Red Deer man returns from heart surgery to run Woody’s Marathon

Competitors from around the world will run in Sunday’s Woody’s Marathon in Red Deer.

However, for one local man, the half-marathon is his long-awaited comeback from an immobilizing operation.

Jeff Strong turns 60 next month and will retire next June after 30 years teaching at Alix MAC School. Since running his first race in 1999, he estimates he’s run 53 marathons, 10 ultra-marathons, too many 10kms and half-marathons to count, and two Ironmans.

“Probably three years ago, I started to notice I wasn’t getting enough out of my workouts as I should. I just kind of progressively got worse. At first you put it down to improper training, or nourishment or sleep, but that wasn’t doing it, so I went to the doctors to tell them what was going on,” says Strong.

“They kept telling me I was really healthy, but it didn’t seem that way. I kept pushing for tests, and the illness kept getting worse. I didn’t have any energy, and if I did push myself, I couldn’t breathe. Finally they started looking at my heart, which was the last thing any of us were thinking of with all the exercise I get.”

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Following a stress test, doctors determined that despie his history of good health, Strong needed double bypass heart surgery. The surgery finally happened in Calgary about 13 months ago.

“It doesn’t seem to matter how well you take care of yourself, things can pop up. For me, it was a matter of genes. I was doing everything right, but with my genetic makeup, my arteries got blocked,” he says. “They actually told me that for the last couple of years, I’d been racing on ‘angel time.’ I could’ve been one of those guys who’d run a race and then keeled over at the finish line, or during.”

Typical double bypass heart surgery involves taking an artery out of one’s leg to fix the heart. But with a return to running in mind, Strong requested doctors take material from his arm.

“As I started to train again, the blood flow was a little bit slower, so it didn’t take much to start getting pains in the muscles because I just wasn’t getting the same oxygen flow.”

“It almost seems like I’m having a heart attack,” he told doctors.

Now just hours away from coming back from the longest layoff he’s had from competing since he initially took up the craft, the Red Deer Runners member says he’s excited and scared at the same time.

“I was 26 seconds off from qualifying for the Boston Marathon. It doesn’t take long to be laid off before you lose your muscle mass, but my speed is starting to pick up again. The endurance is there, so it’s a matter of pushing myself to get back up there again.”

He adds the Woody’s event is one of the prettiest races he’s ever seen.

“So many races, unless you’re doing a cross-country race, are on city streets. With Woody’s to allow us to run along the river trails, just makes it beautiful. The organization is fantastic, they always have everything well-organized and planned out,” he says.

The Woody’s RV World Marathon/Half/10K begins at 8 a.m. on Sunday at Camille J. Lerouge School.