Causes?

The media reports the deaths, what happened, but does not do any investigative reporting into what really happened inside the bodies of the runners when they died.

We can only assume some things around 11 - 12 miles into the race like dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, or some pre-existing condition.

Same thing with media reporting H1N1 or flu deaths, they leave out any pre-existing condition details or underlying problems.

Are we supposed to just accept "sad" stories without understanding the situation entirely. I could even pose the argument that given the ratio of deaths by flu versus marathons, we can conclude that if the US has 305 million people and all were running a marathon, that 2.44 million would die according to the article's statistic reference.