to me, how much I've read, how many stories I've heard, I will never get it. That's a good example.
00:34:45
Speaker 1: And that is exactly how I would describe trying to explain what it feels like to run a marathon to someone who's never run a marathon.
00:34:52
Speaker 2: And at the same point, I don't understand what happens to a woman's body I don't know how it goes out of the shape it was in, and it goes back to the shape it was in, and things widen, and then they lessen again. And I don't know how y'all do that. It's an absolute miracle. So is running a damn marathon.
00:35:10
Speaker 1: Agreed.
00:35:10
Speaker 2: I'm not comparing the two things, by the way. But I'm saying, babe, it is physically virtually, it's almost impossible.
00:35:17
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:35:18
Speaker 2: To do this. Yes. And people do it, and we're looking forward to doing it next year, but man. This is a reminder here, babe. You said the person in 2024 died of what at the marathon?
00:35:29
Speaker 1: Hypertension. Look, we've had some hot marathons here in New York, and that's always, always an issue. But you actually have been the Brooklyn half marathon in 2022 that you ran. A man collapsed right at the finish line.
00:35:43
Speaker 2: Sabine was at the finish line, and she saw all this go down. I think she informed me before I was even aware. I think it was 31 or something, a young guy. dropped dead at the end of.
00:35:54
Speaker 1: A half marathon.
00:35:55
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:35:55
Speaker 1: These are all, I have seen the deaths. They do tend to be younger folks. Although the New York City Marathon 2013, you mentioned this one, Joy Johnson, 86 years old. She finished, but she fell at what mile?
00:36:10
Speaker 2: 24, I think it was, later. That's pretty late. I mean, any 86-year-old woman out there running, but ropes.
00:36:15
Speaker 1: Falling at all at 86 anywhere is scary when you're 86.
00:36:18
Speaker 2: Hits her head. Refuses to go to the hospital. Refuses to stop. They bandage her, babe. They bandage her up. She finished. Crosses the finish line. Huge victory. Everybody's celebrating her. I think she was the oldest participant that year. Next day, she's got the bandage on still, wearing it proudly. Died in a sleep the next night from head trauma.
00:36:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:36:43
Speaker 2: Well, it's just a reminder. I was trying to find something. She was doing it for her granddad. She was doing something she loved. I can't find one, baby. This is just awful. That's just a tragedy.
00:36:54
Speaker 1: It certainly is. And just, yes, it's just a reminder to all of us. I always say, yes, we can learn lessons as runners. We can learn lessons as spectators. But we can also just learn lessons as humans. Tell the people you love, you love them when you can because you just don't know.
00:37:10
Speaker 2: All right, folks. We appreciate you wanted to, certainly, as soon as we heard about this, we knew we wanted to talk about it and continue to talk about this young lady, Rachel. I hope to hear more. I think it's important for runners to hear more about exactly what happened to her, and there are lessons in this, and I don't know how her family will feel about that, but we need to understand and not make, I don't know, maybe this is a fluke thing, or maybe there is something we can point to. I don't know, but just like you said, baby, God bless the family right now. Folks, we appreciate you as always. I'm TJ, or my dear Amy Roback. We'll talk to you all soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: We are just getting word that a young woman has died after running in the New York City Marathon, and she came within two miles of that finish line. Welcome, everybody. I'm TJ. That's Robes. And Robes, this is one, when you hear the details, it's tragic no matter what. And these things do happen. They're very rare. But the details of this, I wanted to be able to say, you know, she's doing something she loved or find something like that. This is just sad top to bottom.
00:00:33
Speaker 1: It's sad top to bottom because this shouldn't have happened. And it's scary to think that it did. She was 24 years old. Her name, we should just say Rachel Appa from Pennsylvania. And she was an elite division one college athlete. She had been training for months for the New York City Marathon. It was her first marathon and she was doing it in honor of her grandfather.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: So you hear those things. And what a 24-year-old elite athlete. She's in great shape by all accounts, and she trained. So you have to ask what in God's name happened. Well, Robes, we've talked about this. We've been talking about this plenty. We recalled our experience this past Sunday. And one of the things you made note of, Robes, is just how some people were standing next to you, a couple of ladies, and they were like, oh, my God, this looks so fun. This looks so easy. Robes, it's hard to convey to people just how almost impossible it is to put your body through this.
