It was to supposed to be out and back. Ten miles or so.
Or at least that’s how far Jim Fixx usually ran. On this particular afternoon, July 20, 1984, he was especially eager to get moving. A thin, angularly handsome man of 52, he’d been driving for six hours, fighting traffic on his way north. Around 3:30 p.m., he’d checked into the Village Motel in Hardwick, Vt., and, as he had most every day for the previous two decades, slipped on shorts and running shoes—in this case, white Nikes with blue laces.
Once upon a time, like most of the country in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Fixx had considered running a grim pursuit, endured only in gym class or by athletes and soldiers.