PUBLISHED 11/06/2006
The Heart of the Matter
They came together at the behest of an affable New York runner and astrophysicist-turned-epidemiologist named Paul Milvy. When a young physician from South Africa asked for a place on the program, Milvy said, "Sure." So Tim Noakes, M.D., gave a presentation that documented the heart attack of a veteran marathoner, which became one of the most-talked-about sessions. Prior to this, several running physicians enjoyed notoriety for claiming that a marathon finisher could never have a heart attack. "The New York Academy meeting showed us the scope of research that was possible in marathon runners," says Dr. Noakes, now one of the world's best-known sports scientists.
The subject of running and heart disease was a big one. While Dr. Noakes showed that runners couldn't expect a home-free card, other presenters demonstrated that runners, in general, had unusually healthy cardiovascular systems. Stanford cardiologist Peter Wood, Ph.D., was impressed by a Ken Cooper report showing that higher levels of fitness corresponded with reduced risk of heart disease. Wood and colleague Bill Haskell, Ph.D., had just found that runners had lower levels of the "bad" cholesterol and higher levels of "good" cholesterol. "I was very excited about this," says Wood. Other conference-goers were excited by things like "progress in injury prevention, or the psychology of running, or whatever their interest was," he says. It was that kind of conference--both incredibly deep and wide-ranging. (A similar conference, a 30th anniversary update, took place in October at the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon.)
Many of the attendees were marathoners, and they chose to toe the starting line on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge as part of the 2,090 runners who ran the first five-borough marathon. Peter Wood ran 3:05:52 (at age 47), Tim Noakes ran 3:08:55, George Sheehan ran 3:14:55 (at age 55), and Jim Fixx managed a 3:23:36.
Paul Milvy was on the starting line, too, offering chunks of hard candy to his new friends. A running psychiatrist named Ozzie Gontang reached out to accept one of these chunks and found their shape unusual. "Why are they flat and round like that?" he remembers asking Milvy.
"Because I cooked the candy in a Petri dish in my lab," Milvy said. It was his early attempt at a glucose fuel that he hoped might improve runners' endurance performance. Milvy ran 3:22:14 that day, a seven-minute improvement over his previous NYC Marathon best. Gontang ran 3:01:25. "It was the fastest marathon of my life," he says, "and pretty good for somebody who stood 6'4" and weighed about 185 pounds, down from a prerunning weight of 236."
Other conference-goers were less concerned with PRs and more interested in lifelong health. Wood, for example, is still going strong; he'll be running New York again this fall at age 77. Neurologist Ron Lawrence, M.D., founder of an early group called the American Medical Joggers Association that helped establish the systems that have evolved into today's marathon medical tents, took the meeting's life-enhancing message to heart. "After finishing 202 slow marathons, I feel not just the physical joy of these successes, but also the knowledge that no other male in my family has lived this long or this well," says Dr. Lawrence, now 81. "I cannot help but feel that marathoning made this happen."
Dr. Lawrence has plenty of company. More than 120,000 runners have joined the National Runners Health Survey, which began more than a decade ago. You can join, too, at healthsurvey.org. When you answer a medical questionnaire, you can think of your daily run as contributing not just to your training log but also to the wider knowledge of running and medicine.
They came together at the behest of an affable New York runner and astrophysicist-turned-epidemiologist named Paul Milvy. When a young physician from South Africa asked for a place on the program, Milvy said, "Sure." So Tim Noakes, M.D., gave a presentation that documented the heart attack of a veteran marathoner, which became one of the most-talked-about sessions. Prior to this, several running physicians enjoyed notoriety for claiming that a marathon finisher could never have a heart attack. "The New York Academy meeting showed us the scope of research that was possible in marathon runners," says Dr. Noakes, now one of the world's best-known sports scientists.
The subject of running and heart disease was a big one. While Dr. Noakes showed that runners couldn't expect a home-free card, other presenters demonstrated that runners, in general, had unusually healthy cardiovascular systems. Stanford cardiologist Peter Wood, Ph.D., was impressed by a Ken Cooper report showing that higher levels of fitness corresponded with reduced risk of heart disease. Wood and colleague Bill Haskell, Ph.D., had just found that runners had lower levels of the "bad" cholesterol and higher levels of "good" cholesterol. "I was very excited about this," says Wood. Other conference-goers were excited by things like "progress in injury prevention, or the psychology of running, or whatever their interest was," he says. It was that kind of conference--both incredibly deep and wide-ranging. (A similar conference, a 30th anniversary update, took place in October at the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon.)
Many of the attendees were marathoners, and they chose to toe the starting line on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge as part of the 2,090 runners who ran the first five-borough marathon. Peter Wood ran 3:05:52 (at age 47), Tim Noakes ran 3:08:55, George Sheehan ran 3:14:55 (at age 55), and Jim Fixx managed a 3:23:36.
Paul Milvy was on the starting line, too, offering chunks of hard candy to his new friends. A running psychiatrist named Ozzie Gontang reached out to accept one of these chunks and found their shape unusual. "Why are they flat and round like that?" he remembers asking Milvy.
"Because I cooked the candy in a Petri dish in my lab," Milvy said. It was his early attempt at a glucose fuel that he hoped might improve runners' endurance performance. Milvy ran 3:22:14 that day, a seven-minute improvement over his previous NYC Marathon best. Gontang ran 3:01:25. "It was the fastest marathon of my life," he says, "and pretty good for somebody who stood 6'4" and weighed about 185 pounds, down from a prerunning weight of 236."
Other conference-goers were less concerned with PRs and more interested in lifelong health. Wood, for example, is still going strong; he'll be running New York again this fall at age 77. Neurologist Ron Lawrence, M.D., founder of an early group called the American Medical Joggers Association that helped establish the systems that have evolved into today's marathon medical tents, took the meeting's life-enhancing message to heart. "After finishing 202 slow marathons, I feel not just the physical joy of these successes, but also the knowledge that no other male in my family has lived this long or this well," says Dr. Lawrence, now 81. "I cannot help but feel that marathoning made this happen."
Dr. Lawrence has plenty of company. More than 120,000 runners have joined the National Runners Health Survey, which began more than a decade ago. You can join, too, at healthsurvey.org. When you answer a medical questionnaire, you can think of your daily run as contributing not just to your training log but also to the wider knowledge of running and medicine.