00:01:37
Speaker 1: It's true. And usually I don't start talking to strangers, but when I heard those two women... saying that jokingly, and they meant no harm by it, but they were definitely saying, hey, should we do this next year? Look how much fun they're having. I mean, I know it's hard, but how hard can it be? Look how many people are doing it. There were 60,000 runners. It was another record-setting year. And I can understand if you've never run a marathon, intellectually, you can say, yeah, that is probably really hard to run 26.2 miles. And when you see people smiling and cheering It looks so exciting. It's something you want to be a part of, but I don't think you, I don't think, I know that you don't know how actually excruciatingly hard it is until you've done it.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: You know what? Even people who train for months for a marathon, for their first marathon, don't know how hard it is until they get to mile 20. 21, because now you're in territory you've never run this far before in your life. And you actually don't know what your body is doing or is going to do because your body has never done that before in its life. Robes, it's hard to convey. And we've been talking about this not as running snobs. You know, runners, they give runners a hard time. You're all just dumping on the little, the people who are just trying to get into it or the influencers or people who want to come out here and walk it a little bit.
00:03:04
Speaker 1: No.
00:03:05
Speaker 2: No. Everybody's welcome. That's not it. But the problem sometimes, Robes, is just what you describe. I had told you story after story after story on Sunday of people talking about this marathon just being dismissive. Oh, I didn't train that hard. Oh, I only ran like a five miler in my training. I'll be fine. When you hear people not taking it seriously, we're not suggesting Rachel didn't.
00:03:29
Speaker 1: No, she did, it seems.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: She took it very seriously. But these stories of this young lady are a reminder what it's hard to get in people's heads, how difficult this is, how physically taxing it is. She is a 24-year-old as fit and elite of an athlete. And on pace robes, she was not to just have a good time. It was an elite time among runners.
00:03:57
Speaker 1: Yes, she was, by all accounts, she collapsed at mile 24 around 1.30 in the afternoon. And we can make this calculation because you crossed the finish line about 10, 15 minutes after that. And you ended up with a very good time as well, just a little over four hours. This young woman was set to, because we have her start time, she was in wave three. It looked like she might have crossed that finish line with like a 3.15 marathon. And if you don't know how elite that is, that is exceptional. I have a goal. One day, I've run six marathons, you've run four. My goal is to one day run a sub-four marathon, meaning three hours and 59 minutes. Our best time is four hours and 14. So to think she was going to compete or complete this marathon, or she was on track to a full hour before my best time, that just says just how fit, how fast and how prepared this runner was.
00:04:58
Speaker 2: She was smoking it. She was absolutely smoking it. So what happened? We have kind of a timeline here and we're getting this information from her dad who wasn't in town for it. Mom was, she was the one on the side cheering and celebrating and rooting her on. Dad was back tracking with the app. And if folks don't know this, most people are familiar with it by now, right? It's one of the coolest things out there. you can track your loved one on this app.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: I had people who were spectating with me because I was tracking you. This was my first time spectating. But people were asking me, can I ask you how you're tracking your runner? They didn't know. I mean, people come from all over and they don't know how to find their runner. And they're like, I've just been texting. Wait, there's an app? And I said, yes. You just put in the name, you get the bib number, and there really is. It's got maybe a little bit of a lag time, but you can see where your runner is. And as we are reading... what her family was doing. Her mom was doing what I was doing. She first met her daughter, Rachel at mile 14. She there's video of her online smiling, looking fit and happy and healthy running and waving past her mom and going on. Her mom then ran across town like I did for you to go try and meet her daughter at mile 25. Her daughter never made it. Her dad is texting her and is watching her on this app as well from back home in Pennsylvania. It's just anyone who's run this race or who has followed someone or tracked somebody knows exactly what those moments are like. You're encouraging them, you're following them, and you're nervously watching how they're doing.
00:06:42
Speaker 2: The part about it, it's wonderful to be able to do that. And the cool part of it is you don't have to get a response. You knew where I was and knew when I was coming up, even if I wasn't texting you during the race. You can literally see, oh, here he comes on your app. And then look up. There he is. It's really cool that they provide this. So even if you're not even a family member, a fan of somebody's, you can track whoever you want to track and keep up with. So this is what the family was doing. And Robes, as they describe what their morning was like, given... Our experience over the years with this race, Robes will imagine what they were feeling is devastating because as they're tracking and they're seeing her move and move and move and move and move, at some point they see it stop. And I remember, Robes, I've gotten text messages before. You have gotten text messages before from friends and family who see that dot, slow down or stop, and they start texting, what's wrong?
