Guy goes out for a run. It's just a 4-miler--nothing, really, to a seasoned marathoner who usually runs 10 miles a day, 7 days a week. Nobody knows why he stops 40 or 50 yards short of his front door--maybe he's checking his pulse, maybe he's tying a shoe--but everybody knows what happens next to Jim Fixx, the 52-year-old patron saint of running: He dies.
You've heard that story. But you may not know about Edmund Burke, Ph.D., who was to serious endurance cycling what Fixx was to running. He died on a training ride last fall, at age 53.
And you almost certainly haven't heard of Frederick Montz, David Nagey, or Jeffrey Williams, three brilliant physicians at Johns Hopkins University who died while running. The oldest of the three was 51.
You'd think that exercise icons should live to be 100. And yet, every year, a few of them go permanently offline at half that age.
Two questions arise. The first is obvious: Why do the hearts of such highly conditioned men fail during exercise designed to make their hearts stronger? The second is so radical it borders on treason against the health and fitness cause: Is there something wrong with the entire notion of endurance exercise as a healthy, life-extending activity?
I've been skeptical about the benefits of aerobic exercise for years. But the answers surprised even me. Pull up a chair--you'll want to be sitting down when you read this.
