‘I believed extreme fitness would protect us from everything’

I once contemplated having a T-shirt made with an adaption of René Descartes’ famous saying: “I run, therefore
I am”.

For more than 35 years, I hit the long road, putting more than 60 000km underscores of pairs of running shoes, running five Comrades marathons, a number of ultra-marathons and sundry triathlons.

With the fitness came the endorphin high-inspired arrogance that, along with other runners, I was special and the normal rules of healthy living didn’t apply to me. I, and many others, believed that our extreme fitness would
protect us from everything.

Oh, how wrong we were. On my first trip in years on an ECG treadmill recently, a heart arrhythmia was picked
up. My GP was sufficiently concerned that she referred me to a cardiologist.

Once he had a look at my history, he knew what was happening, he said. He was almost sure that I, as a “veteran athlete” (his technical description), would probably show calcification of the arteries.

Research over recent years has highlighted the fact that among athletes who train at extreme levels for decades, calcification of arteries is – counter-intuitively – often higher than in people who have led more sedentary lives.

Some years ago, researchers did post mortem exams on runners who had died while running the Comrades. All had been running for many years and all showed signs of clogged arteries – the opposite of what might have been expected of experienced and fit runners.

Quite why this happens has still to be determined, the cardiologist told me. Strenuous endurance exercise does see various substances travelling from the heart to the bloodstream but the concentrations normalise within a day or
two. But long-term effects of repeated exercise are still a bit of a mystery.

An angiogram proved him correct: my arteries do show signs of calcification, which is a danger sign for heart attack and stroke. So it’s a strict diet and some medication, although fortunately, I have dodged the bullet of having had to have stents in my arteries or even a coronary bypass. Less fortunate was a family friend of ours, six years younger than me

His body is the proverbial temple: he doesn’t smoke or drink and he’s a serious swimmer, runner and triathlete. He also
has very little body fat.