In the running to revive health post-surgery
Print Edition
MINHANG resident Wu Dongxu has finished 100 half-marathons in the past seven years, despite ulcer surgery that removed four-fifths of his stomach.
People told him he was “committing suicide” to take up running, but Wu said the exercise has made him feel healthier and younger.
“I would not be me today without jogging and half-marathons,” said Wu.
In 1992, Wu was diagnosed with a severe stomach ulcer. After surgery, he was hospitalized for 43 days. When he was released, the then 42-year-old said he “looked like an old man.”
Two years later, on a business trip in Nanjing, he got to talking to a colleague there, surnamed Wang, whom he guessed to be about 45 years old.
“When he told me he was 58, he had to show me his ID to convince me,” Wu said. “I was shocked and asked him how he could maintain his health so well.”
Wang said he joined the army at 18 and picked up habit of jogging there. After discharge, he never stopped running.
So Wu decided to give Wang’s health tip a try. He figured he had nothing to lose.
“I didn’t expect to look young again, but I believed jogging would bring me health and happiness,” Wu said.
From 1994 to 2010, he jogged every morning, stopping only for two weeks in 1996 when his wife was hospitalized.
Wu said he always jogged alone and followed no fixed route. His runs took him past places near his home that he had never seen before. The more he ran, the more he enjoyed it.
He started running the half-marathon in 2008, after attending a dinner party where one of his old schoolmates described his experience of running a half-marathon a year earlier.
“He was 42 then, and he was new to the sport, too,” said Wu. “So I asked him to help me train for a half-marathon and he agreed.”
A year later, Wu finished his first half-marathon in the city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province. He came in 1,382 of 15,000 participants.
“A colleague of mine took a picture of me crossing the finish line, and I printed it into a poster and hung it on the wall,” he said. “In the picture, I saw a brand new me.”
After retiring in 2010, Wu decided he would try to do 100 half-marathons as long as his health allowed. His goal was achieved last month at a run in Zhejiang Province. His 91-year-old father-in-law created a calligraphy piece to celebrate his success. The scroll in Chinese characters read: “Perseverance, strength and perfection.”
The most difficult run he ever undertook was a half-marathon in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region. The risk of altitude sickness worried his family and friends.
“None of them, including my wife and son, supported my idea because they were convinced that running a half-marathon in Tibet would kill me,” said Wu. “They hid my ID card, thinking that I couldn’t buy a rail ticket to Lhasa without it. But they didn’t know that I had already booked everything.”
Eventually his family acquiesced, but not before making him promise that he would quit the race if he started to feel unwell.
On the trip to Lhasa, Wu began feeling the effects of altitude sickness as the train climbed the Tibetan Plateau. Fortunately, a local friend visited him on the second day of his arrival and brought him some medicine.
Wu trained carefully for a week in Lhasa, letting his body adapt to the oxygen-deficient environment.
The competition required all the participants to finish within three hours. It was, Wu said, the most difficult run of his life.
“I could just jog at a steady pace, but any acceleration would cause pains in my chest,” he said. “But I didn’t quit because I didn’t think I had reached my limit.”
Wu finished the run seven minutes before the three-hour deadline. He considers it the greatest achievement in his life.
His dream of completing 100 half-marathons attained, Wu said he has no plans to give up daily running.
“As long as you pursue something in your life,” he said, “you will live your life to the fullest. That’s what I have learned.”
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