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To close out her 2019, Lupita Hernandez stopped after every mile to plant a small flag along Interstate-10 between Houston and San Antonio. Each pause in her 200-mile run was to honor a fellow veteran battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), something she has dealt with since she retired from the Marines in 2004. PTSD still affects her life each day, whether personally or in Hernandez’s work in the Veteran Treatment Court in Harris County, Texas. On average, 22 veterans commit suicide everyday, and that’s a statistic that is always on her mind. “I wanted to bring awareness to the stigma...

Two and a half years ago, Erin Menefee didn’t know if she’d be able to run competitively again after having open heart surgery. But on December 8, the 27-year-old physical therapist realized her dream when she qualified for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials at the California International Marathon (CIM) in Sacramento with a time of 2:43:10. Surrounded by dozens of other women who qualified for the first time, Menefee basked in the accomplishment of a goal that motivated her throughout the long recovery. For the first time since she underwent surgery for a rare congenital heart defect in July...

Aaron Stevens will run the Boston Marathon for the sixth time in April, and his fifth as part of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute team. For each of the past two years, he has raised $16,000 for the cancer center. The effort is personal. Stevens lost a cousin in her 30s to colon cancer, and his father survived grueling treatment for bladder cancer that included a nine-week stay in intensive care. He’s got his two-pronged fundraising strategy down pat—an email list of 500 people get monthly appeals from him, and he can count on at least 100 of those people to...

Eliud Kipchoge captured the attention of the world when he broke the two-hour marathon barrier in October. Whether watching live or through replays and highlights, the Kenyan runner inspired runners all over the world. For Jon Ornee of Holland, Michigan, it certainly sparked a fire following months of recovery after being hit by a car while cycling in May. “I was inspired to really double down on getting after things that I love and make the best of this awesome life I’ve got,” Ornee, 38, told Runner’s World. “Once I was able to train again, I decided I wanted to...

When Nate Boutcher was 22, he found out his kidneys were failing. He wasn’t totally shocked by the doctor’s news, since his dad had suffered from kidney failure throughout Boutcher’s childhood, but the diagnosis still hit him hard. Like most undergrads, he thought he was invincible at the time. “I knew that I had scarring on my kidneys when I was 18, but I didn’t think it would get any worse. When I went in at age 22, I had some swelling, but I thought it was because I needed stronger medicine—but it turned out, I had severe kidney failure,”...

Before her life changed last year, Lauren Ziegler hated running. The Grand Valley State University student, now 22, grew up playing team sports in high school, then joined a CrossFit club in college as a way to stay fit as an undergrad. “I started competing in CrossFit competitions in college,” Ziegler told Runner’s World. “I loved every part of my CrossFit workouts except for the running. It was my least favorite thing in the world. The most I would ever run was two or three miles a week.” One morning before class in December 2018, Ziegler woke up to find...

In her decade of living and running with cancer, last year was Carol Chaoui’s toughest yet. But in 2019, she’s mounted a remarkable comeback. She has stage 4 breast cancer and stage 4 thyroid cancer, but Chaoui, now 56, finished the New York City Marathon on November 3 in 5:39:34—faster than 13-minute pace—even though she has tumors all over her body, including in her brain. And she mostly walked for the last 19 miles after stumbling several times in the early going. “I’m a pretty fast walker,” she quipped after the race. Chaoui was first diagnosed with breast cancer in...

Around mile 10 of the Edmonton Marathon in August, Collin Jarvis was faced with a choice. One of the runners in the top pack pulled ahead at a pace that would lead to a sub-2:30 finish. Jarvis knew that he could either continue at a conservative effort with the group or risk hitting the dreaded wall while following the leader to a potential breakthrough. Just as he had done many times before in his life, Jarvis took the risk: He hung on to finish the race third overall, in a massive personal best of 2:27:30. Shaving 22 minutes off a...

Though Allison Longest had a normal pregnancy, soon after she gave birth to her son, Zachary, on December 16, 2013, she and her husband noticed that something was wrong. “He wasn’t eating very well, and after looking into it, the doctors at Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health discovered that he had a heart murmur,” the 39-year-old from Indianapolis told Runner’s World. “But it was minor, and no one was that worried about it.” Two weeks later, Zachary was brought in for a heart check-up on Christmas Eve. To the surprise of his parents, the doctors diagnosed him...

