A New Health Practice Is Born: Looking Back to When Runners Were Weird, Unhealthy, and Unproductive
Hard to believe heart patients were once warned against running.
In 1984, Jim Fixx died of a heart attack while out for a routine run in Vermont.
A 52-year-old man dying of a heart attack usually does not make the newspapers, but Fixx was a well-known advocate of running. He credited running with changing his health and allowing him to avoid the same fate as his father. Fixx (1977) wrote, “My father had a heart attack when he was thirty-five, and until he died eight years later he lived the life of an invalid” (p. 226).
The irony of Jim Fixx’s death was not lost on the nation.
In the running community, Jim Fixx is recognized as one of the pioneers of the 1970s jogging boom. He wrote perhaps the most famous book on running, The Complete Book of Running (1977). It is hard to imagine today in light of the multitudes of recreational runners now, but Fixx’s death was met with many “I told you so’s” by those who believed running was dangerous for our health. For instance, Restak (1984) wrote in The Washington Post that Fixx fit the mold of what psychiatrists labeled as the “obligate runner.”
