Keep on running

Elizabeth Lyon decided to do something special to reward herself after going back to college and earning a second degree at age 36.

Although she’d never been a runner, she decided to run the Indy Mini-Marathon. She hired a coach, started training and finished the 13.1 mile race in a respectable 1:42.

That was 10 years ago. Lyon, the wife of Indiana women’s soccer coach Mick Lyon, was hooked on running. She asked her coach if he thought she could run a marathon.

“He told me I couldn’t,” she recalled. “He said I didn’t have the guts. He wasn’t trying some reverse psychology thing, he just thought I couldn’t do it.”

Lyon has proved her coach wrong on that prediction. Not only did she complete the Chicago Marathon a year later, but she’s had the guts to keep running since being diagnosed with multiple scleroris in 2002.

Within a couple of years of starting to run, Lyon was winning local 5K and 10K races in Evansville, where she lived at the time.

At 39, she qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon.

But in 2002, the year the Lyons moved to Bloomington, Elizabeth went to a doctor because she had noticed that she was clumsy in ways she hadn’t been before — dropping her car keys, stubbing her toe, having trouble putting on makeup.

The doctor gave her the diagnosis she had feared, MS, a chronic progressive disease of the central nervous system.

The next morning, she got up at 5:30 and ran a few miles. That’s what she’s done since learning about her disease, she’s kept running. She isn’t as fast as she used to be and she has to be more careful about her footing because her balance isn’t as good.

Lyon continued to run marathons and has now finished 14 of them.

With the help of a drug, Rebif, that delays the disease’s progress, she’s running about 25 to 30 miles a week. She currently logs about 10 miles on her long runs and intends to keep running in some capacity for as long as she can.

“I feel like I still have another marathon lurking in me somewhere,” she said.

Lyon is one of about 100 national MS Lifeline ambassadors who go around the country sharing their stories with others.

In June, she started a group, the Live Your Life, Not Your MS Fitness Walking and Running Club in Indianapolis for anyone with MS, their family members or their caretakers.

The club, which has about 15 regular attendees, meets on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. It has people of all levels of physical ability and disability, Lyon said, from one woman who doesn’t walk with the club, but just comes for the companionship, to a man with MS who still runs marathons regularly.

Lyon encourages anyone interested in joining the club to send her an email at elruns@insightbb.com.

It's all about celebrating ability, not disability,” she said. “I don’t let disease define me or who I am. It’s all about being positive about what we can do.”

Elizabeth Lyon, 46, takes a small run around Bryan Park in
Bloomington last Friday evening. The wife of IU soccer
coach Mick Lyon, Elizabeth has continued to run regularly
since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2002.

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