00:07:41
Speaker 1: I mean, it happened in our last marathon that we ran together in 2024. My dad was sending me, and this is where I just, I put myself in her father's position and I put myself in her position. But my dad was like, you're smoking it. You might get a sub four. He was tracking us. We were on track. And at mile 22 stopped because I started vomiting and I couldn't stop. And he said, you stopped. What's wrong? Are you okay? That's what parents do. That's what family members do. Because you know, at least especially if you've been following someone training, how hard this is, how serious this is, how you're pushing your body and your mind to places you can't even imagine. So I, yes, immediately felt what they must have been feeling, but probably never imagining the worst case scenario.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: But you know something, and Rob, you did this on Sunday. You saw my times get faster, faster, faster, faster, and then all of a sudden from One mile to the next, there's an extra two minutes on the pace. Massive slowdown. You knew something was wrong. You just didn't know what. Given what I had been going through with a foot injury, what is the reaction to a loved one to see that dot do that?
00:08:54
Speaker 1: So worried. And first of all, there was a little bit of a glitch at mile three. And Nikki and I, I'm telling you, I panicked. My girlfriend and I were following. I was following you. She was following her boyfriend. And all of a sudden, I saw you stop. She's like, TJ stopped. I was like, why did he stop after that? as soon as he got off the Verrazano, what happened? And so your heart is racing, racing, racing, and you keep refreshing, refreshing, trying to see if the little dot would start moving again. You started moving again, and I felt my body release. And then when you weren't texting me, I got nervous again or texting me back. But I kept seeing your dot moving, and so I said, all right, even if he can't text me back, he's still moving, it's okay.
00:09:35
Speaker 2: So we say all that to say, That is the experience her dad and her mom were having. The dad's sitting in Pennsylvania at home. The mom is along the course. So they're watching her robes for that many miles essentially crush it. So the first, so the only look we get of her is this video out of her. Good Lord. There's this video of her at mile 14 that her mom takes. Yep. And, Ro, she did exactly what you expect. We all had that slowdown. You don't want to love on your loved one, but you don't want to mess up your time. And at some point, like you said, Ro, after 14, 20 miles, slowing down or switching that pace even a little bit could be the end of you. So we see her, Robs. How perfect did she look at mile 14?
00:10:21
Speaker 1: She looked like she was actually shooting a Nike ad or what she had on Adidas, right? So an Adidas ad.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: The shoes, but I need to see her top. It might have been Nike. But yeah, she was perfectly dressed, coordinated. She looked like a badass.
00:10:34
Speaker 1: Fit, gorgeous, 24-year-old girl who just looked like she was And she was crushing this marathon, her first marathon ever. That's the scary thing. You don't know how your body's going to react. And I will even say having run six, I still don't know how my body is going to react at each marathon dependent on the weather, how I fueled, how well I've slept. All of those things are factors that can change your experience pretty dramatically. So even if you've run 10 or 20, every marathon is unique.
00:11:08
Speaker 2: And so this young lady, mile 14, this great video of her. It was quick. Well, that video is 10 seconds. She runs right by. She really didn't stop. High fives. I got stuff to do. See y'all at the next one. So mile 14, her mom sees her there. They move on then rope. She gets to mile 18. And her dad sends a message asking how she's doing. And we've been through this before. It's hard to type out full sentences whenever. But her simple response at mile 18 was, ow, O-W. I mean, it's not necessarily alarming.
00:11:40
Speaker 1: No, you'd think you've got a cramp, maybe. That's what I would think. Ow.
00:11:44
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:11:45
Speaker 1: Yes. And so it was the next mile, mile 19, she texted, ow, ow. And literally that was, it turns out her final text to anyone was, ow, ow. But she kept running. So you get that and you might think, oh no, what hurts? I don't know what her dad texted back, but that would be the likely next, are you okay? What hurts? But he ended up saying, I think final stretch. I think he was just trying to encourage her. At mile 23, I believe he saw, he's watching her dot move. So he texts her, final stretch, exclamation point.
00:12:24
Speaker 2: His heart rose. Those things are really important to runners.
00:12:27
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: You were doing it on this one, even though I had some issues I couldn't hear because of.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: My- I was like, you're crushing the Queensborough.
00:12:33
Speaker 2: And I was in sleep mode, got nothing. But when you're doing that and you turn that on, Robes, and you're getting text messages from folks, your dad is really good about it.
