He persists

When is running no longer age-appropriate?

I know a 78-year-old man whose thoughts during his morning runs sometimes include wondering how much longer he’ll be capable of sustaining that exercise routine. Not surprisingly, a form of leg oldsheimers is setting in as 80 approaches. Power walkers often pass him by. Some things just don’t get better with experience.

But a habit is a habit. And what doesn’t kill a person is meant to make him stronger, no?

OK, about running and death: In the early days of the running boom, when it became clear that ordinary people could safety attempt long distances on foot, a fellow named Jim Fixx died of a heart attack in the midst of his daily jog.

The irony was that Fixx had been something of a jogging/running drum major. In 1977, he had published a best-selling book, The Complete Book of Running, and thereby was a key missionary in the American fitness revolution. His own running regimen had transformed him from an overweight 214-pound, two-pack-a-day smoker to a healthy, happy dude.

But it turned out that his earlier habits and genetic predisposition did him in. At just 52.

In 2007, during the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, 28-year-old Ryan Shay—among the nation’s elite runners with a handful of national titles to his name—collapsed and died just 5 ½ miles into that race. Autopsy results were inconclusive, but Shay reportedly had a lurking pre-existing condition, an enlarged heart.

Amby Burfoot, a former Boston Marathon champion, argued at the time that “marathoning is remarkably not dangerous. I’m biased but, to me, obesity is a much greater health crisis than marathoning.” Burfoot still runs daily. He’s 78, too.

That other 78-year-old, the one cited at the top of this discourse—he once ran a couple of marathons but never was close to championship material—had been informed two decades earlier by a just-widowed neighbor that his wife used to worry that the guy passing on his daily jaunt was going to kill himself. A twist of fate, that.

And, for him, there have been interrupting, albeit unrelated, health issues along the way. Thyroid surgery. Brain surgery. Valve-replacement surgery. Some potential skin-cancer issues. Still, the daily perambulations continue to appeal. Hard to say exactly why. And people who do this sort of thing typically are not of an evangelical bent.

The uninitiated tend to see runners as either inspirational or, more likely, crazy, and it’s best to leave it at that. But the number of Americans who regularly participate is reportedly around 50 million—whether casually or competitively, solo or in a group, and in any of those forms the practice is widely considered an ideal means of releasing stress and maintaining fitness.

Beginning in the 1970s, running began spreading like a communicable disease; the bug was caught by hundreds, then thousands, of ordinary folks—including the 78-year-old geezer referenced above. Citizen road races and marathons sprang up, drawing increasing crowds, giving lie to the expression associated with a 1959 short story, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.

A primary influencer of the movement—a good word for it—was Frank Shorter, whose televised 1972 Olympic marathon victory began to spread what Shorter has benignly called a “disease.” (At 77, Shorter still has the virus.)

Now, consider Fauja Singh of India. At 89 years old, with a scraggy beard that reached his chest and attired in a yellow turban, Singh returned to his youthful passion of running and, over the following eight years, completed nine full marathons—26 miles, 385 yards—and, living in London, also bettered UK age-group records at 200, 400, 800 and 3,000 meters as well as the mile. Leading up to the 2012 London Olympics, he was among the torch-bearers of the Olympic flame. His last marathon came when the Turbaned Tornado was 100, making him the oldest known finisher at that distance in history.

Singh died earlier this month, at 114. But running didn’t kill him. He was on a walk in his native village of Pujab, hit by a car in a hit-and-run incident.

So tenure guarantees nothing. But that man I know intends to persist with his daily excusions on foot.