A pretty good runner into his early 40s, Craig Godwin had seen a fair amount of success on long-distance courses around the region.
Only after a major heart attack in 2011 did he reach an elite level in USA Track and Field Masters competitions.
“Whether it’s a heart thing or some other major medical thing, you can come back from that and live a full life,” Godwin, 57, said last week during an interview in his Philomath home a few hours before running in a 3,000-meter race at Hayward Field in Eugene. “That may not be winning a national championship but maybe it’s a hike to the top of Bald Hill, or whatever is a huge achievement for you, whatever that happens to be.”
Godwin won four USA Track and Field Masters division titles in his age group and set four American records after the heart attack. A decade later in 2021, he suffered another heart attack and in the following months, won two more national titles.
This past October, he had a third heart attack. And last month, he won three more times in the Masters national meet in Sacramento, California.
Growing up in Southern California, Godwin wasn’t much of an athlete during childhood. In fact, he wore braces on his legs during his toddler years and had such bad knees that he would dislocate one while doing a simple task like tying his shoes.
In high school after being told that he couldn’t play football, Godwin’s sister told him about cross-country and how the team needed runners. So he tried out, won a spot on varsity as a freshman and earned his letterman’s jacket.
“I was terrible to start with and then I got better,” he said. “By my senior year, I was the fastest guy on the team.”
Godwin ran track in college.
“I was very much a B team kind of guy who probably shouldn’t have been on the team but I did run in college,” Godwin said about his time with the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo program. “Back then, there was a 10K in every meet and no one else wanted to do it. And because I wasn’t fast enough to do the races that people wanted to do, it was either run the race that nobody wants or you don’t go to the meet at all.”
Following college, he ran in local 5K and 10K events and had some pretty good results.
“But I didn’t win a national championship until after my first heart attack,” he said.
Looking back to the spring of 2011, Godwin said he didn’t know if he’d ever run again.
“The first year was pretty rough,” said Godwin, who lived in Eugene at the time. “And then, it becomes your new normal and you sort of settle in.”
Following the procedure, Godwin wasn’t going to sit around on the couch and wait for the next one. In fact, doctors often encourage patients who survive a heart event to maintain a good exercise routine.
“They did say that because I had been a runner for so many years, that really helped with surviving,” Godwin added. “You build up all these collateral arteries in your heart so when one of them blocks, you have other things that can keep your heart working. So that helped me recover better with less damage.”
Returning to running races
Godwin started a cardiac rehab program with doctors watching his heart to see how he reacted to physical activity.
“In the middle of that, there was a local race that was literally around my neighborhood in Eugene … it was a prostate cancer awareness thing,” he said. “My dad had prostate cancer and I had done this race a few times before so I asked the doctors if it would be OK to run this race because it was meaningful to me personally.”
Doctors told him, sure, that’s fine, if it’s a social-type thing.
“Of course, I got out there and I got carried away and I’m feeling good about 3 miles into about a 5-mile race,” Godwin said. “I was with another runner and ended up pulling away and won the race.”
The following week, Godwin headed in for his doctor’s appointment. They asked how the race went.
“I’m not volunteering that I had run as fast as I had,” Godwin said. “But the guy that ran the program, he’s like, ‘did you win?’ He’d looked at the results.”
Not only did Godwin win, he broke the course record.
“I was very embarrassed,” he said.
About 18 months after the heart attack, Godwin entered the USATF nationals in Lisle, Illinois, a community just outside Chicago.
“I went out there and tried to run as easy as possible and not overstress my heart,” he said.
Godwin won the 10,000 meters — his first national title.
“So I sort of became the poster child for returning from a heart attack and having success,” he said.
Godwin became involved with Cardiac Athletes, an international group that supports competitors who have worked through heart conditions and are medically cleared to compete. Godwin broke several of the organization’s world records.
Also during this stretch, Medtronic, a company that makes medical devices, including stents, flew Godwin and other inspirational athletes to its headquarters in Minneapolis.
