Dan Leite Runs Marathon After Heart Transplant – Heart Failure and Running – Runner’s World

After he crossed the finish line at this year’s Columbus Marathon, Dan Leite got the chance to ring the race’s PR gong. Sure, it was the 54-year-old’s 155th marathon, and his time, 4:54:59, was almost two hours slower than his personal-best 2:56, which he’d run in the Twin Cities Marathon in 2001.

But it was his first—and therefore his fastest—race with a critical piece of new equipment: a new heart.

Leite received a heart transplant three years earlier, coming after four years of worsening heart failure that even medications and a pacemaker couldn’t slow down.

It’s a miracle he survived, Leite told Runner’s World. And now that he’s back to running long distances, he feels truly alive.

“There’s a photograph of me in bed with my breathing tube in right after the transplant,” Leite said. “To go from that to running across the finish line at the marathon—from literally almost being dead to being saved and then to be able to go back to doing something like this—it was an emotional day.”

Courtesy of Leesa Drake

From Slowing Paces to Surgery

Leite ran his first marathon in 1995 because a friend joked that he couldn’t. The former competitive tennis player upped the ante by finishing the Columbus Marathon that year in a Boston-qualifying 3:03:2. He went on to 153 more—plus an Ironman triathlon—in a 16-year period.

But then in 2011, he started to feel a little off when he was running.

“I was training just as hard, but I was slowing down,” he said. “I thought, well, we all get older.”

Soon, he started feeling breathless and lightheaded. He wondered if he’d developed exercise-induced asthma. He went to the doctor, who suspected a heart issue—a shock to Leite, given his active lifestyle.

Later the same day of his appointment, Leite began experiencing chest pains, as if he were having a heart attack. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital, the first of many visits.

Doctors diagnosed him with congestive heart failure, when the heart’s ability to pump blood through the body falters. The condition has various causes. Leite’s case is likely linked to genetics, or perhaps a previous, undetected infection, said Ayesha Hasan, M.D., medical director of the Cardiac Transplant Program at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center who oversaw his transplant.

That’s different from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy—a genetic heart defect that’s often to blame for sudden deaths on race courses, Hasan said. And, it’s also not the same as what cardiologists call the athlete’s heart, a thickening and enlargement of the coronary muscle that may occur in athletes after years of heavy endurance training.

In other words, it wasn’t the multiple marathons that caused heart damage, Hasan said. Rather, Leite’s fitness protected him, enabling him to endure far longer than he would have otherwise.

There’s no cure for congestive heart failure, but medications and medical devices can make the most of the heart’s remaining function. Leite’s athletic background, though largely beneficial, did present some challenges in treatment. “I’m not the usual heart patient,” he said.

Many people with heart failure are prescribed beta blockers, which improve the heart’s function—but also slow heart rate and reduce blood pressure. Athletes often don’t tolerate them well, Hasan said, since they often have low resting heart rates and blood pressure to begin with.

In fact, doctors couldn’t find the right drug doses to protect Leite’s heart without bottoming out his blood pressure. A pacemaker appeared promising at first, then fizzled.

During these years, running became difficult, then impossible. He could still bike—one saving grace. Another was his deepening relationship with a fellow runner. He and Emily, who met working in state politics, started dating in 2013 and married in April of 2015. (In between—in 2014—she ran her own first marathon, with his guidance.)

Soon after their wedding, Leite’s condition declined sharply. During an emergency-room visit that October, the Leites met Hasan, whose husband is an Ironman triathlete Dan knew from endurance-sports circles. She quickly sized up Leite—his breathing labored and his legs swollen from fluid, despite doctor’s best efforts—and recommended pursuing a transplant.

“That was kind of rock bottom,” Emily said. “When you first hear the words ‘You need a transplant’—I’m educated enough to know not everybody gets one.”

By mid-December, Leite couldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs. He entered the hospital again, knowing he likely wouldn’t leave without a new heart.

While some patients wait years for a donor organ, his call came quickly—that Christmas Eve. The words, “We have a heart for you” represented the ultimate gift, but the Leites recognized the price.

“There are no living heart donors,” Leite said. “You’re happy for yourself. But you also feel a level of guilt, along with sympathy and gratefulness, that somebody gave you a chance to have a second shot at life.”

His new heart began beating in his chest soon after midnight on Christmas. Almost immediately, Leite felt sharper, as blood flow returned to oxygen-starved areas of his brain. His color returned and his eyes shined brighter, Emily said. Two days later, he was up and walking.

Each day, he would stroll further. Eventually, Hasan imposed a limit on the number of laps he could take around the hospital floor. He went home in January with clearance to walk on his own. Two weeks later, he returned for a follow-up—and told doctors he’d hiked about 13 miles around the neighborhood the previous weekend.

“We had to have a little talk about toning it down,” he said.

In May, Emily ran the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati to raise funds for the organ-donation organization Lifeline of Ohio. Five months post-transplant, Leite walked the half marathon —perhaps jogging a few downhills, he admitted—finishing with a time of 2:49:06 and a glowing ember of hope he could reclaim some normalcy.

