ONE REASON sports fascinate so many of us is that they repeatedly provide insights about many of life's basics. Learning. Striving. Sharing. Trying. Failing. Overcoming. Losing. Winning. ...
Dying.
If you're a runner who is middle-age or older, you're hyper-aware these days of something called sudden cardiac death. It means dropping dead while following what's often called a healthy lifestyle.
Just from this newspaper's pages since October, it was a TV news director, 46, dying of a heart attack while jogging in Woodbine. In November, two Baltimore doctors, one at Johns Hopkins, another at St. Agnes, both in their 40s, collapsed while running. Heart problems. Seven months earlier, it had been another Hopkins doctor, also in his 40s, in a Crownsville race. Ditto.
Locally, it is not understatement to say that only running guru Jim Fixx's death in 1984 at age 52 while jogging probably caused as much sustained talk among amateur athletes as the recent passings.
The Howard County Striders are certainly still talking about it, but, said James Moreland, who won a Striders 10-kilometer event last weekend at age 50, it's not just them; it's everywhere. He belongs to six Central Maryland clubs and operates his own club for runners who do 50 or more races a year.
The deaths have registered with, for one, Ellicott City's Ray Lake, 42, a Hopkins pharmacist and Strider activist, who acknowledges not being in quite the physical condition he would like but still runs - to the consternation of some co-workers.
Lake also acknowledged in an interview to sensing his own mortality all of a sudden with the most recent deaths of colleagues - and then, matter-of-factly, he talked about a former boss at Hopkins who died the same way in an Annapolis race several years ago.
Several Striders have made the point in a continuing Internet dialogue that just because you're an athlete, you're not immune from hidden medical problems.
Some contend the deaths are more of a "weekend warrior" thing. Several urge physicals for anyone, even the fittest, before starting a running regimen. Most steadfastly say running remains a health-endowing pursuit, those recent deaths aside.
One active Strider, as well as five-year president of the D.C. Road Runners, Robert Platt, raised a couple of other points for clubs and runners to ponder.
"We need to redouble our preparations for emergencies," he said.
"Do we have an emergency medical technician/ambulance standing by at a race? Is there good communication so that if someone goes down we can get help to him/her without delay? Does the EMT have a portable defibrillator? Should clubs invest in such units? They are now on commercial airplanes?"
But Moreland, who in an interview said he lives in Gaithersburg but loves Striders races because of their low pressure and fees, made the most insightful statement on the issue, drawing on personal experience.
"I have been running for 15 years," he said. "My weight is a normal 150 pounds. My blood pressure has always been about 110 over 90. My total cholesterol is 190. ... I have averaged 35 miles running and 20 miles walking a week since the beginning. I spend two hours five days a week at the gym with weights. I cycle close to 30 miles a week. I do not smoke.
"I have always considered myself healthy, racing as many as 125 events in a year.
"In March 2000, I was running a 10-kilometer race. Feeling a little sluggish, I went through the first mile in 5 minutes, 50 seconds. Suddenly, in the second mile, my right leg buckled, and I almost fell. I was sure I had pulled a hamstring, so I slowed and continued.
"I pushed through the pain, and though many runners passing me begged me to stop, I finished in 47:00, somewhat off the 36:10 of a couple years before.
"My racing went south for the next six weeks until I was having trouble breathing while racing a 7:55 mile versus my normal 4:55.
"The doctors I went to found nothing muscular. The pain in my chest was not pleurisy, a cold, or a virus. The breathing difficulty was unexplained. My slow times were ridiculously written off by my advanced age of 48.
"One morning, I woke up, and my right leg was numb. [In the emergency room] they quickly discovered that I had a massive blood clot in my right leg and in a lung. It had already passed through my heart.
"I was very lucky that day, when I suffered this heart attack. ... Now, I am very aware that we humans can be very fragile.
"I was so sure - even now, I am so sure - that I am fit. I am safe from sudden cardiac death. They say, 'Know your body.'
"That is not enough, it would seem."
Call the writer at 410-332-6525 or send e-mail to lowell.sunderland@baltsun.com.