Lifestyle

He Has 14 Marathon Finishes and Made a Video About Walking Into His 70s. Days Later, the ER: “I’m a Runner Who Right Now Has to Walk”

By Curtis Jones · November 9, 2026

He films himself on a morning walk in Arizona, a marathon medal hanging around his neck. A little over two weeks earlier, he says, he had posted a video about walking into his 70s, coming to grips with the idea that he might not run another marathon.

“I’m a runner. I’m a heavy runner, but I’m a runner. I’ve got 14 marathon finishes,” he says in the July video on his YouTube channel, Better After 60 (@BetterAfter60Az). He does not give his name or exact age in the video.

Then he tells viewers what happened after that first video. You can watch his video on YouTube.

“Within a couple days of that, I was in the emergency room, having had a heart flutter detected,” he says. A few days later he was in a cardiologist’s office scheduling an ablation. A few days after that, he had the procedure under general anesthesia, and he says he was home later the same day.

He is open that he has no medical background, though his wife does. He describes sitting in on conversations about EKG patterns and medications and hearing one message underneath the medical terms. “All of a sudden you’re brittle. You’re mortal. You won’t live forever,” he says.

Two and a half weeks earlier, he says, he had been bold and, in his word, a little arrogant about striding into his 70s strong as ever. Now he describes being in a dance with his own heart, negotiating what he can and should do, with the support of family, doctors and nurses. He was due to see his cardiologist again the following Monday.

He cannot picture never running again. “I am, after all, a runner. I’m not a walker. I’m a runner who right now has to walk,” he says, adding that he does not see that changing, “but I do want to live.” He ends the video at two and a half miles, out early to beat the Arizona heat, saying the medal means he is someone who finishes.

He calls it a heart flutter and does not name a specific diagnosis in the video. One heart rhythm problem treated with ablation is atrial fibrillation, or AFib. The Mayo Clinic’s page on atrial fibrillation ablation describes AFib as an irregular and often very fast heartbeat. It says ablation uses heat, cold or high-energy electric pulses to create tiny scars in the heart that block faulty signals, most often through thin tubes guided to the heart through blood vessels.

Mayo says people may go home the same day or stay overnight, and that most return to their daily routines within a few days, though they should ask their care team which activities are safe. It also says most people see their quality of life improve, but AFib can come back, and ablation has not been shown to lower the stroke risk linked to AFib, so some people still need blood thinners.

His experience is his own, and it says nothing about what any reader’s heart needs. But it is a reminder that a fluttering heartbeat is worth taking seriously. If you notice a racing, pounding or fluttering heartbeat that is new to you, tell your doctor.

For active people heading into their 70s, his video raises a practical question to bring to that conversation: what kind of exercise is safe for you right now, and when can you return to the kind you love.

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. Talk with your doctor about any heart symptoms and before changing your exercise routine. This article was produced with the assistance of AI and fact-checked against the sources cited by LightWave Reports.