After cancer, transplant, and rehab, it’s off to the races
November 21, 2011|By Dan Hardy, Inquirer Staff Writer
Derek Fitzgerald , 38, crosses the finish line after a half-marathon. He got a new heart in January. (SARAH J. GLOVER / Staff Photographer)
Eleven months ago, fresh from a heart transplant, Derek Fitzgerald of Harleysville could barely walk.
On Sunday, new ticker working perfectly, he completed 13.1 miles, one of the 25,000 people who took part in the annual Philadelphia Marathon weekend, which also includes a half-marathon and an 8K race.
Fitzgerald, 38, was diagnosed eight years ago with cancer: non-Hodgkin’s disease. Chemotherapy worked – but it damaged his heart.
“It felt like having a 10-pound weight on your chest,” Fitzgerald said of his disease. “I just felt sluggish; it got a little harder every day. . . . I’d forgotten what it was like to be healthy.”
After the transplant in early January, Fitzgerald started rehab.
A few months in, as he was walking on a treadmill, he picked up his pace to a run.
“My chest lifted up, and I got goose bumps,” he said. “I got a runner’s high – I remembered what it was like to feel healthy.”
Before Sunday, Fitzgerald had never run a long-distance race. He finished the half-marathon in 2 hours and 37 minutes. The winner of the marathon, Folisho Tuko, 25, of High Falls, N.Y., completed the 26.2-mile course in 02:19:16.
Fitzgerald hadn’t come to the race to finish high in the standings or to run a great time. Instead, he said beforehand, “I want to show appreciation for everything I’ve been given. And I want to stand up for the people who are in the same place I was.”
Fitzgerald trained and ran with Team in Training, a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society fund-raising effort that fielded about 200 participants, spokesman Gregory Seitter said. About 10 of those were cancer survivors, he said, and the effort raised more than $300,000.
The Philadelphia Marathon – anyone over 16 can compete; no qualifying time is needed to enter – is tailor-made for those who simply love to run, or who have something to prove, or who want to take on a challenge in memory of a loved one. The race, in its 18th year, drew participants from all 50 states and 40 countries; 57 percent were men and 43 percent were women, organizers said.
Peter Radford, 34, also of Harleysville, is one of those who love to run. Said Radford, a professor at Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary in Lansdale who started running at age 30: “All of the other sports I play I was getting worse at. This one, I keep getting better at.”
Radford is part of an informal gathering of runners who meet in a parking lot in Souderton to run, mostly each Saturday and sometimes on any other day of the week. Sunday’s run was his ninth marathon, his first in Philadelphia. “I like the training as much as the racing,” he said. “The rhythm of running is the rhythm of life for me.”
Radford had been shooting for a 3:10 qualifying time for the Boston Marathon. He didn’t make it. But, he said, “It was fun. You try your best and see what happens.”
Jude Dinan, 52, of Troy, N.Y., almost didn’t live to run in Sunday’s race. Dinan was given the “High Five” award before the race because of the obstacles she overcame.
About a year ago, Dinan fell ill. After doctors discovered a tumor on her lung, she was thought to have cancer. When her organs began to shut down, her doctors discovered that she had been infected with mold spores and gave her massive antibiotic doses.
Dinan, a longtime runner, had competed in two marathons but decided she would not run one again. Her illness and recovery changed that.
“It’s a celebration that I’m well enough to do it,” she said.
Dinan ran with her sister, Katria Hitrick, who nursed her back to health, and the two finished hand-in-hand. “None of us get here by ourselves,” said Dinan, who said she dedicates each mile she runs to someone she knows. Running, she said, is “a celebration of determination and of what we can do – there’s such a palpable feeling of energy.”
The runners weren’t the only ones feeling the energy – or creating it. Spectators had a ball, too.
At 15th and Chestnut Streets, six miles from the starting line, hundreds of people kept up a steady chant of encouragement as the runners streamed by. One of them was Bryce Suber, a medical student at the Drexel University College of Medicine. Her fiance, Peter Lewellen, and his father, Donald, had already passed by, but Suber stood out in the street, shouting well-wishes and giving high fives. “I’m cheering for everybody,” she said. “It’s exciting to see so many people out here committed to running.”
The enthusiasm stayed high even as hours went by after the elite runners finished. Fists still pumped, shouts of joy still rang out.
As Meghan Benbow, 26, a first-time marathoner, crossed the finish line hours after the elite runners, her face twisted with emotion. Pain? “No, I’m just overwhelmed; it was hard but I made it,” she said.
Benbow, who flew in from San Francisco to run in the race (a sister lives in Cheltenham), said she had set a goal of completing the course in less than six hours, which she easily achieved. She said she had run half-marathons before and had made a New Year’s resolution to run a full one. She wore a sign on her back that said: “Treat me gently. I’m a marathon virgin.”
Asked whether she planned to run another one, she paused for a second.
“Not any time soon,” she replied.
Original URL: http://articles.philly.com/2011-11-21/news/30425003_1_boston-marathon-long-distance-race-heart-transplant
