

Fixx finished last among 50 runners, impressed that the winner was a man in his 60's. He ran in his first race, five miles long, in Greenwich, Conn., in 1970, and Mr.

When he began in 1967, to help rehabilitate a tendon pulled while playing tennis, he weighed 220 pounds and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Fixx's concern about his hereditary predisposition to heart disease - his father, Calvin, was first stricken at the age of 35 - contributed to his decision to take up jogging. Maybe if Jim Fixx didn't run, he'd have died five years ago.'' But I'm sure more people die on the golf course or watching the Yankees play baseball. What does this prove to them? Sure, we have people dying in Central Park, one or two a year while running.

''What I'm concerned about now is all those people who talk about the danger of running. Lebow said from Chicago, where he is attending a triathlon competition. ''We know running doesn't cause heart attacks and may, in fact, prolong life,'' Mr. The irony was not lost on Fred Lebow, the president of the New York Road Runners Club and the guiding light of the New York City Marathon. ''But he had no indication that he ought to check in with his friendly cardiologist.'' Lebow Voices Concern ''There's an irony in this, no doubt about it,'' Mrs. Bower said that her brother believed himself to be in good health, having run races of 12 and 5 miles in recent weeks and having ''trounced'' her in a tennis match on Cape Cod the previous day. Fixx's sister, Kitty Fixx Bower, he was ''most aware of the signs'' of coronary disease because of their father's death from a heart attack at the age of 43. Fixx had died of a massive heart attack and that two of his coronary arteries were sufficiently blocked to warrant a bypass operation.Īccording to Mr.

An autopsy yesterday morning revealed that Mr. He was taken to Copley Hospital in Morrisville and pronounced dead. Fixx was subsequently identified by the owner of a nearby motel, where he was a guest while waiting to move into a rented summer house on Caspian Lake. Before the police arrived, several passers-by attempted to resuscitate the fallen runner, dressed only in shorts and without identification. by the side of Route 15 in Hardwick by a motorcyclist. Fixx, a former magazine editor and the author of five books, among them ''The Complete Book of Running,'' was found at 5:30 P.M. Fixx, who spurred the jogging craze with his best-selling books about running and preached the gospel that active people live longer, died of a heart attack Friday while on a solitary jog in Vermont.
