Jogging

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Jogging

If there was a physical activity that caught on during the last few decades of the twentieth century, it was jogging. Running and sprinting had been around since time immemorial and were associated with competitive running. Jogging, on the other hand, achieved currency when individuals took up the deliberately paced trotting as part of fitness regimes. At some point, when the briskness or doggedness of noncompetitive jogging reached a certain level, the more impressive word "running" came to be more or less interchangeable with "jogging."

James (Jim) Fixx was an important figure on the cusp of the jogging boom. In 1977, Fixx triggered a revolution in physical activity with his book The Complete Book of Running. He made getting out of bed early to put on sweat clothes and sneakers the stylish thing to do. Panting and sweating became fashionable. Although Fixx popularized the movement, years earlier Dr. Kenneth Cooper had advocated jogging as a healthful activity in his book Aerobics in 1968. Others, such as runner Bill Rodgers, had promoted physical activity as good for one's health. But runners credited Fixx with universalizing the sport through his book, which sold almost a million copies in hardback over a few years. He got overweight people off couches and onto the roads of America. He advocated jogging or running as good for everything, from weight loss to better sex. He said joggers digested food better, felt better, and had more energy.

Would-be converts to running could identify with Fixx as an average guy, perhaps like them. In his book, he described how running changed his life. He was overweight and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day before hitting the road at age 32 in New York City, where he worked as a magazine editor in Manhattan. "One of the more pleasant duties was to entertain authors at lunches and dinners," he wrote of his editor's job in the foreword to his book. He noted that in high school he weighed 170 pounds but ballooned later to 214 pounds. His only activity was weekend tennis. Ironically, it was a pulled calf muscle from playing tennis that led to regular jogging. He started running slowly to strengthen the muscle and later became a running addict, competing eight times in the famed Boston Marathon.

Fitness experts urged people to get physical examinations before starting rigorous running programs. This included stress tests where the heart could be tested by cardiologists during a fast walk on a treadmill. The purpose of jogging was to improve the heart and lungs by improving the delivery of oxygen through the body. Speed was not the main goal, fitness experts said, but time spent performing an aerobic activity which strengthened muscles and overall cardiovascular system. Trainers suggested three or four runs a week, to give muscles that break down during exercise time to renew between runs. The experts said that during runs, an individual's pulse rate should rise to about 70 or 80 percent of his or her maximum rate. The rule of thumb for calculating one's maximum rate was 220 minus one's age. Thus, a 40-year-old runner's rate should rise to a level somewhere between 125 and 145 beats a minute. To test the level of strain, runners were urged to take a talk test. If they could not talk easily while running, they were straining and should slow down.

Fixx stressed that running could lower cholesterol and blood pressure, thus improving the cardiovascular system and otherwise giving people better lives. Fixx himself, however, could not outrun his own genes. His father had suffered a heart attack at the age of 36 and died seven years later. While running on a country road in Vermont in 1984, Jim Fixx himself, fell and died of a heart attack, shocking American and the running world. As it turned out, Fixx had not paid enough attention to earlier signs of heart problems, including chest pains he experienced only weeks before he died. He was 52.

Fixx's death stunned runners but did not stop them. U.S. presidents had already taken up the jogging craze and others continued it. A famous picture of Jimmy Carter showed him exhausted after a jog. George Bush became the first well-known Republican jogger—other Republican presidents, such as Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford, were better known for golf. But Bush combined both a form of jogging and golf. He was known as a speed golfer who would dash through an 18-hole course as fast as he could. Democratic president Bill Clinton was an often photographed jogger who had run daily through the streets of Arkansas when he was governor. When he went to Washington as president, he caused a brief furor by having a jogging track built around part of the South Lawn of the White House to shield his running form from the prying lenses of photographers.

Senators, congressmen, and celebrities such as Madonna, the singer-actress, were runners as were ordinary housewives, businessmen, and students, all of whom were determined to get in their regular runs. Some runners ran into physical problems, however, including knee, leg, and muscle injuries. In 1994, Senator Slade Gorton of Washington suffered a mild heart attack while running in Boston. He was hospitalized and later recovered.

The influence of Fixx, Bill Rodgers (who won eight Boston and New York marathons between 1975 and 1980), and other advocates of a good workout spread. They pioneered a movement that led to an industry of exercise schools, aerobics programs, television shows, sports stores for runners, special clothing, public health campaigns aimed at combating inactivity and lowering cholesterol, and, above all, the ubiquitous running shoe. They changed the landscape of America and created a scene where city streets and country roads featured walkers, joggers, runners, and others out getting some exercise.

—Michael L. Posner