McIntire flourishes as distance runner despite Crohn's disease and injuries
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
By Jim Irish
Courtesy photos, Austin American-Statesman, Jim Irish
Jimmy McIntire can never predict when a Crohn’s attack will strike.
On Easter weekend, he and his daughter, Megan, drove from Bastrop, Texas to New Orleans to compete in the Crescent City Classic 10K. On Friday, after checking into a hotel, he ventured across the Mississippi River to Algiers, the quaint neighborhood founded in 1719, to sightsee.
During the jaunt, he started to feel ill. The return trip to the hotel lasted an interminable two hours. Once there, he took an 80 mg dose of prednisone.
“The Crohn’s had a head start,” says McIntire, who has a gray goatee, mustache, and ponytail and always wears a cap in races. “I should have taken it a lot earlier. By the time I got back to the hotel, it had gotten out of control.”
He was sick the rest of the day. The next morning — race day – he “was wasted.”
McIntire ran the first three miles but was forced to walk the next three. He typically runs a 10K in 40-plus minutes, but on that day, he finished in 1 hour, nine minutes.
“I hadn’t been able to eat anything,” he says. “It knocks you down.”
McIntire loses consciousness after 10K race in New Orleans
His problems weren’t over.
After the finish, he accepted a glass of beer and wandered around. He sat down near the generators cooling the kegs of beer.
He says his back was “achy,” and he felt “really bad.” His vision began to fade to a grayish-white, and he couldn’t see anything.
At that moment, he passed out on the ground.
When he regained consciousness, runners were tossing cups of ice on him.
"Please stop doing that. It's not heat related."
-- Jimmy McIntire speaking to runners tossing cups of ice on him
“Please stop doing that,” he told them. “It’s not heat related.”
They placed him in a chair in the shade and handed him another beer and then some beans and rice.
His daughter appeared on the scene a few minutes later.
“She wasn’t alarmed,” McIntire says. “She knows me.”
The Crohn’s attack followed by lack of sleep, inability to digest food, and low blood pressure were factors in the sudden loss of consciousness, McIntire believes.
McIntire, 77, was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease more than fifty years ago.
Symptoms of Crohn's disease
Crohn’s is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that causes swelling and irritation in the digestive tract. No cure exists. Slightly more than one million Americans are estimated to have Crohn’s. Symptoms include:
abdominal pain,
chronic diarrhea,
weight loss,
fatigue,
fever.
McIntire adds sleeplessness to the list.
“It starts with cramps in the intestine and is extremely painful for 6 to 10 hours,” he says.
When he first struggled with Crohn’s in his mid-20s, he was prescribed 160 milligrams of prednisone daily but stopped that dosage because of the drastic side effects.
"I was retaining water weight and looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy."
-- McIntire after gaining 45 pounds on prednisone
“I was retaining water weight and looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy,” he says.
He ballooned from 135 to 180 pounds on a 5-foot-8 frame, and his skin was covered with “these big orange-covered bruises.”
He has since adjusted the prednisone to 60 milligrams at the start of a flareup. Taking the prednisone promptly eliminates the worst symptoms, McIntire says.
Brutal introduction to running in high school
McIntire’s initial introduction to running amounts to a horror story. In the mid-1960s, he went out for the track team at Robert E. Lee High School in San Antonio (the school had no cross country team). The track coach was a football coach whose sole goal was to condition the football players.
"If you weren't throwing up, you weren't giving enough effort."
-- McIntire describing high school track
“If you weren’t throwing up, you weren’t giving enough effort,” McIntire recalls about the experience. “That was his attitude. I didn’t find it pleasant.”
One drill that is burned in McIntire's memory involved one runner wearing ankle weights and having a 15-meter head start before the rest of the team chased him. If he was passed during a quarter of a mile, he had to run a second lap wearing the weights.
“I mostly remember the bad stuff,” he says.
After high school, McIntire enrolled in the Marine Corps for two years during which he ran track to avoid menial tasks.
He stopped running altogether for about 25 years after becoming a carpenter to support his family. Then in 1994, a neighbor who ran the Cap 10K in Austin every year invited McIntire to run it with him. Training only once or twice a week in a park, McIntire ran 49 minutes.
First crack at Cap10K proves to be a gamechanger
“It was a blast – the adrenaline, the big crowd,” he recalls. “There were more costumes. Austin was weird back then.”
"It was a blast -- the adrenaline, the big crowd."
-- McIntire describing his first Cap10K in Austin
Non-runners also entered among the 25,000 competitors. McIntire saw the late Austin American-Statesman humor columnist John Kelso in the race with a folding chair tied to his back “in case he wanted to sit down.”
