How can running a marathon be part of emergency preparedness?

Well, have you ever tried to run away from your wife when she’s chasing after you with a frying pan?  That’s a real emergency!  You can’t go as fast if your only excercise has been lifting your hand to your mouth to insert potato chips (and sometimes blinking your eyes so they don’t dry out).

Actually, my wife has never chased after me with a frying pan or anything else, though she may have wanted to.  Let’s talk about some of the real reasons why someone would want to be physically fit for an emergency.

You see, my buddy, Hyrum Oaks, who runs the Utah Valley Marathon, is a great example to me (like all the commas?).  He is in good physical condition!  If he were ever in the outdoors, and someone in his party was in danger because of an accident and they couldn’t move, he could hightail it down the mountainside and get to within cell phone calling distance in no time.  That’s because my buddy Hyrum has trained for a marathon.  He has endurance.  He has discipline.  He trains hard, and he is ready physically and mentally for emergency situations that call upon his physical fitness stamina.  Kudos to Hyrum and all you other marathon runners.  My buddy T.J. and my other friend Julie also run like the wind.  Maybe they will light a fire underneath my sad rump some day, and I will get motivated to run a marathon and lose some weight in the training process.

Let me tell you about another friend of mine.  My buddy, Dr. Roger Lewis, is a quite an inspiration (BTW, his son is Chad Lewis, of Philadelphia Eagle football fame.  Methinks Chad got some of his courage and strength from his dad, Roger.).  He started his marathon running career in 1978 when I was 4 years old.  He ran the Deseret Marathon twice and the Boston Marathon once.  The way he got inspired to take on the grueling challenge of a marathon is of special intrigue.

Dr. Lewis watched a movie called “See How She Runs” starring Joanne Woodward.  In the movie she was a normal, ordinary housewife who got it in her head that she wanted to run a marathon.  Well, run a marathon she did, and though she didn’t finish before the sun went down and the endtape for the finish line was long removed, her beloved husband was at the finish to greet her and congratulate her with the car headlights shining their beams as a beacon for her.

Roger thought if she could do it, “I sure can.”  So he did what any thinking man would do, and subscribed to Runner’s World and followed their training programs.  He started training with his internist doctor friend, Lyman Moody, running every Saturday morning.

One other inspiration for Roger was an article he read in Reader’s Digest in the late 60′s by an aerobics expert.  The article said to measure the distance for how far you could run in 12 minutes, and by that you could tell if you were a poor runner, average, good, or very good.  Roger got a score of “average” and thought to himself, “I’m a doctor, and doctors aren’t average at anything!”

Roger’s first marathon finish time was 3 hours and 24 minutes.  He bettered that in the Boston marathon to 3 hours and 6 minutes.  He wanted to break his 3 hour barrier in his third marathon, but he weighed in at 3 hours and change again.  He figures the diahrrea may have had something to do with slowing him down.

The Boston Marathon is relatively flat.  Roger feels that the “Heartbreak Hill” is rather like a wimpy mole hill compared to the Deseret Marathon’s “foot-slapping” real down hill terrain.   After running the Deseret Marathon he would have to make sure there was a firm chair beneath him in order for him to be able to collapse into because his thighs were so sore.  Not so with El Bostonio.

Roger defined for himself the definition of running: a better than 7 minute mile; jogging was a 9 minute mile. He continued trying to better a 7 minute mile so that he could break his 3 hour barrier, but finally decided there was diminishing returns with his efforts, and that he would run for the “health of it”  from there on out.

Roger continued running with his buddies, and found his time getting to more than 10 minute miles, and he couldn’t keep up with his motley crew.  He was diagnosed with endocarditis, with a hematocrit of about 33.  He suffered a stroke in 1990, but even after that he still forged ahead with physical fitness training, and although he can’t run a marathon, he did take on Mount Timpanogos, and became “King of the Hill,” cresting it’s peak with a rope tied around him so he wouldn’t fall off (due to the effects of the stroke) one day in 2001.

If you really want to be prepared for the disasters, catastrophes, and emergencies that life throws at you, learn a thing or two from a courageous example like I have pointed out above.  You probably won’t really realize how far out of shape you are until you are forced into action to take care of an emergency by your own resources, including your body’s strength, energy, and endurance.  True, some people have such an adrenaline rush that they can lift a car if need be.  But you can’t count on that.  You need to be exercising daily, preparing in advance, and maybe like my friend T.J., go out for the Iron Man!

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