She didn't stop.
After training for months for the Chicago Marathon, Barbara Nance didn't pull out of the race because of the tendonitis which had been hampering her left hamstring for the month leading up to the race. She couldn't run. So she walked.
Nance kept going even when race officials began taking down the barricades, opening up the streets, disassembling the water stations and telling her to walk on the sidewalk. Nance wasn't finished. So she got on the sidewalk and kept going for the final 14 miles.
"You're in the middle of all this," said Nance, who has lived in Bolingbrook for 10 years, "and nobody's respecting that you're trying to finish. It was really a challenge."
This was a race she wanted to complete a year earlier when the extreme heat caused race officials to turn around her group after 16 miles. Now in her second attempt to finish a marathon, the course itself was falling apart around her.
The 48-year-old knew she could keep going because of the support her running group provided. The Elijah Running Club, based out of her Forest Park church, was there to provide water for her thirst and support for her spirit. She saw her friends in the neon green shirts and knew she could keep going.
"If they had not been out there, I wouldn't have been able to make it," Nance said. "So my focus was getting to the next green shirt to make it through."
The Elijah Running Club trains people who have never run before to finish marathons. That was the case for Nance, who said the only running she ever did "was after my children."
So when fellow members of the Living Word Christian Center told her about the running club, she joined up. Improving her health was her main inspiration. Nance said she was taking medication for high blood pressure, suffered from daily headaches and was constantly tired and in pain.
The aches and pains didn't go away immediately, but Nance stuck with the club. She ran every Saturday with the club and twice a week on her own. Nance credits her faith with giving her the fortitude to push herself.
"The scripture says I can do all things through Christ," said Nance, who is a native of Gary, Ind. "So that's what I quoted every time I would go out and run and I would feel sick or tired or whatever it was. I said, 'Well if Christ is in me, then I can do all things.' One step in front of the other."
