My dad just turned 80 yesterday, and my mom is 70, and they still are running too.ĬUNO-BOOTH: He hopes to follow in their footsteps and in Clarence DeMar's.Ĭopyright © 2023 NPR. It's also that the man simply loved running. Paquette says it's not just DeMar's competitive achievements that inspire him. ![]() The running store's animatronic mannequin is even nicknamed Clarence. PAQUETTE: If I don't run, I'm not the same person.ĬUNO-BOOTH: Clarence DeMar lived here in Keene for part of his racing career, and he's still a local legend. In any case, many runners say they're not just doing it to stay healthy.ĬUNO-BOOTH: Thomas Paquette is the manager at Ted's Shoe & Sport. Research suggests even moving around a bit can make a difference, and more is generally better. KIM: Overall, when you look at elite-level athletes, they still tend to do better than individuals who are not as active or fit.ĬUNO-BOOTH: For most of us, of course, the concern isn't getting too much exercise - it's getting too little. And in general, people with a high degree of cardiorespiratory fitness from years and years of intense exercise still typically live longer than everybody else. It's just that the extreme amounts of exercise done by, you know, people like myself who've tried to be a competitive athlete all their lives has potential side effects.ĬUNO-BOOTH: Studies have also found evidence of plaque buildup in the arteries of some lifelong endurance athletes, but Kim says it's not yet clear if that means anything for their long-term health. THOMPSON: I don't want to discourage anyone from doing a fair amount of exercise. He's also an accomplished marathoner who ran in the 1972 Olympic trials. THOMPSON: I've had atrial fibrillation, one of the reasons I got interested in the whole topic.ĬUNO-BOOTH: This is Thompson, the Hartford cardiologist. For example, atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heartbeat, affects some middle-aged athletes, particularly men. JONATHAN KIM: Exercise is truly medicine.ĬUNO-BOOTH: But in recent decades, researchers have also learned more about a question that faced DeMar a century ago - whether running as much as he did might have side effects. Jonathan Kim, a sports cardiologist at Emory University, likes to put it. ![]() Meanwhile, a growing body of research showed that exercise actually makes us healthier and helps us live longer, or as Dr. Aaron Baggish is a professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and the former medical director of the Boston Marathon.ĪARON BAGGISH: It was one of those first studies that taught us that the human body can really handle very healthfully lots and lots of exercise.ĬUNO-BOOTH: Running's popularity exploded in the decades after DeMar's death. It made the front page of The Boston Globe. They did not block flow.ĬUNO-BOOTH: The study was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. PAUL D THOMPSON: So that even though they had all this cholesterol, they were not narrowing. Thompson is the former chief of cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut. ![]() Not only was his heart perfectly healthy, his arteries were two to three times the size of a typical person's. What they found contradicted all those dire warnings. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Here he is - doesn't even look as if he's warmed up yet.ĬUNO-BOOTH: After DeMar died from cancer at age 70, a couple cardiologists took a look at his heart. It's the start of the Boston Marathon.ĬUNO-BOOTH: He competed in two more Olympics and won the Boston Marathon a record seven times between 19. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Here they come - 184 of them. TOM DERDERIAN: He trained more than was commonly believed humanly possible at the time.ĬUNO-BOOTH: Tom Derderian is a historian of the Boston Marathon.ĭERDERIAN: He ran lots of mileage, and the idea in the past was that lots of mileage would wear you out, that you would die early.ĬUNO-BOOTH: It may sound strange today, but back then, people thought marathons were kind of dangerous.ĭERDERIAN: People came out to watch the marathon because they thought that somebody might drop dead during it. Even his fellow runners told him not to try more than one or two marathons in his lifetime. He won the 1911 Boston Marathon and competed in the next year's Olympics. PAUL CUNO-BOOTH, BYLINE: Clarence DeMar would train by running to and from his job at a print shop in Boston, up to 14 miles a day, often carrying a clean shirt. New Hampshire Public Radio's Paul Cuno-Booth has the story. The race is named after one of the best distance runners of the early 20th century, who made a surprising contribution to sports science after his death. ![]() Hundreds of people will line up Sunday morning to run the 45th annual Clarence DeMar Marathon in Keene, N.H.
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