“You’ll never run another Marathon!” The cardiologist had just saved my life with emergency angioplasty. Then he added, “Maybe some 10k’s, but not a Marathon. Running didn’t hurt your heart, but it didn’t help it either!” I was a mere 55 years old and had recently completed my 6^th Marathon.

I was too sick to understand and I’m not the kind of person who pays good money for medical advice and then ignores it. But now I have to disagree. A 99% blockage of the LAD, the main coronary artery caused 5% damage to my heart. I am convinced that the damage would have been much more severe if I had not been in great shape. Without my years of running, I would have spent the rest of my life on the porch, in a rocking chair, watching the world run by.

Oddly, while I was still in the hospital they started me on rehab. Wait a minute! I can still work out? Exercise? Even after a major heart attack? In my mind, something did not compute. The following summer I ran a half-marathon. The next year, and each year since, I ran a Marathon. Twelve Marathons after I was told I would never run another!

So I became the Crabby Old Runner. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do!”