00:12:41
Speaker 1: I was getting, my dad, I felt like my dad was with me in a lot of these marathons because he'll text me and I have it so that it goes into my ears. So I'm like, dad says, you've got this, baby. You know, and I hear it in my ear as I'm running and it actually really helps.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: So 19- She responds back. Final text is just ow, ow. But like you said, Rope, so okay, fine. But that's mile 19. She's not texting back, but she gets to mile 20. They can see her. She gets to mile 21, 22. They can see her. Her mom was expecting her at mile what? 25. Mile 23 is when that last text you talked about, final stretch, comes to her. But at mile 24, Rope, this is a short distance. Before she gets to her mom, Rachel collapses on the course. Now, if these folks at this race embrace these runners like nobody's business, they said it was immediate. Anybody who had even the slightest medical training jumped in, and they immediately started CPR on this girl.
00:13:51
Speaker 1: Yes. I mean, they have medical tents set up throughout the course, and especially towards the end. Look, I was at the finish line. I get chills right when this was happening. Cause I made it to the finish line to watch you cross probably around 1 15, just to anticipate. So this was all just happening, but I saw several people on stretchers. I saw people being greeted with a wheelchair at the finish line. People had vomit bags. I mean, there are a lot of medical minor emergencies taking place when people cross that finish line, when their body finally gets to stop. this extreme workout for four-plus hours or three-plus hours. But they are at the ready, and there are medical personnel, and there is equipment. You're in the best place possible, probably, if you have a medical emergency, if you're along that marathon route. So she had immediate medical attention.
00:14:47
Speaker 2: And I give them credit, Robes. They say it was a couple of spectators who had medical training. They immediately... I mean, there was no delay in this young lady getting medical assistance. It wasn't any delay. So they come on. CPR is used. The defibrillator is used. They eventually get her on a cart. They get her to an ambulance. They get her to a hospital. They work on her for the next six hours.
00:15:10
Speaker 1: I mean, the woman who first got to her immediately said when she first felt her, there was no pulse.
00:15:14
Speaker 2: They worked on her for six hours trying to save this young lady's life. And she eventually was... Was declared dead at 9.40 p.m. Rose, I told you before we knew about this, I said it's something I've never seen before at a race. It's because of my condition, my injury, I ran in the extreme right side. That's the bus lane and the bike lanes. Most people are in the street being next to the crowd doing.
00:15:41
Speaker 1: No, I'm So I missed you at mile 16 because you were in the extreme right lane and we were on the left side with the spectators.
00:15:49
Speaker 2: Not paying attention to anything else focused on my foot and what's going on. I had to look up and had to move pretty quickly out of the way because coming towards me in that essentially bus lane, free lane on the right, was an emergency vehicle with the lights on. I've never seen that on a course in any races. We have seen plenty of people have to be put in carts or even go on stretchers and all kinds of things. Robes, I said, what in God's name is going on? Because they didn't seem to give a damn that they were about to come hit me. They were, get the hell out of the way. Robes, ambulance lights on essentially what is a golf cart, and there was a person being carried off. I was like, what the hell? That was my thought. I go a little further, Robes, and here comes another similar situation, but they didn't have the lights on. But it was, that was a guy in the back and they had a neck brace on him. And then I saw one last person in that last stretch was literally laid out on the ground getting medical attention.
00:16:45
Speaker 1: That was almost certainly her.
00:16:47
Speaker 2: Robes, because the timing you described, we are in the exact same spot. She started an hour after me, but her time was an hour better than me. So it makes sense. It was that exact stretch. Because it freaked me out when I saw the lights on that. I was like, God. That must be bad. Oh, good Lord.
00:17:22
Speaker 1: To think that you ran right past where she dropped. I mean, you did. There's no way. You crossed the finish line around 140-something, and that would have been, you would have run right past her.
00:17:38
Speaker 2: Ropes, it is so scary. We just saw an injury in football. We talked about this this morning. When a football player has to see, right, a teammate go down with a neck injury and they're on the ground not moving. And then those guys got to get up and continue to play a football game. Ropes, you talked about, we've been talking about it all morning with running. Like, you're scared now. Like, I don't know what my body's doing. Is that pain? Do I need to stop? Ropes, every single marathon, don't you push your body beyond a pain you've never experienced before?
