Figuring two hours per week of training, since that was the average reported by runners in the Cooper Institute study, the researchers estimated<br />that a typical runner would spend less than six months actually running over the course of almost 40 years, but could expect an increase in life expectancy of 3.2 years, for a net gain of about 2.8 years.<br />An Hour of Running May Add 7 Hours to Your Life -<br />Running may be the single most effective exercise to increase life expectancy, according to a new review<br />and analysis of past research about exercise and premature death.<br />So for the new study, which was published last month in Progress in Cardiovascular Disease, Dr. Lee<br />and his colleagues set out to address those and related issues by reanalyzing data from the Cooper Institute and also examining results from a number of other large-scale recent studies looking into the associations between exercise and mortality.<br />High-mileage runners wondered if they could be doing too much,<br />and if at some undefined number of miles or hours, running might become counterproductive and even contribute to premature mortality,<br />And a few people questioned whether running really added materially to people’s life spans.<br />The gains in life expectancy are capped at around three extra years, he says, however much people run.<br />Improvements in life expectancy generally plateaued at about four hours of running per week, Dr. Lee says.
