heart surgery

Gabino Toledo's world-class running career was cut short when docs discovered he had a congenital heart defect. He refused surgery and carried on running, still well able to make the rest of us suffer. In fact Gabino was the coach who taught me how to suffer, by the simple expedient of running my hardest workouts alongside or, often, just in front of me :)

It was a standing joke among the athletes training with him that we only had to hang on long enough for his heart rate alarm to go off -- then he would have to back off. Being Gabino, he rarely did.