00:18:07
Speaker 1: Yes. And look, I think it is nerve wracking when your body is experiencing that much pain to know when is this dangerous and when is this just mental? How much do I push myself? And for me, my Because I do tend to start, when my body gets dehydrated and starts to break down, I do start to vomit a lot of times. And for me, you start to get dizzy and you think, I don't want to mess with this. I don't want to collapse. I don't want to faint. I'm afraid of, like when your body's, showing massive signs of distress, that's understandable when you're running a marathon, but at what point is it dangerous? And I think that's the scary part when you see a story, when you hear a story like this. This poor young woman obviously was pushing herself, but so was everyone in that marathon. So how was she to know that she was in a life-threatening situation? Yes, your legs hurt. Yes, you get cramps. Yes, you have all sorts of things that are happening to you that you weren't experiencing before. And We don't know how far her training runs were leading up to her first marathon, but if she followed the standard marathon training program, your longest run before your first marathon is 20 miles. That is pretty standard. Some people have you run 22 miles, but most of them 20 miles is the most. So that last 6.2 miles is uncharted territory. So you don't know how you're supposed to feel. And everyone tells you, you'll hit a wall at 20. You'll feel like you can't keep going. You'll feel like your legs can't move. Sometimes you cramp up. I've had friends tell me that they basically hobbled over the finish line because they couldn't move their quads anymore because they seized up. So you're hearing all these stories. So if you're experiencing these pains or these cramps or these you might think, wow, this hurts. But you might also think, this is what happens.
00:19:54
Speaker 2: This is what's supposed to happen.
00:19:54
Speaker 1: This is what your body is supposed to feel like because not 1% of the world has finished a marathon. So it's pretty extraordinary. It's very rare. And there aren't a lot of anecdotal, this is what's supposed to happen, or this is how you're supposed to feel. It's individual. It's unique with each marathon. And I know this one, you might even think we had perfect weather. Look, we didn't, it wasn't too hot. I mean, that's, I think people are more aware. At least I am when it's hotter. I know that my body's going to be under more stress and I'm more aware of what I need to do to offset the heat or what my body's up against. This one, she might have been lulled into this feeling of, oh, this is perfect, perfect weather. I'm perfectly conditioned. This is just some pain I'm going to have to get through.
00:20:46
Speaker 2: The other thing I think about that, Robes, is she didn't have enough experience to know what she was experiencing.
00:20:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:20:53
Speaker 2: There are times we flat out said to you, baby, something's wrong. Like I've done this enough to know, okay, that's not right. That's not okay. I need to stop running.
00:21:03
Speaker 1: That happened after a half marathon this past year in Mystic, Connecticut.
00:21:07
Speaker 2: Changed my life. Ropes, that moment changed how I run, how I prepare and what I think physically. Ropes, I don't know how bad that could have been. I don't know what was wrong with me in that moment. It was explained. We We Googled it. We figured it out. Maybe I should have gone to a hospital.
00:21:26
Speaker 1: Yes. And just to let people know what happened after that, we did a half marathon in Mystic, Connecticut, and you basically did not fuel beforehand and you did not fuel afterwards because we were going to a brunch, but a couple of hours passed. And by the time you sat down to eat and you started eating, it I believe the glycogen or just the rush of sugar and carbs that your body was desperately needing hit you all at once, and you basically fainted.
00:21:56
Speaker 2: It was the scariest thing I've ever experienced.
00:21:57
Speaker 1: The whole restaurant got up.
00:21:59
Speaker 2: It was scary because it's rare, but your body did something that you can't control and you can't understand. I had no control. I had nothing I could do about it.
00:22:08
Speaker 1: You said, babe, I think I'm in trouble, and you started sweating. Yeah. And I think anyone who's ever fainted or near fainted knows what it feels like. You get a wave of nausea, a wave of heat, and you started to go down. I had to hold you.
00:22:22
Speaker 2: The first thing I said to you, baby, I am in trouble.
00:22:26
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:22:26
Speaker 2: Because I know my body. And I had to listen to it in that moment. We don't know what she was experiencing, Rose, but whatever her body was experiencing was experiencing for the first time ever. So what did happen here? Probes, I had not. And we're getting this from her dad who talks to the New York Times. I'd never heard of this condition.
00:22:48
Speaker 1: I hadn't either. It's called rhabdomyolysis. And it's a condition, it's a rare condition. We should make that very well known.
00:22:57
Speaker 2: Like extremely, right?
