Edmonds Man Who Walked Seattle Marathon On Oxygen: 'I Would Do It Again'

EDMONDS, WA — Just about 36 hours after completing the Seattle Marathon, Evans Wilson was feeling good. But was he ready to do it again?

“It’s really hard, it’s not fun,” he said. “But I would do it again.”

Wilson isn’t your ordinary marathoner. He completed the Seattle Marathon last weekend in about 11 hours. It took him that long because he walked the entire 26.2 miles while towing an oxygen tank. Inside his chest, his lungs and heart were struggling with two afflictions: pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary fibrosis.

Wilson competed in the marathon to raise money for pulmonary fibrosis – an interstitial lung disease where scars grow inside the lungs, slowly robbing a person’s ability to breathe – and just because he can. Yes, he has debilitating pulmonary problems, but he’s an athlete underneath.

He draws strength from his competitive running days. Wilson, now 62, ran cross-country at Woodway High School and went to the state track championships three times. He led the school there two of those three times. In his 20s, he ran the Rose Bowl quarter marathon and placed fourth out of thousands. Throughout his life, he always made sure to exercise and eat well.

But a couple of years ago, something strange happened. He went for a walk near his home in Edmonds and, climbing a steep hill, he just couldn’t breathe. It would be 2-1/2 years before he was diagnosed properly for pulmonary fibrosis. In the interim, he was diagnosed with sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension, a condition that causes high blood pressure in the lungs, making it very hard to breathe.

“I was walking all over Edmonds trying to attack the problem,” he said. “And I couldn’t hardly do the hills. I didn’t want to get to the point where I was going to have another crisis breathing point.”

There are treatment options for pulmonary hypertension, and getting help for his sleep apnea helped him. But due to a quirk in medical history, there's less research on pulmonary fibrosis.

In the mid-1990s, the diet drug Fen Phen was found to contribute to pulmonary hypertension, one of the factors that led to the drug being taken off the market. Due to the Fen Phen controversy, there was a lot of research put into pulmonary hypertension. Research into pulmonary fibrosis is about where research into pulmonary hypertension was in 1997, Wilson said.

There are two drugs out now to deal with pulmonary fibrosis, but the drugs are expensive and not spectacular. They can slow a person's decline by a maximum of 20 percent per year, Wilson said.

So, here’s Wilson, a former star runner suddenly dealing with two diseases that make it basically impossible to run. He was still exercising, though, walking around his house, up and down the stairs. He made it into a routine. If he could walk around his house, he reasoned, maybe he could walk to raise money for pulmonary fibrosis and help push the research into this century.

“Sometimes you have to do something dramatic to get people’s attention,” he said. “With my background and the fact that I’m pretty fortunate in the degrees to which my diseases has progressed versus what happens to the vast majority of people, I thought I could do [the marathon] and hopefully bring some attention to the disease.”

He wanted to do the Boston Marathon, but qualifying was a problem. The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation didn’t get accepted as a participating charitable organization.

“The Seattle Marathon was the next best bet,” he said.

Most people train for a very long time before a marathon. Wilson trained, but not very hard, simply because it would not be good for him. His doctors gave him the OK to walk the marathon, but “they weren’t thrilled,” he said. His training included daily exercise; one day, he and his wife walked from his doctor’s office at the University of Washington to their home in Edmonds, about 13 miles.

He also completed a full test marathon on the treadmill at a local LA Fitness one week before the Seattle Marathon. Under perfect conditions – no terrain and a temperature-controlled room – he completed the test marathon in 10 hours.

“I could barely move,” he said of his condition after the test marathon.

Anyone who has ever gone on a run, be it a marathon or a 5K (maybe because you made it your New Year’s resolution), has hit The Wall. It happens to everyone. It’s a point during the run when your knees feel like concrete and your lungs burn and you feel like maybe you might puke. It’s mostly a mental issue, where one-half of your brain begs the other half to just stop. If you can make it past that point, if you can defeat yourself, then you’ll be fine.

For Wilson, that point came early, about 10 miles in.

“The last 14 miles, I guess I would call them grueling,” he said.

But he wasn’t alone. His wife and a friend – whose father died of pulmonary fibrosis – walked next to him, giving him strength and helping him carry oxygen.

And eventually the mileage ticked down. At mile 22 he knew he could do it, and by mile 23 “it was in the bag.”

Wilson had said that the Seattle Marathon was the “next best bet” to the Boston Marathon. It turned out to be more than that. They allowed him to begin the marathon two hours early knowing it would take him much longer than the scheduled race time. And when Wilson made it to the finish line inside the empty Memorial Stadium at the Seattle Center, the marathon workers had waited for him.

“They gave me my medal, they gave me hugs, they gave me my official time. That was really cool,” Wilson said.

Wilson finished the race in 10 hours and 55 minutes. If you’re wondering, that’s close to 2-1/2 mph - not far off from the average human walking speed of 3 mph.

Doing another marathon is not a question of ability. It's a matter of fundraising. He had a goal of raising $50,000 for pulmonary fibrosis; he raised about $25,000. If he’s to do it again, he needs a sponsor – Brooks, Nike, Under Armor; a company that realizes that athletes are not just first-place finishers but people who finish no matter what, that an athlete is someone who walks for 11 hours on oxygen in spite of his serious pulmonary illnesses. He would want to have a sponsorship of at least $25,000, which would all go toward pulmonary fibrosis research.

Again: “It’s really hard. It’s not fun. But I would do it again."

Wilson still needs donations to reach his $50,000 goal. You can contribute to his fund for pulmonary fibrosis at his Firstgiving.com page. Through Dec. 15, all donations up to $10,000 will be matched 100 percent.

Image via Evans Wilson