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But after a while regular four mile runs and occasional 10Ks weren't enough. I wanted more. I wanted endorphins – what I saw in my mind as a sea of dolphins eager to carry me to a dreamy athletic state. Later I would learn they were a group of pain-killing hormones released by the brain. No matter. To find them I needed to push past the pain, making the day they finally arrived all so sweet. Even now I can remember the moment: Nine miles into training for my first half-marathon, coming down one hill and heading up another, a killer, near the park. I'd never run this long or this far in my life. My legs felt like lead, my lungs breathing fire. I wanted to quit. Then, suddenly, the endorphins kicked in and, like magic, I was floating on air. The hill disappeared. By the time I finally hit home I had done 12 miles. By the early 1980s we'd exchanged sunny San Diego for New York City, the west for the east coast, one park for another. Several times a week I did the six-mile loop in Central Park at lunch with a bunch of buddies at Sports Illustrated. In time my claim to fame would feature the finish of two half marathons in a bit more than two hours each. No awards, no medals, but plenty of personal highs. The kind of growth and gratification at the heart of what Fixx preached about for decades; what inspired the creation of thousands of running clubs across the country; what helped turn Shorter, Rodgers, Benoit and Salazar into household words, and marathons in Boston, New York and Chicago into international celebrations of fitness and sport. In the summer of 1984 Jim Fixx died of a massive heart attack while jogging along a tree-shaded road in Vermont. To call his death ironic does a disservice to the word. We can debate the root cause of the attack and the effects of exercise on the heart (see accompanying article by my younger, smarter brother) but to me there's no argument his legacy lives on. Think not? Try these stats on for size: More than 93,000 people applied for 37,000 spots in last year's New York Marathon; 15,000 women ran the marathon in San Francisco. Today estimates are 37.5 million people in the U.S. run for exercise – up 8 % since 1998. Fact is we're in the midst of another running boom right now fueled by an explosion of female runners (up 14 percet since 1998), in particular, women in their 20s and 30s, catching the same wave I did back in the day. And even though I've long since retired my running shoes in favor of cycling, tennis and a diabolical elliptical workout, I owe my love of a serious sweat, the profound benefits of exercise, to Jim Fixx. And so does just about everyone else who has lost a few pounds and found greater truths…on the run. Eight-time Emmy Award winning Armen Keteyian is the Chief Investigative Correspondent for CBS News in New York and executive editor of Hall of Fame Magazine. You can contact him at
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