'COUCH POTATO' NOW A MARATHON MAN.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

It doesn't necessarily take a life-altering experience to get someone to make some changes. Sometimes simply picking up the paper will do it.

Eric Heilbrun of Valencia was plugging along in a comfortable and occasionally high-pressure job as an insurance agent at the Automobile Club of Southern California. He's a husband and father of 5-year-old Paige and 7-year-old Rebecca.

A self-labeled ``couch potato,'' Heilbrun scrupulously avoided the NordicTrack that has been collecting dust at the foot of his bed despite steady reminders from his wife, Lori, that he needed to exercise more.

Then, in March, he saw a newspaper ad for marathon training to benefit AIDS research.

Great idea, thought Heilbrun, but not the cause that will get me into running shoes. A search of the Internet brought up several non-profit organizations that would help people run a marathon to benefit their particular causes. But now that he was on the lookout for marathon matters, Heilbrun spotted the brochure for the Arthritis Foundation's Joints in Motion program in his dry cleaners. The Joints in Motion program is a five- month regimen that promises to get participants in marathon-running shape and pay for their travel and accommodations, in exchange for a $3,100 fund-raising commitment. His destination race: the Honolulu Marathon, Dec. 10, 2000. Next year, he might opt to raise funds to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

``Or maybe I'll cross the finish line (in Honolulu) and say, 'I'll never do this again in my life,' '' he says with a laugh.

The training regimen, which includes weekly Saturday morning group runs at Griffith Park, appealed to Heilbrun, who turned 42 in June. But it was the organization itself that hooked him. Heilbrun's mother, Shirley, died in 1985 at the age of 65 from side effects of treatment from rheumatoid arthritis. He'll be running the race in her memory.

Raising $3,100 is no picnic, but as people from the Joints in Motion program and any non-profit organization will tell you, there's no stronger inspiration to train for and complete a 26-mile grind than if the disease or condition you're raising money to fight has touched you personally.

And it has. Until his mother began to battle the disease, Heilbrun said he simply considered arthritis to be among the regular aches and pains that come with old age. Shirley Heilbrun's condition made it difficult for her to walk up steps. The side effects from her treatment included anemia and other blood complications.

``There was no viable treatment,'' says Heilbrun, who organized co- workers to donate blood platelets for his mother's treatment. ``If she was younger, a bone marrow transplant is what they would have done.''

Arthritis is not, Heilbrun has since learned, simply an old person's disease. Among the 100 forms of arthritis are such conditions as juvenile arthritis, lupus, fibromyalgia, ankylosing spondylitis, osteoarthritis and gout.

Once he decided to compete, Heilbrun wasn't simply hooked; he was positively consumed. He signed up for the Joints in Motion program early and began running with the Joints in Motion team preparing for the Dublin Marathon on Oct. 30. He started frequenting the well-known running store Phidippides Sports Center in Encino and bought an issue of Runner's World magazine that promised to guide first-timers, step by step, to their first 5K.

That got Heilbrun walking, then slow running, then finally participating in a couple of 5K races. He has lost 10 pounds since March and hopes to lose at least 10 more by December to get down to a running weight of 145.

This is a man, who, his wife acknowledges, enjoys his leisure time.

``From the time I first knew him - and we met in college - people would say, 'Isn't he the guy who's always sleeping on the couch?' '' said Lori Heilbrun. ``One time we were listening to a band, and he fell asleep on a bar stool. His favorite thing to do is relax.''

Her husband has started exercise regimens in the past, says Lori, but they haven't stuck. But this marathon may turn out to be the wake-up call he needed.

Heilbrun's father suffered a heart attack and a stroke and had diabetes. Even at 42, it's hardly too early for him to be thinking about staying healthy.

``Eric just knows he's kind of like a walking time bomb unless he does something,'' says Lori. ``We're very dependent on each other, and I know I'd just be lost without him. I want my girls to have a dad.''

A slightly achy right knee notwithstanding, Heilbrun is a couch potato no longer, although after observing his early marathon gusto, his Joints in Motion coaches and administrators wonder if he ever was really slothful to begin with.

``I've had to slow him down a little bit. He was going a bit too fast,'' says his coach, Stan Kirschner. ``He's amazed me. For being a couch potato, he runs pretty good. And he's got the enthusiasm. If they don't have that, they're not going to make it through the program.''

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Photo:

Eric Heilbrun, 42, of Santa Clarita, front, trains for the Arthritis Foundation's charity run. Heilbrun will run in memory of his mother, who died from complications of rheumatoid arthritis.

Lexey Swall/Special to the Daily News