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Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:03:37 -0500
Reruns 34: The Heart
[From my memoir-in-progress, titled Reruns. Photo (by Russ Niemi): Arne Richards, an early mentor of mine, became an unfortunate rebuttal to the belief that running conferred immunity to heart disease.]LOS ALTOS HILLS, CALIFORNIA, February 1973. During running's growth spurt of the early 1970s it was both oversold as a life-saving activity and overstated as a life-taker. A group of runner-doctors led by Thomas Bassler claimed that "true marathoners, those who complete the 26.2 miles, appear to be immune from coronary heart disease (CHD). We have yet to find a marathoner of any age with fatal CHD." However, the doctor team of Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman wrote in Type A Behavior and the Heart that running is a form of "mass suicide" that destroys hearts instead of saving them.
Both claims failed tests of time. Runners, including marathoners, did die of heart attacks -- usually from disease that had developed before they ran and had gone either undetected or untreated. But the number of fatalities was minuscule compared to the number of runners who aimed to improve heart health, and succeeded. How many runners avoid a heart attack is impossible to quantify. Deaths can be counted, and headlined.
The first time I saw a runner's heart fail was at an event with an ironic name: a Fun-Run. Runner's World now promoted these weekly low-key races, a shorter and longer one back to back. They provided an intermediate step between routine training and more formal competition.
I knew this particular runner only by face, not by name. When he finished the mile, he told RW publisher Bob Anderson, "This was my warmup for the six-mile." An hour later, near the longer event's finish, this same runner dropped to the pavement. Medics from a nearby fire station were on him almost instantly, but it was already too late. This was the first time I'd seen someone take his last steps and breaths, and had watched a wife become a widow. She identified herself as Selma and him as George Herzl, 46.
She told a doctor on the scene that her husband had a history of high blood pressure but no known condition serious enough for doctors to warn him away from running. A doctor later told me, honestly but not callously, "He probably was gone before he hit the ground. If he had been running through a hospital with all the most advanced equipment, it's unlikely we could have saved him."
Bob Anderson briefly considered dropping the Fun-Run program that he had conceived. But medical experts from Stanford University, runners themselves, convinced him that these runs remained a force for good. These Fun-Runs would continue for another 20-plus years (long after Runner's World left town). Participants would number in the thousands, and never again would a heart fail there. But one death was still one more than I ever wanted to see, or would ever forget.
UPDATE: DYING YOUNG
Looking back now, I see that Arne Richards was a fast runner. It didn't seem so at a time when everyone who ran was fairly fast, but he ran marathons in the 2:30s before the deluge of sub-2:30 marathoners. He won some minor national championships. His winnings were incidental, though. The important fact about Arne was how he approached his running, not how fast he did it. In the 1950s and '60s he lived the sport the way others would start to live it years later.
He ran every day, of course, and traveled by train or bus, or bummed rides, to every race he could find. In the dark ages of the sport, that meant running the gauntlet of insults at home as he trained, then riding outrageous distances to find a handful of runners for a race.
Besides running himself, Arne worked to make the sport better. He never earned anything for this as he wrote for what passed as running publications, put on races and served as an AAU and RRCA officer when no one else wanted those jobs. He also took time to help young runners, like me, who might not have gone on without a kind word at the right time.
Arne paced me in my first race longer than high schoolers of that era were normally allowed to go. We ran together and talked more that summer of 1960. After I went back to Iowa for my senior year, we exchanged letters. He told me about the longer races he ran, how he trained and his views of running. His approach sounded much different and more fun than mine. He helped plant the idea that I would grow up to be a long-time long-distance runner.
Arne Richards helped start me on my way to this page. If I'd never met him, I might not have graduated to longer distances. If I hadn't raced longer, I might not have trained longer. If I hadn't trained long and slow, I might not have written about the sport (since speed training doesn't encourage much deep thought).
I continued to see Arne every couple of years and to hear from him by letter -- neatly typed lucid letters with the same enthusiasm on the pages that I first saw in 1960. I last saw him 18 years later in Kansas City. He wore an Army fatigue jacket and a backpack to the pre-race banquet. Only his graying temples hinted that he was any older than when I'd met him.
I hurried to leave the banquet room so I could forget the tongue-tied speech I'd just delivered. Arne followed. We talked briefly, then I said, "See you tomorrow." We missed each other at the race, but I figured that more meetings like this would come. You can never assume that. The next winter, Arne suffered a heart attack while running and died alone on a Kansas country road. He was just 46.
[All completed chapters of Reruns appear together at http://joehenderson.com/reruns.]