Run Like Justin, ‘Love Like Judi’

At 36 years old with a full-time job in sales and a 7-year-old child at home, what compels Justin Elliott to run 26.2 miles on the pavement in Chicago?

Justin has run enough in the past to know how rewarding and how difficult it can be. In the case of the marathon, the incredible human feat of covering 26.2 miles in one try, let alone doing so in three or five or even seven hours, is herculean – or in this particular case, Pheidippidean.

And that is only on race day. It is easy for onlookers to gawk at the end result without fully understanding the hundreds of miles covered by the runners in preparation for the race. By the time most marathoners toe the starting line, they have clocked long weekly runs progressing from single digits up to more than 20 miles. “I’ve never done anything this long,” says Justin. “I haven’t done a half-marathon either. I would probably say that over the past 10 years, I have cycled through getting into running and then cycling off [running].”

It does beg the question, will Justin find the consistency needed to handle the training and the race? The answer seems to be a resounding “yes.”

Whatever anyone’s own version of a marathon may be, it takes motivation and inspiration to endure and persist through such incredible pain and adversity. Justin has the motivation: He has signed up for the October 2022 event and logged serious long runs on the streets and city parks near his exurban Chicago home. The inspiration? He has that too, in the form of his mother, Judi, who passed away in February 2021.

Judi lived with plaque psoriasis. Justin doesn’t know the medical severity of her disease, but from his memories, it sounds as though Judi dealt with the challenging symptoms that are common to so many: pain, burning, itching, bleeding, flaking.

“She was itchy all the time. She would leave a lot of flakes,” Justin remembers. “It would keep her from wanting to go anywhere, so she ended up kind of staying home a lot. And she was raising four kids. My dad was traveling a lot. It was a lot on her.”