Because of a broken nose playing baseball in his youth and a deviated septum, McIntire’s breathing sounds as distinctive as a train locomotive. In the Cap10K one year, Bob Wischnia, deputy editor at Runner’s World for 27 years, yelled at McIntire, 20 yards behind him, “I hear you, Jimmy.”
Multiple age-group winner at Cap10K
McIntire has competed in every Cap 10K since 1994. He has finished first in his age division nine times and in the top three an additional six times.
"I find running enjoyable, and it appeals to my active lifestyle."
-- McIntire
“I find running enjoyable, and it appeals to my active lifestyle,” McIntire says. “But after running for years, it becomes more than a physical activity. The mental side becomes more developed and increases my motivation.”
The Bastrop fire in 2011, one of the worst in Texas history, destroyed his home among 1,500 others and, with it, all his race records before that year..
His personal records include a sub-38 minute 10K in LaGrange around 1998, a 1 hour, 20-minute half marathon at the 3M in Austin, and 3 hours, 5 minutes in his first marathon at the Motorola in Austin, both at age 50 in 2001. He finished second in his age group in the half marathon.
He trained only 20 miles a week for his first marathon and yet almost broke three hours.
“I fell apart and walked a little bit,” he says. “I stopped at a water station, and my knee went out. I limped around for a while. I lost quite a bit of time.”
Crohn's returns with a vengeance after 25 years in remission
After 25 years in remission, Crohn’s reemerged in his 50s. It was so painful at times, he couldn’t drive a vehicle for a few months.
He has also struggled with debilitating injuries.
Neither plantar fasciitis nor bone spurs knock McIntire out
Starting in 1999, a severe case of plantar fasciitis – heel, ankle, Achilles tendon – forced him to the sidelines for a year and a half. He visited a sports medicine physician who recommended finding an activity other than running.
As an alternative, he rode a bicycle until he suffered some accidents.
“I’ve gone over the handlebars a couple of times,” he says. “I don’t like bicycles.”
In 2014, he developed painful bone spurs in his heels. Deterioration of the bone in the heels was evident in X-rays.
“For a few months, I couldn’t run much,” McIntire explains. “It starts with a stabbing pain that gets worse the longer you run. The inflammation got so bad that my ankles and heels would swell and were painful to touch.”
Inserts eliminated the pain, but it returned after two years. A friend and Airrosti practitioner recommended removing the inserts. McIntire followed his advice, and the pain disappeared.
McIntire deals with a severe case of shingles
In 2022, soon after a 50K trail race, he contracted shingles on the right side of his neck, in his scalp, and in his ear. He was able to run only short distances. A dermatologist told McIntire it was the worst case she had ever seen. She prescribed a “cocktail” of pain medication, including ketamine.
"The pain wasn't necessarily extreme but was unrelenting."
-- McIntire describing his bout with shingles.
“The pain wasn’t necessarily extreme but was unrelenting,” McIntire says. “I was getting up at least four times during the night to medicate. It lasted about three weeks, not counting the scabbing. The nerves in my neck are still damaged.”
Even his carpentry work caused problems. About five years ago, while working inside a home near painters who were spraying lacquer – a toxic chemical – McIntire inhaled the fumes. The next day at a 5K race in Bastrop, he dropped out because he had trouble breathing.
Anemia is an aftereffect of Crohn's
Three years ago, he experienced “tired legs and no energy” after workouts. His doctor ordered blood tests, which revealed anemia, a disorder characterized by a reduced ability of the blood to carry oxygen. Anemia is the most common complication of Crohn’s disease, affecting one in three patients. It is caused by iron deficiency.
McIntire experimented with different supplements and discovered an herbal iron syrup that eliminates stomach cramping. But the anemia has dropped his VO2 max from 46 or 47 to 41.
“The anemia hasn’t made it any easier,” he says.
Nothing will prevent McIntire from pursuing his passion
Despite his struggle with Crohn’s, anemia, and an assortment of illnesses and injuries, McIntire has persevered with his passion.
"I've never given any serious thought about no longer running."
-- McIntire
“I’ve never given any serious thought about no longer running,” McIntire says. “There have been a couple of times I thought my running was over because of injury or illness, but luckily that didn’t happen. That made me more appreciative of being at the starting line regardless of my fitness or finishing time.”
On a warm spring day in late April, McIntire arrived at the Bastrop High School track. He jogged a mile as a warmup. Then he ran eight 400-meter repeats at 7:30 pace.
Few 77-year-old individuals are able to duplicate that interval session.
Jim Irish is a freelance writer in Bastrop, Texas
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