A Run For Their Money

A former Eagle Scout, Cooper often speaks of discipline. "I don't backslide because I don't feel good when I am inactive. We're trying to find why people abandon the program. They seem to be looking for an excuse to stop. There is a break in their schedule because of a trip or an illness, or they say it's 'not practical' in their neighborhood. I'm coming to believe that the backsliders have never known what it is like to experience true physical fitness."

The pizzicato roll of joggers' footsteps subsides through the morning. Women have the exclusive use of the Center from 9:30 to 11:30 but no children are permitted except, grudgingly, on Saturday mornings. "And even that might be a mistake," says Russ Harris. "The majority of our clients prefer that there be no children." At noon the lunchtime wave of executives arrives.

Tom McMahon, 28, is assistant treasurer of Bonanza International, which operates steakhouses. He runs three miles in 20 minutes, with an exuberant sprint over the last 200 yards. "This is what life is all about," he says, declaring it his ambition to run the Boston Marathon. "It's ego. It's to know I did that and to be able to tell other people I did it. But I'm young. This place is really for that wobbling gentleman there, and that overweight one. It gives you psychological support. It lets you find a suitable challenge. These are smart people. You run a total of 100 miles and they give you a buck-and-a-quarter T shirt. My boss is well-off, 53 years old, and he's as proud of that T shirt as anything in his life."

McMahon himself might be offered as a testimonial for endurance exercise. "I've gained time by this. Before I ran I was sleeping eight or nine hours a night. Now I only need four or five. I can work 60 or 70 hours a week for the company and have just as much time with my family." It was McMahon's experience as a military aviator that impelled him to begin. "My input on America is that endurance is not our cultural thing," he says. "In Vietnam it seemed to me the 8-to-5 Americans just got beat by some 24-hour killers, little guys who went near-naked for years, who burned their bare hands holding mortars—while we were griping that the toilet paper wasn't fluffy. Texas society in particular is concerned with power, with size and strength. I guess it comes from this being a frontier place until the '50s. There is all this new money and a lot of insecurity. Manhood in a lot of places is still judged by how big you are, how you play football, by how much meat and beans and beer you can put away. I didn't feel like a man unless I weighed 220 pounds—until Vietnam. Now I plan to lead my life in a way that gives me some adaptability, some stamina."

In the afternoon the air thickens and the whine of cicadas mounts. The running course is deserted until about 4:30, when the afterwork wave of Mercedes and Cadillacs begins rolling through the front gates. Cooper often does his two miles with these men, running with a springy, fluid stride, knees high, shaking his wrists occasionally in an old track man's gesture of relaxation.

The Research Center's computer has found that those members who exercise in the afternoon slip from the program much more often than the early risers. One who has not is Ronnie Horowitz, 42, president of Southwestern Textile Company, a large wholesale operation. "This is my most important non-business hour," he says. "It's built-in, computerized, because the 170-pound dynamo you're looking at is not the man I was 16 months ago. I was 193 pounds. I'd have a big dinner and crawl away from the table and be conked out by the weather and sports. Now my Nancy is proud to tell people, 'We don't eat until seven because Ronnie is running,' and I have no desire to sit after dinner. Why, Monday we played tennis until nearly midnight."

Horowitz doesn't believe that business executives as a class are more concerned with cardiovascular fitness. "The Aerobics Center has blossomed out because of stories like mine, not because it only appeals to a certain level of society. It's made up of executives and members of the medical profession simply because they are the groups that have been exposed to the truth that endurance exercise works, like it did on me."

Does it always? Are there people who because of background or constitution find aerobics exercise an ordeal with little or no reward? The Activity Center would not seem the place to find any, but here is Reuben Martinez, a gentle, engaging man of Mexican ancestry, lying beside the pool on a bright morning, waiting for the women to abandon the steam room. Martinez has just escaped the custody of Russ Harris, who earlier had startled him from his bed and taken him to a downtown businessmen's breakfast in honor of Kyle Rote Jr., who has trained at the Activity Center. "My wife asked, 'You're going to a breakfast?' " says Reuben, eyes closed, fingertips pressed to his temple. " 'You just got in!' "

Martinez, who runs El Fenix, a chain of excellent Mexican restaurants, has far less sport in his background than work in interior design and the arts. "A friend who'd had a heart attack made it his job to get me to take the stress test," he recalls. "And Russ Harris...I know he simply wants to be my friend. I suppose that's the reason I have stayed around as long as I have."

Martinez does not respond well to the center's appeals to the competitive urge: "I will do what I think is enough for me. I'm not here to prove anything. I may be competing in other areas—in business or in raising money for charity—but not in running. How many times do I hear that greeting, 'How many miles today?' It's replaced 'How is the family?' "