“We ran a big race they sponsored and they had banquets and the whole thing,” Godwin said. “So for 10 years, I’m this shining example and everything’s good. I’m taking the cholesterol meds and I’m doing all the right stuff. And then 10 years later in the middle of a run in Albany … I had another heart attack.”
During the decade between his first and second heart episodes, Godwin, as mentioned, had won four gold medals at USATF national championship meets and also set four American records in his age group.
On the second heart attack, Godwin received three more stents.
“So I’ve got four total — 3-1/2 inches of stainless steel mesh tubing in my heart now,” he said.
Just six months later in September 2021, a 54-year-old Godwin was competing in Highlands, New Jersey, in the USATF 12-kilometer championships.
He won again.
And in October 2023, Godwin had a third heart attack.
“On that one, they really don’t even know what happened … they didn’t fix anything,” Godwin said.
Winning at nationals in the heat
The recent meet in Sacramento was Godwin’s first serious competition since his heart attack last fall. First up for Godwin at the July 18-21 event was the 5,000-meter run.
“Certainly I wasn’t the favorite, although there was a group of us that were supposed to be pretty close together,” Godwin said.
Such meets have multiple age groups but that doesn’t mean that they necessarily run separate races. At Sacramento, the 55-59 group ran together with the 50-54 runners in the 5,000.
“One of the people that I know in the younger age group, he led early on and he was running at right about the speed that I wanted to go and we started getting a little bit of a gap on the people in my age group.”
Godwin eventually moved to the front and pulled away to beat everybody in both age groups.
“For two-thirds of the race, I ran by myself basically … just keep going and nobody catches you,” he said.
Godwin won in 16:45.18, more than 30 seconds ahead of the runner-up. Actually, he might’ve benefited from a series of delays that set back the start of the race. At one point, runners were at the starting line and officials held up the race for about 45 minutes.
“Everybody was complaining about that and I don’t know what happened from an organizational standpoint but it helped me,” Godwin said. “As I sat there and we were all getting overheated, I was thinking this increases my odds.”
The temperature was hovering around 90 degrees.
Said Godwin, “I run well in the heat.”
Later in the day when the mercury had gotten up to around 102, Godwin competed on a 4-by-800 relay.
“It was a group of people from around the country … two of them I had never met before we got to the starting line,” he said. “By the time the race started, we knew there was no one else in our division.”
With no other teams in the age group competing, the foursome just needed to run a clean race and not get disqualified to win a gold medal. They ran the distance in 9:59.92.
Two days later, in the 10,000, runners ages 25-59 ran together. Godwin won the 55-59 group in 34:32.52, which was nearly a minute and a half ahead of the second-place competitor. Overall, he was third behind runners in their 30s and 40s.
“Because that was the last race and I was competing against people I’d run against in the 5,000, I decided I was just going to run hard right from the beginning and hope nobody went with me,” Godwin said. “And that’s what happened.
Godwin runs with Portland-based Bowerman Track Club, a top organization with athletes at the Olympics and in professional events. The next big race for Godwin could be this December in the USATF national club cross-country championships in Tacoma, Washington.
Godwin serves as an example of someone who can work through a serious health issue and return to something he loves. The heart issues caused relatively little damage, he said, and his cardiologist told him that there’s no great risk in long-distance running.
“But that’s not the same situation for everybody,” he said. “There’s other people that say, ‘well, I’m on these drugs and I can’t get my heart rate over this so my goal is to walk a 5K,’ which is great and for them, that’s a huge achievement. That’s as big of a deal as something I’ve done — they just have different challenges.”
The first heart attack in 2011 followed a high-stress event. Godwin, an engineer who specializes in building automation, admits that he wasn’t taking care of himself. He encourages others to reduce stress in their lives.
“It’s not a matter of learning to be able to handle more stress,” he said. “Don’t handle more stress — have less stress.”
