The winner of three New York City Marathons and one Boston Marathon in the 1980s, Salazar coaches elite runners, including Duluth native Kara Goucher. Some of them were with him last year when he collapsed and stopped breathing.
Salazar, 50, went 14 minutes without a pulse before paramedics restarted his heart with an external defibrillator. He had a cardioverter-defibrillator implanted while recovering in the hospital, and the security the device gives him has helped him work his way back to the condition he was in before the heart attack.
“There are a lot of people out there with pacemakers and defibrillators who are very active,” he said. “I run four or five miles a day, five or six days a week, which is a good, healthy thing to do. If I didn’t have the defibrillator, I would be scared to death. It allows me to be healthy.”
Jungbauer ran three Grandma’s Marathons and as many as 50 miles a week in the early 1980s. A lower-back injury suffered in a 1988 fall made it too painful to run, and a 1999 auto accident and 2002 construction injury damaged his neck and made things worse.
He was able to bike and water ski, but he missed the serenity of distance running. He had the last of his plates and bone grafts implanted in 2003 as he edged his way toward the 200-pound mark. Eager to get back into better condition, Jungbauer learned to stretch properly to ready his body for exercise, and he resumed running in 2005.
He made it 2 1/2 miles on his first day. Last year, he ran across his Senate district from East Bethel to Elk River, covering 21.7 miles.
“If that 2 1/2 miles was all I could do, I would have been happy, because I was back on the road,” said Jungbauer, an advocate for health and wellness issues. “A month after I got into Global Heroes, I threw my back out, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to run. But I thought, ‘It took me 18 years to get back the first time. Let’s see if I can do it in four months.’ And here I am.”
Oesterle hopes the Global Heroes will inspire people, even those with health problems, to become active. It worked for him. An avid runner and marathoner, he will be running the TC 10 Mile after having a hip replacement.