Recipe for summer learning: Kids sharpen cooking skills

Each week through the spring, we’re spotlighting one camp from our Ultimate Summer Camps List. Find previous stories and search our Ultimate Summer Camps List at

Martie Sullivan started her Sweet Basil Gourmetware & Cooking School 21 years ago, and for 18 of those years, she has been hosting summer camp for children who like the kitchen. This year, she’s expecting more than 100 participants, ages 8 to17, at Kids Cooking Camp

See CAMP, Page 6D Camp of the Week: Kids Cooking Camp

Age range: 8-17. Type: Day camp. Activities: Aspiring young chefs are taught how to prepare recipes daily, each with a new theme, in this hands-on camp. Students work in teams of two and enjoy all dishes prepared each day. Where: Sweet Basil Gourmetware & Cooking School, 10749 N. Scottsdale Road, Suite 101, Scottsdale. When: June 8-July 31. Cost: $250 per week. Details: 480-596-5628, sweetbasilgourmet.com.

When Amanda Glover, a 32-year-old mother of four, collapsed and died moments after completing the Palmetto Half Marathon in Columbia, S.C., on April 11, it sparked a debate about the safety of running long distances.

It’s a debate that probably has raged since the very first marathon.

As the story goes, a messenger named Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to report an Athenian army victory over the Persians — only to collapse and die after delivering the news, “Rejoice, we conquer.”

Today, such incidents grab headlines.

The cause of Glover’s death has not been released. Most deaths in marathons and half marathons are attributed to sudden cardiac arrest due to arrhythmia or an electrical disturbance of the heart, or a heart attack caused by coronary artery disease.

A comprehensive study of such deaths published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2012 found that there is one cardiac arrest for every 184,000 participants and one death for every 259,000 participants.

That study tracked 10.9 million runners who participated in marathons and half marathons from January 2000 to May 2010. Its authors show evidence that cardiac-arrest rates in long-distance running events are “equivalent to or lower than the risk experienced in other vigorous physical activity.”

So why does it seem as if there is a large number of incidents?

Joseph Marquez, a 57-year-old Phoenix runner, suffered a heart attack during the recent Phoenix Half-Marathon in Mesa. He was revived when Mesa Fire Department paramedics and other medical personal at the finish line used CPR and an automated external defibrillator.

A 61-year-old man suffered a heart attack at mile 22 of the recent Los Angeles Marathon, the second year in a row that someone suffered a heart attack at that event and survived.

In about one month last spring, six runners — including a 20-year-old in Boulder, Colo.; a 23-year old in Pittsburgh; a 38-year-old in Maryland; two runners in their 30s in North Carolina; and another of that age in Brooklyn — died of cardiac arrest in half marathons.

In 2010, three runners in a half marathon in Detroit died within 16 minutes of each other.

And in 2007, American marathoner Ryan Shay died in such an incident during the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in New York City.

But research has shown that the ratio of deaths to participants has remained steady. The difference is that the number of runners participating, particularly in half marathons, has skyrocketed.

According to the most recent numbers available from USA Running, the number of half-marathon finishers in the U.S. quadrupled between 2000 and 2013, increasing from 482,000 to 1.96 million.

See RUNNER, Page 6D