Running Inspiration

Ed Whitlock, a retired mining engineer and masters running champion who broke three hours in the marathon in his 70s and last fall became the oldest person ever to run 26.2 miles in under four hours, died on Monday in Toronto. He was 86.

His death, at the Princess Margaret Cancer Center, was caused by prostate cancer, his family said in a statement.

The British-born Mr. Whitlock trained in a cemetery near his home in Milton, Ontario, outside Toronto, running laps for three hours or more at a time in his shuffling style. He had no coach, followed no special diet, did no stretching except on the morning of a race, got no massages and took no medication, except for a supplement for his knees.

The training itself was drudgery, Mr. Whitlock said, and he did not run for his health. He simply enjoyed setting records and getting attention. And those records forced scientists and fellow runners to reassess the possibilities of aging and performance.

“The real feeling of enjoyment,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in December, “is getting across the finish line and finding out that you’ve done O.K.”

Wearing a Prince Valiant haircut, Mr. Whitlock, then 85, finished the Toronto Waterfront Marathon on Oct. 16 in 3 hours 56 minutes 34 seconds. No one in his or her mid-80s had ever run 26.2 miles so fast. And in a world of flashy Day-Glo gear, few marathoners of any age had been so unencumbered by appearances. His racing shoes that day were 15 years old, and his running singlet was 20 to 30 years old.

“His performances were so far out there beyond what anyone has done or could imagine,” said Amby Burfoot, the winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon and a longtime editor at Runner’s World magazine.

“We worshiped him as a god even though he had no interest in being a god,” Mr. Burfoot said. “He didn’t run to inspire us, to impress us. He ran for higher reasons — he ran for himself. In the end, that’s why we all run. He was a pure athlete, following his own drummer.”

Mr. Whitlock’s greatest masters race came at the Toronto Marathon on Sept. 26, 2004. Then 73, he became the first person age 70 or older to complete a marathon in under three hours, finishing in 2:54:48. He is still the only one.

Adjusted for age, that race was the equivalent of a runner in his prime completing a marathon in 2:04:48, which is less than two minutes off the current world record of 2:02:57.

Writing in The Times, the running journalist Marc Bloom said that that stirring performance might have made Mr. Whitlock “the world’s best athlete for his age.”

At 5 feet 7 inches and a racing weight of 110 to 112 pounds, Mr. Whitlock was also a marvel of science. At 81, he underwent a battery of physiological tests at McGill University in Montreal. His oxygen-carrying capacity was the highest ever recorded in the literature for someone his age, scientists said. And his relative retention of muscle mass was also considered remarkable.

“He’s about as close as you can get to minimal aging in a human individual,” Dr. Michael Joyner, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic who has studied performance and aging, told The Times in December.

Edward Frederick Whitlock was born in London on March 6, 1931. He ran a 4:34 mile as a schoolboy, but an injury to the Achilles’ tendon in his right foot curtailed his collegiate running career. Upon graduating in 1952 from the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College in London, he moved to Canada for work and did not run again seriously for nearly two decades, until he was 41.

Mr. Whitlock is survived by his wife of 58 years, Brenda; two sons, Neil and Clive; and a sister, Catherine Hunt.

It was Clive, 14 at the time, who spurred his father’s interest in marathon running when the two completed one together in 1975. Since then, Mr. Whitlock had become what one scientist called a “rock star” among masters runners.

By December, though, his running had been interrupted by various pains in his shoulder, knee, hip and groin. His weight had also dropped to 105 pounds. Even so, as with many runners, he was reluctant to visit a doctor. He gave no indication that he was gravely ill.

“To some extent, I believe if anything is wrong, the body will cure itself,” he told The Times, adding, “I don’t want to be a burden on the system.”

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