Free Republic

Rudy “Junior” Zevallos' family is remembering the 18 year old as "a remarkable friend, student, brother, and son"A Missouri family is mourning the death of a high school senior who “tragically and very unexpectedly" died after crossing the finish line of a half marathon over the weekend. Rudy “Junior” Zevallos was rushed to the hospital after he collapsed at the finish line on Saturday and was pronounced dead, according to The Kansas City Star. Zevallos was 18, according to his family, who launched a GoFundMe fundraiser over the weekend to help the family with funeral costs. “Junior was a...

A runner who collapsed at the finish line after completing the Brooklyn Half Marathon died Saturday morning, according to police and fire department officials. The runner, who has not been identified, was pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital shortly after 9:40 a.m., according to police. Police cited possible cardiac arrest, but are currently investigating the situation. Sixteen people were taken to the hospital, according to a final count from the fire department. Five people were reported to have serious injuries. Eight people had injuries that were not life threatening, and four others had minor injuries, the department said.

When Dave Cassidy was asked to help a group of women train for the 2010 Walt Disney World Half Marathon, he readily accepted. Cassidy worked in the sports rehabilitation department at what was then Florida Hospital, but he likely never had done something like this before. Neither had the women, nearly 20 in all, competitive to their core but with little experience running, much less that far. "He really became the center of why we were there,'' said Kari Conley, one of the runners. "I don’t know if we could have achieved it without him.'' Cassidy helped 16 of the...

Last January, Lauren Barnathan, 31, didn’t realize what was happening when she tried to roll over in bed but couldn’t because her left side was limp. The Tampa, Florida, resident had always been fit and active, so the tell-tale signs she was experiencing didn’t add up in her mind for someone her age. As soon as her then-fiancé flipped on the bedside light, however, he knew exactly what was happening: Lauren was having a stroke. Adam Barnathan, 32, an emergency medicine doctor, recognized the facial droop, inability to use one side of her body, and slurred speech that he often...

Cecelia DeWitt, a member of the Coldwater High School track team in Michigan, has a few running goals she wants to complete before college: After her junior year, she had planned on running her first half marathon, which would prepare her to go the full 26.2 after her senior year. So she signed up for the Bayshore Half Marathon in Traverse City on May 25 to achieve the first part of it. Her dad, Joe, did the same, and helped her train in preparation for their big day. Everything seemed to go accordingly to plan on race day until the...

Growing up, Kelly Pietkiwicz, 29, wasn’t a runner. Sprints were her least favorite form of exercise, and she gravitated to swimming and competitive cheerleading instead. But while she was preparing to move to Nashville, Tennessee, from Memphis after college, she wanted to find a way to keep connected to Memphis. The answer? The St. Jude’s Half Marathon. “St. Jude’s Research Hospital is located in Memphis, and I had volunteered there,” she told Runner’s World. “My sister Micky was also leaving Memphis, and we both felt like we needed a way to keep Memphis a part of our lives.” So when...

When Anastasia Pursel crossed the finish line of the Bakersfield Half Marathon, she did it with a team by her side. As she ran through the straightaway the morning of November 18, her friends Bryan Matthews and James Miller held each of her hands. While the crowd cheered enthusiastically, Matthews carried a hand-painted sign with the message, “Victory Is Mine.” Only 8 years old, Pursel is already a fighter. At 17 months, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a cancer that starts in the bone marrow. After six months in the hospital and another six months in isolation,...

David Stephenson, store manager of Cedar City Deseret Industries, promised his team that if they met their sales goals, he would run at least 200 loops around the roundabout outside of their office—and he would do it in his work clothes: a shirt, tie, and slacks. “Where I work, we train individuals to get better jobs,” he explained. “They all face different challenges in their lives, so I’m always looking for any opportunity to show them that you can do hard things, even if some thing seem impossible—or not the smartest thing to do, in my case—you can still accomplish...

A half marathon in China made international news for all the wrong reasons: Hundreds of participants were caught cheating at the Shenzhen Half Marathon on November 25.Officials punished 258 runners for cheating. That included 18 runners with fake bib numbers, three people who competed as different registered runners, and 237 entrants who cut the course, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. While the runners using fake bibs and the imposters were banned for life, the 237 athletes who cut the course will receive a two-year ban from the event. Those runners were actually caught on video by a traffic...

Six people were detained Sunday for allegedly plotting an attack on the Berlin Half Marathon. Local police said the men supposedly planned to brandish knives in crowds and slash spectators and participants around them, according to The Washington Post. “There were isolated indications that those arrested, aged between 18 and 21 years, were participating in the preparation of a crime in connection with this event,” prosecutors and police wrote in a joint statement.Police reportedly tracked the main suspect and his co-conspirators for weeks when they discovered a plot to attack civilians at the event. Once suspicions were confirmed, the residences...

<p>A dog that became an Internet sensation after crashing an Indiana half marathon has died just a week after receiving a medal for completing the race.</p>

Doug Adams, the former potato chip salesman who founded the Iowans4Palin website last year, was asleep Sunday morning at home in Storm Lake, Iowa, when his wife, Diane, woke him up with a panicky phone call. “She was squealing,” Adams said Sunday night. “I was kinda scared.” Diane told him to get down to the lake post-haste. Sarah and Todd Palin were there, and Sarah was about to run the half-marathon. Diane had risen early to walk the course. Adams thought his wife was joking at first, since they had just returned the night before from Indianola, more than 150...