Have Heart!

It was a beautiful day that first Sunday of November of 2005! I was lined up on the Verazzano Bridge for the running of the NYC Marathon. A few of my friends who were part our Fleet Feet marathon training program were at the line with me. After the National Anthem and the canon blast, we were literally off and running. We were heading down the bridge, and the sight of Brooklyn, the Statue of Liberty, and the NYC skyline that we saw was awe inspiring. One of my buddies, Bobby remarked, "Wow, this is great, I can't believe we're finally here after all the training! Look at the people and the sights!" It was his first NYC Marathon and my 6th. The NYC Marathon is THE event in road racing and, it's the Big Apple to boot! As anyone who's run this race more than once knows, EVERY NYC Marathon is as special as your first, so, I shared in Bobby's excitement and was privileged to be sharing it with him.

We were running through Brooklyn, almost at the 10K mark when out of the blue, Bobby exclaimed, "I'm going to quit, I don't think I can finish!" Well, to say I was shocked is putting it mildly. During training, Bobby was a runner who I had to hold back. He was energetic and never complained about a run. To hear him say he wanted to drop out so soon in the race had me dumbfounded!

Bobby told me he felt tired, and that his legs were heavy. I talked with him, told him we'd slow down, get into Manhattan, and then pick it up for the finish. That seemed to settle him. Well at about mile 9, I got separated from Bobby and assumed he took off like he did in training, and I was confident that we'd hook up soon.

We never did, however Bobby finished the race about an hour or so after I did.

The next day he visited me at Fleet Feet, dejected that he "blew it!" He complained that he still felt so fatigued, a tiredness he never felt before. In fact, the week after the race, he wasn't able to run a quarter mile without having to quit.

Bobby decided to pay a visit to his doctor and it was then that he was told, he had suffered a heart attack DURING the NYC Marathon! The race he FINISHED! WOW!

He had a major blockage of the vessels leading to his heart, and underwent a balloon angioplasty and thankfully, is alive and still my buddy today!

As runner's, we take for granted that we are healthy because we run, and try to live and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Rarely if ever, does the thought ever enter our mind that something that happened to Bobby happen to us. As this article points out, we need to pay constant attention to our bodies and take into consideration our family history so that we can be as lucky as my friend Bobby was!