Originally Posted by
augiedogie
I have never understood why people push beyond recommendations like Max. beats per minute. Maybe you remember Jim Fix, The running book. The guy fell over at 50 from a heart attack, dead. It was discovered he had a heart of an 80 year old man. Years of long running had deprived his heart of the oxygen it needed. The walls of his heart were like paper. I see this also with people running too late in life and ruining their knees. IMHO, its better to not push the old bucket of bones. Once its worn out, in most cases, there's no replacement parts. So my advice to people is, everything in moderation.
The running isn't what damaged his heart and killed him. One could easily argue that the running extended his life by 11 years. From Wiki:
"On July 20, 1984, Fixx died at age 52 of a fulminant heart attack, after his daily run on Vermont Route 15 in Hardwick. The autopsy revealed that atherosclerosis had blocked one coronary artery 95%, a second 85%, and a third 70%.[SUP][3][/SUP] Still, medical opinion continued to uphold the link between exercise and longevity.[SUP][4][/SUP] In 1986 exercise physiologist Kenneth Cooperpublished an inventory of the risk factors that might have contributed to Fixx's death.[SUP][5][/SUP] Granted access to his medical records and autopsy, and after interviewing his friends and family, Cooper concluded that Fixx was genetically predisposed (his father had a heart attack at 35 and died of another at 43, and Fixx himself had a congenitally enlarged heart), and had several lifestyle issues. Fixx was a heavy smoker prior to beginning running at age 36, he had a stressful occupation, he had undergone a second divorce, and his weight before he took up running had ballooned to 220 pounds (100 kg).[SUP][6]"[/SUP]
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