By DEANNE JOHNSON Journal Staff Writer of Morning Journal in Lisbon, Ohio 44432
SALEM — One step at a time, one mile at a time, one day at a time and one state at a time — Glenn Peison plans to run nearly 500 miles to help those with Multiple Sclerosis.
After watching his father, Glenn Peison Sr. and others deal with MS, which attacks the central nervous system, Peison decided to do something to help.
“It doesn’t attack your life,” Peison said. “It attacks your quality of life.”
The plan he came up with to help was to run from Winston-Salem, N.C., where he attends school to Salem. He’s been running since last spring and hopes to complete his journey over 17 days in September of 2008.
He admits he is not a natural runner. When he first started running six miles would kill him. But even while going to school and completing an internship last summer, Peison has been training long miles.
At one point he even found himself overtraining, leading to a small bone slipping out of place in his foot last August. But then Peison got people from the Wake Forest Sports Medicine department behind him, who tested him physically and checked his running gait. Peison then learned about how his running style was affecting his performance and health.
“I run poorly,” Peison said. “I run on the inside of my foot.”
Wake Forest Sports Medicine created orthodics to help improve his running technique.
Since then he has been injury free and has worked his way up to training marathon distances. He runs 50-60 miles per week and goes through a pair of Asics every 400 miles.
While home in Salem over the holidays, Peison spent one day running from Salem to Lisbon to Salem and then around town, a total of 26 miles.
The 24-year-old Salem graduate and film production and design student at the North Carolina School of the Arts admits the idea may be crazy, but it fits with his zany personality.
“I’ve got a crazy personality,” Peison said. “I kind of get a crazy idea in my head and there is no stopping me.”
He said he has been influenced by other runners, like Dean Karnazes, an ultra-marathoner. Peison said Karnazes once ran 262 miles without stopping to sleep.
Peison has chats and blogs with other runners. He recently read about a man, who was running a 50-mile race and hit a wall at about 39 or 40 miles. After sitting on the side of the road, he realized he was still breathing.
“I’m breathing so I must be alive and if I’m alive I can do this,” Peison repeated what the man wrote on the blog. So then he got up and ran the remaining 11 miles.
Peison takes inspiration of the other runners when he hears it cannot be done. He said growing up in the Salem area he has seen so many people with negativity and a lot of people giving up.
“I don’t do failure,” Peison said.
In September he plans to take that I won’t quit attitude on the road, traveling back roads through towns between Winston-Salem and Salem followed by a van with friends cheering him on and providing food and water.
He hopes people will join him along the way, even if they just run with him through their own hometown.
His mother, Dena Peison, plans to run through Salem with him on the last leg of the journey. His sister, Leia, has also talked about joining him during his run.
He would like to see if his dad can also do a final lap at Reilly Stadium with him in his electric wheelchair.
It would be a huge personal triumph for Peison, who said he has learned so much about himself already just during the training.
But he also hopes the journey raises $20,000 to aid in the research of MS. The money will go to the Mellon Center of Multiple Schlerosis in Cleveland, where quality research is being done in the field of MS led by Dr. Richard Rudick, director of the Mellon Center
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