Free Republic

At every mile marker of the 2019 Chicago Marathon, Jimmy Choi dropped to the ground for a burpee—complete with push-up—and then jumped back up on his feet before he got back to running. For each mile marker on the course, he did that same number of burpees—from one on the first mile to 10 on the 10th, all the way up to 26 on the 26th mile—adding another hard effort to the already grueling marathon distance. By the time Choi, 43, reached the finish line in 5:56:03, he had completed a total of 351 burpees in addition to running 26.2...

Name: Kate Perelman Age: 33 From: Silver Spring, Maryland Job: Federal contractor and social media specialist People think depression is just feeling sad, but that’s not it at all. Depression makes you feel nothing. And in late 2018, after years of battling the disease, feeling nothing replaced my love for running. So my brand new pair of silver and blue Asics sat in the corner of my apartment, laced for a run that I thought would never come. My couch became my safe harbor. It’s where I made several impulsive internet purchases one day in late November, which included, for...

Chicago runner Lynn Rogers knows the brain and nervous system in detail. After all, she earned her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. Every day in her research, she uses non-invasive brain stimulation to understand the connections between mind and muscle. But even with a brain-science background, she struggled to find information about her prognosis when, last year, she received a rare diagnosis: chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, or CIDP. The disease causes her body to attack her own nerve cells, destroying their protective coatings and short-circuiting their signals. After three weeks of paralysis and three months as an inpatient at the same...