00:22:59
Speaker 1: Yes, extremely rare. But it's a condition that causes your muscles to break down and it usually occurs, they actually list this if you Google it, in marathons. But basically when you have extreme... an extreme fitness situation, basically, where you're pushing your body beyond what it's used to, but it literally causes your muscles to break down, which leads to muscle death. And it says, when this happens, toxic components of your muscle fibers enter your circulation system, like your bloodstream, and go into your kidneys. That can cause kidney damage, or in this case, kidney failure.
00:23:37
Speaker 2: Your body is poisoning itself.
00:23:38
Speaker 1: Yes, muscle fibers. Look, I've talked about my, my father's a food scientist and talked about glycogen levels in your muscles. And once you get past mile 20, the reason why marathoners call it the wall is because it actually is a physical situation where your body has no more glycogen reserves. So what does your body have to do to keep moving? It has to go into your muscles to pull fuel out of it. And that creates muscle deterioration, muscle atrophy. And yes, in some rare cases, muscle disintegration.
00:24:09
Speaker 2: Muscle death. Muscle disintegration, Jesus.
00:24:13
Speaker 1: So I wonder, this is why, and it's always this delicate balance of trying to keep fueling yourself. You see runners with those packs, if you've ever been along a race or the aftermath of a race, you'll see a bunch of packets where people are sucking down And it's just a big boost of carbs and energy and fuel so that your body, you're trying to prevent your body from doing that, from going into your muscles. So if you keep, because literally you have no gas in the tank after, I believe, mile 20, which is what, a couple hours for most people. And so if you don't have that fuel and that water, your body's going to do what it needs to do. And unfortunately, it attacked itself in her case. Oh, my God.
00:24:54
Speaker 2: And those scenes, I remember Roge was talking about losing control in muscles. There are videos out there of people. And one guy did it to me to where he almost kicked me and knocked me over. He lost control of his body. He was trying to make his legs move. He was just doing this. He couldn't do it. Like he was seizing. He had nothing he could do to tell his body to take another stride.
00:25:17
Speaker 1: I know, and that's why training and practice and knowing your body and knowing how to fuel and knowing how to handle the weather. I'm always struggling with how much water because you know what you do if you're in this condition and you get an IV fluid. It's all about flushing it out, flushing it out, getting water in you. It's this delicate balance. If you get too much water in you, you get nauseated and start vomiting. That's always been my problem because I'm worried about dehydration. So I try to get water in me and then boom. So it's just this, it's this delicate dance. Most runners are trying to just find this balance so that they can have optimal output with minimal input.
00:25:56
Speaker 2: Well, the symptoms here, like how is anyone supposed to know, right? weak muscles, muscle stiffness, muscle pain. And then the key one they always list is a change in the color of your urine, dark urine. You're not going to know that. Certainly that. So what are you supposed to listen to in your muscles? Yes, your muscles are going to hurt. They're going to be screaming. We ain't going nowhere else. At what point did you know, okay, I need to stop? And wrote the last thing anybody who trained for five months wants to do at mile 24.
00:26:30
Speaker 1: Is go get IV fluids at the medical tent?
00:26:32
Speaker 2: Stop.
00:26:33
Speaker 1: No. You don't. And look, to the point where you are putting out so much, it's interesting. I've started a race having to use, like having to pee. But once you start going and you're exerting all this, there's no fluids left inside of you. So it's not as if she would even have had the opportunity to know that she was having an issue with her pee color or any sort of change in her fluids. She wouldn't have known. I found it so shockingly abrupt that she would just literally drop dead. I mean, I know they kept working on her and I know they kept trying to flush out her system and they're giving her CPR. But to hear that woman who had medical experience say the first thing she did when she was giving her CPR is take her pulse and there was no pulse.
00:27:22
Speaker 2: I would like to hear more because you just said that phrase, drop dead. Like, in an instant, it was over. She's running one moment, and the next moment, she's on the ground, dead. This is a horrific story. There are lessons and things to learn, and we all have to pay attention to for runners and non-runners and runners, people who love runners that are in your family. Rosie, if you're thinking about getting all kinds of stuff, baby, but this 24-year-old young lady, what's her dad's quote here? It's unfathomable, perfect health practice. Perfect shape, 24 years old. And that's true. Her fiance, he was out there as well. It was an awful, awful time.
