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Should women ever run alone?
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Two young women have been murdered while out running in recent weeks. The Road Runners Club of America offers safety tips for runners, but others question whether women should run alone. - photo by Jennifer Graham
Within hours of setting out for a run, two young women were murdered in recent weeks. Their deaths remind runners that, regardless of how fit they are, they are vulnerable to attack while exercising in public. They also raise the question of whether women should ever run alone.

Karina Vetrano, 30, ran 3 to 5 miles a day in Spring Creek Park in New York City. Her body was found by her father a few hours after she was reported missing.

Vanessa Marcotte, too, was a regular runner who competed in road races, sometimes raising money for charity. Like Vetrano, she lived in New York, where she worked for Google. The 27-year-old was visiting her mother in Princeton, Massachusetts, when she left for the run from which she never returned.

Police say they have no reason to think the murders were connected, and no arrests have been made.

According to The New York Post, the deaths have caused a surge in sales of a sports bra called the "booby trap," which has an inner pocket where women can conceal a small knife or can of Mace.

The developer, Texas resident Jennifer Cutrona, said she created the bra after a man attempted to pull her off a trail while she was running. Sales spiked soon after Vetrano's body was found, she said.

I keep getting orders from New Yorkers, pinging my phone. At first I was thinking, Whats going on? Then I read the story about her. And I got sick to my stomach, she told Natalie O'Neill of The Post.

Safety advice for runners abounds. Both men and women should tell someone when they're leaving, where they're planning to run, and when they expect to return, Runner's World magazine says.

In Boston, 60 miles from where Marcotte was killed, TV station WCVB suggested apps like Glympse and RunSafe that notify selected people of your location and sound an alarm if you don't return when scheduled.

The Road Runners Club of America says to shun headphones, which are distracting, and to carry a cellphone and a noisemaker of some kind, such as whistle. Run with a dog if you can and "use discretion in acknowledging strangers."

And vary your running route; don't run the same roads or parks every day. "If you run the same streets, the same time of day, someone will notice," wrote running blogger Elizabeth Kalifeh after she was attacked in Mobile, Alabama.

Regardless of safety precautions, there are some women who believe that running alone isn't worth the risk. Among them is Sheri Ball-Garcia, whose story was told in a 2013 article in Women's Running titled "I Will Never Run Alone Again: A Survivor's Story."

Ball-Garcia, a mother of two, was running at 5:30 in the morning, which is supposed to be one of the safest times of day. (Crime generally dips between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m.) Still, she was brutally assaulted and suffered 20 fractures and lost her two front teeth before she managed to escape, according to writer Lindsey Emery, who shared Ball-Garcia's story.

After her recovery, Ball-Garcia started running again on a treadmill and later became a crusader against violent crime. She advises women to join a running club or run with friends. "Try to involve your kids and your spouse in your training, too," she told Emery.

"Runners often tell me that they have to train super early, in the dark by themselves, that there is no other time. But the reality is that if you do that, there may be no (more) time, period," she said.
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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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