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The Review
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March 8, 2016 DIXON
In it for the long run Runner logs nearly 90,000 miles, and she’s not done yet
Just do it? She does – and how BY CHRISTOPHER HEIMERMAN
DIXON – It took the threat of losing her leg to get Diana Nelson to stop running. In 2007, she was running a cross-country race along the Rock River in Prophetstown, and cut her leg on a tree, resulting in 8 days in the hospital and 13 days on crutches. “I had gangrene and everything in my leg,” she said. “They almost took it off. I couldn’t believe something so stupid could make me lose my leg.” It ended a 25-year stretch during which a day didn’t pass without her getting out for a run. “25 years, 8 months and 21 days … but who’s counting?” Nelson said. She’s broken both of her wrists, slipping on ice, but both times resumed running, cast and all. In fact, despite having cracked five vertebrae and shrinking 5 inches since she overcame her gangrenous injury Nov. 19, 2007, she’s yet to miss another day. Every day, she gauges the wind while walking across Kilgore Road to fetch her paper. After all, when she calls time and temp, the recorded message tells her only, well, the time and the
LEFT: Diana Nelson hits the pavement for her daily run in Dixon. A hospital stay was the only thing that
the other day. She’s also run her race total to nearly 500, nearly all of them in the Sauk Valley, and most of them 5Ks and 10Ks. “It used to be just 10Ks for the first 12 years or so, temp. until they added in the Her running habit began 5Ks, to get more money,” modestly in 1980, when she said. she was 33. Her then-husShe likens running to band had given up smok- brushing her teeth, or ing and began running. washing her face: It’s He convinced her to run just something she does to the intersection of Wol- every day. When she used verine and back, a .2-mile to hold three jobs and route. couldn’t run before sun“I said, ‘Leave me alone. set, she’d get up at 3:45 I don’t like this.’” she said. a.m. to get in her running “But he kept nagging me, before going in to work at and told me to go 10 steps 8. farther each time.” “I ran in the dark for Six months later, she got 21 years – except for on a log book for her birth- weekends,” she said. day. She’s “When I run in started writhistoric A friend of mine ing it down, it conditold me she ran became more tions, real,” she said. in her house, and with the Today, a I said, ‘Are you w i n d bookshelf in nuts?’ – then I c h i l l her living room reachdid it. is chock full of ing 65 Diana Nelson log books and below. trophies – the The last latter collection day she a small sample missed of the awards she’s gar- because of the bitter cold nered over the years. She’s was Jan. 10, 1982, when run 88,000 miles – “and she said wind-chill condicounting,” she added – tions reached 85 below. each route documented in “I don’t get sick,” Nelson the log books. She said she said. “Maybe it’s because brings up her accomplish- I’m just used to it, and I go ments with friends only outside every day, no matwhen she hits another ter how cold it is.” 5,000-mile plateau. When the mercury These days, she’s still touches 100 degrees, she’s pounding out 7 miles 6 out there, pounding the days a week, and a 9-miler pavement of rural Dixon.
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“So what?” she said. “I always think, ‘If I’ve got an excuse today, I’ll have an excuse in a few days.’ I don’t have any excuses, and I don’t want them.” It’s rare for her to run indoors. There either has to be lightning like crazy – “I got scared one time … really, really scared” – or extremely icy. If those conditions exist, she runs in her house. Her 1,000-or-so-square-foot house. Yup. You read that right.
“A friend of mine told me she ran in her house, and I said, ‘Are you nuts?’” she said. “Then I did it.” If it’s a 7-mile day, that means nearly an hour and a half of running loops around her home. You don’t want to do the math for a 9-miler. “It’s so boring,” she said, pounding her fists on the table. “I hate it. It’s bad.” Just a few years ago, it wouldn’t have taken nearly as long. In 2009,
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she tied then-Sauk Valley Media sports editor Will Larkin for 471st place in the annual Reagan Run 5K in Dixon, both of them finishing in 28 minutes, 45 seconds – a 9:35-permile pace. She could once maintain a 7-minute-permile clip. “I do races … very badly,” Nelson said, managing a laugh. “But it’s such a habit, and I can’t give it up. There was never any intention. I just did it.”
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