Runner feels ups, downs on the track

     By Sean DeFrank
     View staff writer
      For Alan Cohen, running has served as both a boon and a bane in his life.
      Although he didn't start competing until 1983, the 70-year-old Cohen has won more than 3,000 medals and trophies. But he has also suffered two strokes while running that may have stopped most people, but not Cohen.
      A retired school administrator and psychiatrist from his native New York City, Cohen ballooned to about 300 pounds in the late 1970s. Coupled with his continuous smoking, he barely revealed the lifelong athlete who once played minor league baseball for the New York Giants.
      However, determined to return to his past physical prowess, Cohen began jogging around his back yard -- barely making it 50 steps initially -- and changed his eating habits before he took to running through the neighborhood late at night, ducking behind trees and shrubs whenever a car would turn down the road to avoid the crass comments that would resonate from the passing vehicles.
      Unbeknownst to Cohen in 1983, wife Beverly entered him in a 7-mile race in nearby Nyack, N.Y., where, to his surprise, he placed second in his age group. Cohen's success led him to enter subsequent races from there and he eventually became a regular on the regional race circuit. He would sometimes enter multiple meets on the weekends, racing from one event to the next.
      In September 1985, while competing in both a 5- and 10-kilometer race on the same day in Ramsey, N.J., Cohen suffered a headache while running in the second event. Officials eventually removed him from the track after noticing him swerving from side to side on the course.
      Cohen was admitted to the hospital. He was diagnosed with his first stroke, which left him temporarily paralyzed. He was unable to recognize his children while in the hospital and doctors wondered if he would be able to walk or talk again.
      "The neurologist that they got for him said to me, `He's a very, very sick man,' " Beverly Cohen said. "He said, `I don't know if he's going to pull out of it. He could be a vegetable for the rest of his life.' "
      But Cohen would have none of that. Instead, he devised his own therapy program, having Beverly force a handkerchief into his hand, which he would try to squeeze. Within days there was a little movement, first his fingers, then a hand, next an arm. Soon Cohen was falling out of his bed as he kept trying to walk.
      "I had to start over again like a baby," Cohen said. "I would go to eat and I would miss my mouth. É I was a total mess."
      Cohen battled depression during this period and credited Beverly for helping him make it through the devastating ordeal. Miraculously, Cohen fought back and regained most of his physical coordination within months.
      Not satisfied with merely recovering, Cohen continued to strive for thriving. He was soon out on the track and entered his first race in January 1986 at Fordham University in New York, winning a gold medal in his age division in the 400 meters.
      From there, Cohen was a running machine.
      He ran in The Athletics Congress National 100-Mile Championships at Shea Stadium in June 1987, finishing the race 13th overall out of the 47 runners entered, with a time of 21 hours, 7 minutes, despite being the oldest competitor in the race.
      Also in 1987, Cohen entered the Ultimate Runner competition in Jackson, Mich., which combined five distance events and awarded points based on the difficulty of each one. With only a half-hour break between each event, Cohen ran a 10,000-meter race, a 100-meter dash, a 400-meter run, a one-mile race and then a full marathon.
      Of the 10 runners in his age group, Cohen finished first, but also finished ninth overall in a field of 200 competitors to earn the "Ultimate Runner" title, based on computer comparisons of his time, factored in with his age.
      After moving to Scottsdale, Ariz., around 1990, Cohen, who also ran in four New York City Marathons, continued his running success. However, he was training near his home one day in 1996 when he had his second stroke. Recognizing what was happening, Cohen managed to get in his car and drive home, but he refused to go to the hospital.
      "I just didn't want to go," he said. "It wasn't that I wanted to hide it; it's just that I was disgusted. I couldn't go through all that again -- how to eat, how to walk -- I just couldn't."
      Cohen avoided the hospital for two days before Beverly and a physician friend tricked Cohen into going to the hospital for tests, but instead admitted him into the hospital for about two weeks.
      "It wasn't as debilitating, but it took him longer, I think, to really come out of it," Beverly Cohen said. "The only thing that keeps him going is he is so stubborn, because somebody else would have given up on it. And he won't let it get the best of him because he was in really bad shape."
      Both doctors and Beverly have pleaded for Cohen, who moved to the Las Vegas Valley in August, to cease running. But now, recovered from his second stroke, he recently re-entered the world of running. He was scheduled to compete Nov. 7 in Phoenix, where he entered the 50-, 100- and 200-meter runs, as well as the javelin and discus events.
      "It makes me feel good and there's no excuses," Cohen said. "When I got into running, I thought it would be terrible. But what I love about it is you do it yourself. You get on the starting line and you either win or lose by yourself."
      Cohen has been training regularly at Silverado High School, although he said he had cut down his training regiment from four times a day to two. Since his strokes came 11 years apart from each other, Cohen said he was not concerned about returning to competition since he is now under medication for high blood pressure, which has been diagnosed as a major contributor to his two strokes, and even underwent acupuncture.
      "I'm not tentative; I'm excited," he said. "I'm too excited because I dream about it and I think about and I'm constantly talking to (Beverly) about it. É Once I get out there, I just go. And I know I'm going to bring back five medals. I know it. But I want to bring back five gold.