(3 of 8)
It would be easier to dismiss the quack, however, if so many of the smug skinnies were not former fatties and former cardiac patients. There is no unarguable proof that heavy aerobic exercise programs prevent coronary blockage and heart disease (aerobic means living in air, and in fitness terminology it refers to sports like running, which cause prolonged huffing and puffing). The medical arguments are not over whether running is bad or good for people, however. They are between medical enthusiasts—such as Dr. Thomas Bassler, a California pathologist who advises heart patients that if they stop smoking, run at least one marathon, then settle down to a regime of three six-mile runs a week, their heart conditions will never worsen—and moderates who object that not enough evidence is in.
Some of the moderates say it may not be the running itself that is so beneficial but the temperate life that running requires—no smoking, little drinking, a sensible diet. Others speculate that self-selection may be involved: that only the strongest of heart patients opt for running, and that these probably would make good recoveries anyway.
Runners Know. To the runners —there may be 7 million to 10 million of us, though many are anti-org types and hard to count—and the running doctors, there is no such uncertainty. Runners think they know something the civilians haven't discovered yet. So, quite clearly, do the gristly followers of the other aerobic citizens' sports—basketball, swimming, cycling, cross-country skiing, singles tennis, racquetball, squash, rowing and hiking. But running (my speed or faster) and jogging (your speed or slower, unless you are faster, in which case points are awarded for narrative style) are the most visible and accessible of the fitness sports, and to civilians who don't participate, the most painful and absurd. Running can stand for the rest.
Not long ago, a 29-year-old runner sagged into a phone booth and called his podiatrist, Dr. Murray Weisenfeld, at his office in Manhattan. He had just run 35 miles of a 52-mile ultramarathon, he said, and now he was having leg spasms. What should he do to continue the race?
Dr. Weisenfeld, who trained, like other foot shrinkers, in the humble expectation of ministering mostly to shoe-pinched fat ladies, has grown accustomed to runners. He told his patient, not entirely seriously, and perhaps not entirely in jest, to consult a psychiatrist.
Vic Braden, the Southern California tennis pro, says that running is crazy. "I think when you put yourself under stress like that, there have got to be some real negative juices flowing. I see people who pretend to be happy as joggers and they're absolutely miserable. It's become like a second job for them."