George Sheehan died of cancer a few years back, but his words live on. He and I shared the podium in a number of US cities speaking on behalf of the President's Council of Physical Fitness. I'd recommend any of his books, but particularly "Personal Best", "Running and Being", and his book about the approach of his death, titled "Going The Distance".

I sometimes wonder whether I didn't indirectly have a role in that last title. I can remember sharing my enthusiasm for Bil Kinsella ("Field of Dreams") and giving George the book "Shoeless Joe" in which the recurring message is "Go the Distance".

Martin Collis

by George Sheehan, M.D. – Runners' World

"What it pleases you to do as an exerciser will be the lifestyle you should have adopted in the first place."

Are you feeling run-down, sluggish, low in energy? Is simply getting to school or work becoming too much for you? Are you exhausted by three o'clock in the afternoon? Do you feel depressed? Have you lost your initiative?

If you answer yes, you may be suffering from a lifestyle disease that, surveys tell us, affects about one-half of all Americans. It is called exercise deficiency, it is undoubtedly a leading cause of ill health, and no household is exempt.

Exercise deficiency – the sweat deficit – is a self-inflicted disease. It is an old and familiar story: Our greatest tendency is to cheat on it. But that is not that way the world works – or the human machine, either. Nothing is free.

Full-blown exercise deficiency states are evident to the most inexperienced observer – sufferers are manifestly out of shape. These extreme cases usually fatigue easily and early and spend most of the day in physical and mental torpor. They are much too tired when they get home at night to even consider taking any physical exercise. For them, repose is that natural state, and any activity is an effort.

Many people with exercise deficiency are unaware that they have it. They expect no more from their bodies than they are getting. They believe their lack of energy and enthusiasm goes with age. They think they are normal. The reality: They are average, because it's average to slow down, average to become less productive, average to have less energy – and since that's exactly what happens to most of us, we confuse the two. But average is not normal. Normal is the best you can be.

The notion that loss of physical vigor is inevitable usually comes in the mid-thirties. At the FBI Academy, where recruits are placed in a fitness program to get them back in condition, one aspirant complained to the director, "I'm 35. I'm too old for this stuff."

But we are never too old to be fit, and never too young to start preserving fitness. We need to be physically fit whether we are 20 or 35 or even 70. Being unfit at any age is settling for less than your best and is a classic example of the sort of thinking that is behind the widespread incidence of exercise deficiency.

Fortunately, the movement toward fitness is equally widespread. Half the people in this country now realize the need for physical exercise. They know there is no need to lose the gleam in their eye, the bloom in their cheek, the lift in their walk, and the life in their day.

And all it takes is sweat.