00:28:07
Speaker 1: It's just like, it's worst case scenario. Like I said, when you see your runner stopped, or I know when my family saw us stop, you're worried that they might be sick or hurt or injured or might need medical attention. I don't think any of us immediately jumped to death, but I will tell you after you finished this year and knowing what happened after the half marathon and knowing how I actually have scared myself with not being able to stop vomiting after a race, you also had that situation where you just kept vomiting, kept vomiting. And then when we finally got home and, And we had plans to go out and celebrate and you just dropped on the couch on my lap and fell asleep for two and a half hours. I started Googling. I didn't tell you, but I got nervous. Should I be worried? Should I wake him up? I was thinking about people who get concussions or have some sort of, like you don't want them to fall asleep. Because maybe his body is shutting down. I just, I got a little nervous and they said usually it's accompanied with a high fever. So I was literally Googling symptoms of when I should be worried or should I wake you up or yes, because I think when you've had worst case scenario situations happen in your family or in your life. The statistics don't matter. You tell me it's rare. It doesn't matter. I had a 1% chance of having breast cancer at 40. Like when stuff like that happens to you, you start thinking, you know what? I could be the 1%. He could be the 1%. And so you start getting nervous because I think those of us who have run recognize just what this does to our bodies. but even this story and this situation shocked the hell out of me.
00:29:54
Speaker 2: We have to pay attention to this and it is rare. Deaths are Extremely rare. Or we put in here from JAMA, the study. They studied for 13 years, 29 million marathon and half marathoners from 2010 to 2023. 179 cardiac arrests out of that. 179 cardiac arrest robes out of 29 million people that ran. That's a really low number.
00:30:15
Speaker 1: It's small.
00:30:15
Speaker 2: In those 179 cardiac arrests, there were 59 deaths that were in their robes. That equates to one in 500,000 runners that have died in marathons in that stretch of 13 years.
00:30:36
Speaker 1: It's incredibly rare.
00:30:37
Speaker 2: It's so rare. And this thing, Robes, this Rabdo, please say it again for me.
00:30:41
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I actually have it phonetically, Robdomyolysis.
00:30:44
Speaker 2: Robdomyolysis is even rarer. Robes, what, 25,000 or so are diagnosed within the country, but the deaths from that every year.
00:30:52
Speaker 1: Five to 10? Yeah, very small.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: Very small number. And so many people who do end up with this end up, it has to be diagnosed. You got to go to a hospital and they have to tell you what's going on with you and then they can treat it. But most people don't dial this.
00:31:06
Speaker 1: Yes. There are marathoners who go to the hospital after races and get diagnosed with this. That's a lot of that number, but they're all treatable. They get IV fluids in them. They flush out their system. They flush out their blood. They get that It's kind of awful to think about, but your muscle fibers get flushed out of your system. So the toxicity levels go down and they're able to fully recover.
00:31:30
Speaker 2: What was the timing for her? Like when was she in trouble?
00:31:33
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like we can only base it off of mile 18 when she first felt a pain. Because at mile 14, she looked like she felt great.
00:31:42
Speaker 2: Rose, how many times? You say owl. It's not the end of the world. It's not alarming. Seeing the owl text doesn't signal to me that she was in trouble. She's just acknowledging maybe how she felt. Or, oh, it's because this is her first. Maybe she was in trouble at that point. But I just wonder, when was she beyond the point of getting help? At what point in her race?
00:32:07
Speaker 1: I was wondering, what if she just... I know no one wants to walk. We didn't want to walk in, especially if you think you're going to get a sub-330. They call this, when you're a mountain climber, summit fever. So people die on the way up Everest, Mont Blanc, you name it, because they've focused, they've trained so long and so hard. You're so close. There's no way you're giving up. And you lose your perspective and your... like ability to reason. And that same thing could be said for folks when you're right near the finish line. And just when you think you can't go another step, you're like, but I'm so close. And you just push and push and push. If it had happened earlier, maybe she would have stopped. If she wasn't, if she didn't have a goal in mind, maybe she would have slowed down. Maybe she would have walked. Maybe she would have gotten gone to the water station. I mean, people don't go to the water stations cause they don't want to lose time in seconds. You just think about all the what ifs. It's just a cautionary tale and a reminder about how serious this is, how taxing this is to your body. And my God, our hearts go out to that family.
00:33:13
Speaker 2: And please, you all respect it. If you're wanting to get into marathon running, excuse me, if you want to enter the New York City Marathon, because a lot of people do want to enter it and don't necessarily want to run it. They don't necessarily want to do the training to run it. or they want credit for running it without doing the six or five months training at a time. That's fine, but please respect these folks who are putting it in. Please respect for your own safety. Robes, respect what you have to do. Robes, it's almost impossible to get somebody to understand what you feel like at mile 20 and what that is.
