I exercise in the morning, also mostly running. I force myself to lift weights twice a week to keep my muscle mass up and for metabolism's sake, but I feel that I get more out of the running. Anyway, giving myself some time to wake up definitely helps, but multiple hours aren't necessary. 15 minutes with a cup of coffee before I leave makes a huge difference in performance and gives my body time to adjust to being awake. I don't even need to move much, really.
Regarding the heart attack risk, I'd say if you need to be worried about such a thing, you'd know it by age 40 unless you're one of the rare cases of undiagnosed congenital heart defects. I would also suspect that if your ticker was that close to giving out, it wouldn't make a difference what time of day you exercise. Exercise itself is going to stress your heart no matter what time of day you do it. Just make sure you're not over-stressing yourself and running your heart rate up too high for your age.
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