A year ago, Secret Service Special Agent Rod Wellman never thought he’d be tapering for a 100K race. The distance was never something he thought would cross his path. He thought the same thing about lung cancer. Yet, on October 4, 2018, Wellman found himself at an urgent care center for a cough that hadn’t gone away after several weeks. Some scans and X-rays revealed the cause. “I’ve never been that sick before,” Wellman told Runner’s World. “I thought it was just a chest cold. Then, they told me I had stage 4 cancer in my lungs.” By the time...

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...

Jeannie Rice is faster at 71 than she was at 70. In October 2018, she stunned the running community when she broke 3:30 for a marathon, running 3:27:50 in Chicago. On September 29, almost one year later, she broke her own 70–74 world record in Berlin, running 3:24:48. She averaged 7:49 per mile. Rice, who splits her time between Mentor, Ohio, and Naples, Florida, ran even splits most of the race. All her 5Ks were in the 23-minute range, until the 35-kilometer mark (about 21.7 miles). Then she slowed to a 26:34. “I faded the last 5K, but I knew...

At age 35, with six months of chemotherapy and three weeks of radiation behind her for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Oregon resident Karen Baas didn’t feel relief because her treatments had ended. She felt poisoned. “Of course I was grateful to have had treatment and get past it,” she told Runner’s World. “But before I got cancer, I was a vet tech, and one of the chemicals we use for euthanasia is red. It turned out one of my infusion chemo drugs is also red. I can’t tell you how disturbing it is to make that mental connection.” Three days after her...

On Sunday, September 15, Marie-Ange Brumelot had just crested a hill in Central Park on her third and final lap of an 18-mile race hosted by the New York Road Runners. At that point, she spotted her husband, Luciano Medina, ahead of her. “I didn’t realize he was in the lead,” Brumelot, 26 of the Bronx, told Runner’s World. “There were nearly 5,000 runners participating, running anything from six minutes to 14 minutes per mile, so we were lapping people. Of course I wanted to catch him.” Brumelot, who is running the Chicago Marathon on October 13, planned a hard...

ANKENY, IA—Friends and family of Landon Carter expressed concern about his mental state after he revealed that he just runs for no reason whatsoever. "Yeah, I like running around the neighborhood, just for fun," said the psychopathic nutjob. "I get up in the morning and I run a few miles. It's enjoyable. In no way is it weird that I enjoy jogging around the neighborhood, with no destination and no apparent purpose." Carter says he runs even though nobody is chasing him and despite the fact that he doesn't have anywhere in particular to go.

When Peyton Dennis told his mom, Katie Ann, that he wanted to run in the kids’ race at the Pottersville Sod Slingers lawn mower race weekend in Pottersville, Michigan, on August 24, she wasn’t too surprised. “Peyton’s always been an active kid. He wants to do what all the other kids are doing,” Katie Ann, who lives with her family in Ionia, Michigan, told Runner’s World. “When he found out there was a race that weekend, he insisted on doing it—even though he has trouble walking now, let alone running.” At the end of February, 5-year-old Peyton was diagnosed with...

When Gina Rouse graduated as a nurse from the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga in 2003, she intended to keep training like she did as a college runner. “I got the night shift in my first job as a nurse,” Rouse, who now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, told Runner’s World. “I was working from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and still trying to run twice a day before and after the shift. I definitely cut corners on sleep.” Rouse soon realized that her new schedule made it impossible to keep training the way she did in college. So throughout most of her...

Right after I watched the trailer for the Amazon Studios film Brittany Runs a Marathon, I thought about the time I had forgotten to buy energy chews right before a 10-mile marathon training run. I walked to the grocery store in my running clothes—spandex leggings, a technical shirt with the name of my local running club on it, and New Balance 860s. I put two packets of chews on the conveyor and started to pull some money out of my belt pack when the cashier said, “These are really good.” I told him that it took me a while to...

For many runners with chronic illnesses, managing their condition in order to continue doing the sport they love can be a challenge. But the benefits they gain from it—a calmer mind, a reduction in stress, for instance—help motivate them to keep pushing forward. But for 37-year-old Annabelle Winters, running through chronic illness hasn’t just given her a mental boost: It may have literally saved her life. Winters is a lifelong runner. She started running in third grade, as part of an after-school club in her hometown in southern New Hampshire. While the team competition side of running never quite struck...

For four years, Joe Robinson and Lance Woods ran the streets of Detroit. Robinson took the east side where he resided, and Woods had the west side. But they never ran together. They didn’t know each other. Though both lifelong Detroiters, their paths never crossed. Not in running, and not in their careers. Woods worked in youth development in the local school system while Robinson operated as a young, hip hip entrepreneur with his company APX Management, which works with up-and-coming rappers in the city. Yet both had a similar vision for their home and the African-American community: a running...