Marathoner beats back dad's demons.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

To understand what last Sunday's Seattle Marathon meant to Jeff Hardisty of Eugene, you must understand what that day in September 1966 meant to him: the day his father died of a heart attack.

His father was 46.

His father's death, he once wrote in a journal, would became a life-long "monkey on my back." The quiet worry. The impetus to eat healthy foods and exercise diligently, lest he live his father's life. And die it, too.

When Hardisty toed the line Sunday beneath the Space Needle, he knew what the registration form for the 26-mile, 385-yard race said about him:

He was 46.

It would not be the first marathon for Hardisty, an equipment operator with Bi-Mart who is married with two teenage children. He had run the 1997 Portland Marathon in 4 hours and 53 minutes. But it would be his first since getting out of the hospital last spring.

The ordeal started in early April. He was training to run back-to-back marathons - Portland in October and Seattle in November - when he developed a strange sensation in his chest. "I felt as though I had exerted myself in extremely cold weather and my windpipe was frozen," he wrote in his journal.

Naw, couldn't be. A few days later, he went running again. Same thing.

Naw, couldn't be. He was, after all, a marathoner.

On his third run, the pain hit again. Hardisty's wife, Carol, a respiratory therapist, wondered if it could be exercise-induced asthma. But when Hardisty returned from another run with tightness in his forearms, she feared it could be worse.

A doctor recommended a stress test, running on a treadmill to see how Hardisty's heart would respond. Later, he showed Hardisty cross-sections of his heart on a computer screen. "You have a blockage that is starving the front of your heart of

oxygen," he said.

Hardisty needed triple heart-bypass surgery. He could hardly believe it. "I felt that monkey jumping up and down on my shoulders," he wrote in his journal. `I could almost hear it saying, `I told you, I told you.' '

Shortly before the surgery on April 25, he whispered aloud: "This one's for you, Dad."

The surgery went well. Doctors told Jeff he could run again someday. But Hardisty wasn't satisfied with that. He wanted to run Portland in October and Seattle in November, as scheduled.

This from a guy who, for now, could hardly get to the mailbox and back without being out of breath.

Slowly, doing therapy at the Oregon Heart & Vascular Institute's Cardiac and Pulmonary Rehabilitation unit, he started building back his endurance.

He brokered a deal with Aaron Harding, coordinator of the rehab center: Portland, no. Seattle, yes.

Hardisty and Harding mapped out the limits of his workouts, lest he overtax his heart.

Many heart patients are stymied by mental demons saying they're broken. Fragile. Finished.

Hardisty's challenge was not overdoing it.

`Jeff had great support from his family and he was the one who `drove the goal,' ' Harding says.

By Labor Day, he was running up to an hour at a time and had set a goal of beating his 4:53 best.

On Sunday, he ran 4:23. He flashed a thumbs-up as his family cheered for him at the finish line.

Nobody who's gone through the institute's rehab unit has completed a marathon so soon after heart surgery: seven months, two days.

"We're proud of him," Harding says. "It was above and beyond what we expected."

Hardisty applauds the folks in the rehab unit.

"I've never seen any patient get anything but compassion from them," he says.

What did his race prove? "That you're never out of the race if you want it badly enough," says Hardisty, who plans to volunteer in the rehab unit. `I think it's going to be neat to tell someone: `I was where you were. But look, I ran this race. I have the shirt. Life is not over.' '

And history, fortunately, doesn't always repeat.