00:33:50
Speaker 1: You know what I would equate it to? And you'll laugh because you won't understand, but every woman out there watching, listening will. It's like explaining what it's like to give birth. And by the way, if you've done it more than once, each experience is different, but you can't explain that kind of pain. You can't explain that experience to someone who hasn't gone through it. And I think it's very similar.
00:34:13
Speaker 2: To- Looks like you guys are fine. People having kids every day. Everything seems to work out.
00:34:17
Speaker 1: Some cases you get a baby, some cases you get a medal, but either way, you go through hell to get it.
00:34:21
Speaker 2: But no, that's a very good point to make. No matter what, I'm sitting over here and I'm saying, yeah, women have babies all the time. What's the big deal? It's fine. Okay, go through some pain.
00:34:29
Speaker 1: Got the baby. We good.
00:34:30
Speaker 2: I'm not dismissing. What I'm saying is it's easy.
00:34:33
Speaker 1: To sit here. We take it for granted.
00:34:34
Speaker 2: I still, there is something I will never be able to understand. Right. No matter how much you explain to me, how much I've read, how many stories I've heard, I will never get it. That's a good example.
00:34:45
Speaker 1: And that is exactly how I would describe trying to explain what it feels like to run a marathon to someone who's never run a marathon.
00:34:52
Speaker 2: And at the same point, I don't understand what happens to a woman's body I don't know how it goes out of the shape it was in, and it goes back to the shape it was in, and things widen, and then they lessen again. And I don't know how y'all do that. It's an absolute miracle. So is running a damn marathon.
00:35:10
Speaker 1: Agreed.
00:35:10
Speaker 2: I'm not comparing the two things, by the way. But I'm saying, babe, it is physically virtually, it's almost impossible.
00:35:17
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:35:18
Speaker 2: To do this. Yes. And people do it, and we're looking forward to doing it next year, but man. This is a reminder here, babe. You said the person in 2024 died of what at the marathon?
00:35:29
Speaker 1: Hypertension. Look, we've had some hot marathons here in New York, and that's always, always an issue. But you actually have been the Brooklyn half marathon in 2022 that you ran. A man collapsed right at the finish line.
00:35:43
Speaker 2: Sabine was at the finish line, and she saw all this go down. I think she informed me before I was even aware. I think it was 31 or something, a young guy. dropped dead at the end of.
00:35:54
Speaker 1: A half marathon.
00:35:55
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:35:55
Speaker 1: These are all, I have seen the deaths. They do tend to be younger folks. Although the New York City Marathon 2013, you mentioned this one, Joy Johnson, 86 years old. She finished, but she fell at what mile?
00:36:10
Speaker 2: 24, I think it was, later. That's pretty late. I mean, any 86-year-old woman out there running, but ropes.
00:36:15
Speaker 1: Falling at all at 86 anywhere is scary when you're 86.
00:36:18
Speaker 2: Hits her head. Refuses to go to the hospital. Refuses to stop. They bandage her, babe. They bandage her up. She finished. Crosses the finish line. Huge victory. Everybody's celebrating her. I think she was the oldest participant that year. Next day, she's got the bandage on still, wearing it proudly. Died in a sleep the next night from head trauma.
00:36:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:36:43
Speaker 2: Well, it's just a reminder. I was trying to find something. She was doing it for her granddad. She was doing something she loved. I can't find one, baby. This is just awful. That's just a tragedy.
00:36:54
Speaker 1: It certainly is. And just, yes, it's just a reminder to all of us. I always say, yes, we can learn lessons as runners. We can learn lessons as spectators. But we can also just learn lessons as humans. Tell the people you love, you love them when you can because you just don't know.
00:37:10
Speaker 2: All right, folks. We appreciate you wanted to, certainly, as soon as we heard about this, we knew we wanted to talk about it and continue to talk about this young lady, Rachel. I hope to hear more. I think it's important for runners to hear more about exactly what happened to her, and there are lessons in this, and I don't know how her family will feel about that, but we need to understand and not make, I don't know, maybe this is a fluke thing, or maybe there is something we can point to. I don't know, but just like you said, baby, God bless the family right now. Folks, we appreciate you as always. I'm TJ, or my dear Amy Roback. We'll talk to you all soon.