G
Guest
Since the age of 10, I had been told, take it easy, don't stress yourself, that leaky valve is dangerous, you shouldn't push your luck. I was 30 when I finally found out everyone had been too cautious. I was never permitted to do any high school sports, never had a single gym class until I got into first year of college, was classified as 4F, unfit for military duty, during the Viet Nam war years.
New research in the 70s then showed that exercise was better for the heart, even the slightly damaged ones. But here I was in a forced sedentary lifestyle with no strength, no endurance, no experience with physical stress. I decided to change that in 1978. I started to run, do pushups, situps, lift some light weights. It was all new to me.
That year also happened to be the 100th anniversary of the founding of the company I worked for, GE. Many celebrations were planned, one of them was a 10km road race in the fall for the fitness freaks. A colleague posted a distance running plan for the months leading up to it. Follow this plan, he said, and you'll be ready for the 10K on Oct 1st. I followed it with several other guys in my building. They put a mileage chart on the wall in the hall to keep the incentive and we would check off the miles we ran each day creating a yards long bar chart.
Oct. 1, 1978, I ran 10Km for the first time in my life at the GE manufacturing plant in Schenectady, NY. I never looked back. After that I ran an average of more than 1000 miles a year. I ran 10, 20, even as many as 30 races in any given year. 200 to 800 meter sprints on the track, 5ks, 10ks, 15ks, half-marathons.
500 races later I was reading on a friend's Facebook page who still works at GE, that a race was planned in September on the same roadways in the same GE plant as I ran that first time, 40 years later, almost to the day. I retired long ago, but he told me pensioners were welcome. Last week I returned at age 70 and did yet another 5k. It felt good.
New research in the 70s then showed that exercise was better for the heart, even the slightly damaged ones. But here I was in a forced sedentary lifestyle with no strength, no endurance, no experience with physical stress. I decided to change that in 1978. I started to run, do pushups, situps, lift some light weights. It was all new to me.
That year also happened to be the 100th anniversary of the founding of the company I worked for, GE. Many celebrations were planned, one of them was a 10km road race in the fall for the fitness freaks. A colleague posted a distance running plan for the months leading up to it. Follow this plan, he said, and you'll be ready for the 10K on Oct 1st. I followed it with several other guys in my building. They put a mileage chart on the wall in the hall to keep the incentive and we would check off the miles we ran each day creating a yards long bar chart.
Oct. 1, 1978, I ran 10Km for the first time in my life at the GE manufacturing plant in Schenectady, NY. I never looked back. After that I ran an average of more than 1000 miles a year. I ran 10, 20, even as many as 30 races in any given year. 200 to 800 meter sprints on the track, 5ks, 10ks, 15ks, half-marathons.
500 races later I was reading on a friend's Facebook page who still works at GE, that a race was planned in September on the same roadways in the same GE plant as I ran that first time, 40 years later, almost to the day. I retired long ago, but he told me pensioners were welcome. Last week I returned at age 70 and did yet another 5k. It felt good.