From there, he set his sights on running the half back at the Columbus Marathon—where he’d recently become chair of the board—that fall.

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Training with a New Ticker

Returning to running felt a bit like a homecoming, albeit to a remodeled residence. His new heart isn’t quite as efficient, so his easy pace is far slower than it used to be (about 10 minutes, compared to the regular 7-minute-miles he’d click off before he got sick).

During transplants, surgeons must sever the vagus nerve, which sends signals from the brain to the heart, Hasan said. In some cases, it grows back, but not for five to 10 years.

In the meantime, the hearts of athletes like Leite literally run on adrenaline. That hormone—and others collectively called catecholamines—tells the cardiovascular system to pick up the pace during exercise. But these compounds take a few minutes to build up, and also to dissipate.

So now, Letite has to warm up and cool down for about 10 minutes so his heart can catch up to his legs. Sometimes, without warning, his adrenaline levels dip and he feel gassed—a sensation that scared him at first. Now, he keeps his effort level as steady as possible to minimize it.

His medications are dehydrating, so he carries a water bottle even for a three- or four-mile jog.

He’s far more likely to retreat to a treadmill when temperatures soar—“heat and humidity are two of the big enemies of a transplanted heart,” he said. When he does run in the sun, he slathers on sunscreen, to guard against the melanoma risk that’s a side effect of his immunosuppressant drugs.

With those precautions—and with Emily by his side, phone at the ready should anything go awry—Leite slowly built up his mileage. Less than a year after his surgery, the two ran the half marathon in Donate Life shirts, finishing in 2:14:40.

Leite knew he would eventually run another full to complete the cycle. It took a little time, but he signed up for the Columbus Marathon this year.

As the wife of an endurance athlete, Hasan understood. “You realize it’s not just important to their physical health, but their mental wellbeing,” she said. While 26.2 miles might be pushing the envelope for the average transplant patient, she know Leite had the dedication and discipline to train properly and run safely.

In his buildup, Leite logged only about half his previous marathon-training mileage—35 to 40 rather than 80 to 90 each week—and one 20-mile long run, when he was used to doing several. He admits to a few moments of race-morning anxiety. But it passed quickly as he pondered the miles he’d put in and his extreme trust in Hasan and the rest of his medical team.

Emily couldn’t run the full distance with him due to a hamstring injury. But just before the one-mile mark, Leite heard a familiar voice. It was Leesa Drake, a friend he met when they were both pacers on the Clif Pacing Team 15 years prior. Drake ran the Chicago Marathon in 2017 during chemotherapy for breast cancer; a month prior, Leite flew in for a day to sit with her during one of her treatments.

During her seven-plus-hour infusion, they had plenty of time to chat about their passions, struggles, and perseverance.

“He articulated something I had been feeling,’” she said. “We can’t just stop being ourselves, which means we aren’t about to just give up on running. So we do what we can. It’s not as much as we’d like, but when we can do it we feel the most like the version of ourselves that we are trying to get through a scary health situation to get back to.”

If anyone could understand why he was out there, she could. “He was trying to be him again,” she said. “I love that Dan and I get each other in this way.” So, she’d flown from Chicago to return his favor, and ran him through the first half.

Courtesy of Leesa Drake

Emily met him for the second. She encouraged him around mile 16, when back pain slowed him. Though his main goal was to finish, Leite had started with the 4:30 pace group and felt frustrated when he fell off.

“I was grumbling and she just sort of looked at me,” he said. “She goes, you’re alive, you’re running. Your time doesn’t matter.” The words struck a chord and the pair moved forward.

Drake rejoined near the finish. As they approached, the announcer shared Leite’s comeback story over the loudspeaker, prompting tears among friends and family waiting in the stands, Emily said.

Dan did what he does at the end of every run or ride. He kissed his hand, tapped his heart, kissed his hand again, then raised it to the sky. “It’s my little sign of thanks,” he said, “a symbol to my donor and my transplant team that they went on the journey with me.”

Dan will go in for another round of follow-up tests this month. Assuming things check out, he’ll likely run another marathon. He’s not sure he can carve out the time to train for a full Ironman again, but would like to do a 70.3: a 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike, and 13.1-mile run.

Hasan said she’s okay with that—as long as he doesn’t swim in a natural body of water, which would pose an infection risk.

“Dan showed everybody that it can be done,” she said. “We know the physiology is different. It is tougher to get that level of exercise for post-transplant patients. But if you build back up to it, it is possible.”

Dan hopes his story inspires others, both potential organ donors and those who have illnesses, transplants, or other setbacks in their training.

And, he has another objective. He knows it’s up to his donor’s family whether they ever meet, and understands if the pain is too great. But, in any way he can, he wants to say thank you.

“I hope maybe if they’ve seen news clips of my procedure and the marathon, they know that I’m trying to be a good steward of their incredible gift,” he said.

Contributing Writer Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013.