Foster to run with heart patients

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34021, 10 December 1975, Page 14

Foster to run with heart patients

(By

JOHN DREW)

New Zealand’s fastest marathon runner, Jack Foster, will run with ‘ rehabilitated coronary heart disease patients in the biggest marathon ever held in the South Pacific, at Honolulu this weekend.

Between 700 and 1000 competitors are expected to take part. They will range from some of the world’s greatest athletes over this distance down to grandfathers, grandmothers and youngsters. The race is held annually by the Honolulu Marathon Association in conjunction with the influential American Medical Joggers’ Association and the city and country of Honolulu’s rec* reation departments. As in last year’s event, cardiologists will run in the marathon with the heart patients. The race chairman is Dr Jack Scaff, who is director of the cardiac rehabilitation programme and assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Hawaii.

He said the heart patients had been given graduated stamina training programmes developed from tests given on exercise computerised electro cardiograph units while the patients were exercising on ergometer treadmills.

The units are linked with equipment to monitor oxygen up-take, blood pressure and heart rate recovery readings, and the computer

produces tailor-made training programmes at a safe level for each individual's condition. While in Honolulu, Foster will be a guest speaker at a three-day medical symposium on heart disease and athletics. Some of the leading medical author* ities in the United States will give papers. Among the speakers will be Dr Tom Bassler, of the American Medical Joggers’ Association, who has records of the performance of heart patients in last year’s Honolulu marathon.

“There has never been a reported coronary heart at* tack among marathon finishers of any age, and the

marathon is a natural graduate ceremony for my cardiac rehabilitation programme,” he said. “Immunity co-exists with the ability to train for and run in the marathon, and the life style which goes with it.”

The 42-year-old Foster, who left for Honolulu last Friday for the start of a week’s acclimitisation training at Hawaii, said he would use the race as a

build-up for qualifying for the Montreal Olympics. He will be running against such marathon stars as Steve Hoag, who ran 2 hours 11 minutes to take second place in the last Boston marathon, Kenny More, fourth in the last Olympic marathon, and the winner of last year’s Honolulu marathon, Jeff Galloway. Foster, who has shown good form in recent road races in the Waikato, said of his prospects in Honolulu, “I won’t be going for a time, but I shall be out to win.”

According to the race director, Mr Tom Ferguson, “If you want to run up fast with the sub 2hr 20mip runners or if you are still trying to break six hours, we will be waiting for you at the finishing line with your certificate.” Last year the watches were stopped at 7hr 12min. The representative athlete, Rendell Mclntosh, of Air New Zealand, who has just returned from a visit to Honolulu, said he saw large numbers of joggers training in Hawaii for the marathon. Mclntosh, who founded the Air New Zealand jogging club, said, “Jogging has really caught on in the United States and Honolulu. I saw hundreds of them out. The thing is so well organised now that they even have joggers’ rest stops rather like our bus stops in New Zealand.”

Mclntosh went on regular training runs while in Honolulu and also in Fiji on the way back to New Zealand.