HOW TO TRAIN A RUNNER'S HEART

Your heart is the most important muscle in your body. Treat it right for a lifetime of strong running.

- BY PAVLÍNA ČERNÁ

Nancy Wells crossed the finish line of the 2025 Glass City Half Marathon in Toledo, Ohio, feeling elated. That in itself wouldn't be unique—for one, the now 55-year-old has run over 60 marathons and half marathons in the past two decades. In fact, at 2:41:26, this was the slowest she had ever run the distance—and for someone as competitive as her, of course, she's painfully aware of that.

What made crossing this finish line special was that it's the very race during which she had suffered a heart attack a year earlier.

In 2024, Wells was planning to run the full marathon, but the Ohio winter, coupled with her busy work schedule, derailed her training. So she decided to run the half marathon instead. Still, the morning of the race, something didn't feel right. At first, Wells chalked it up to the muggy late-April weather and decided to ease into the race more so than usual. But she found it took all her energy to get through the first two miles, which wasn't normal. Then there was this weird chest pressure. She slowed to a walk for a bit, then called her husband to tell him she wasn't feeling well. The last thing she remembers is making a turn at about 4.5 miles. Around midnight, she woke up in a hospital with a tube down her throat.

She was told her heart had stopped beating.

Luckily for Wells, a retired nurse running nearby was able to perform CPR on the course soon after she collapsed.

What followed were four days in a hospital, a procedure to place an artery stent (a flexible tube that helps open a narrowed vessel and increase bloodflow), and a supervised program of cardiovascular rehab. Once her heart's ability to pump blood had improved to within normal range, she began thinking about running again—and finishing the race.