A young Chicagoan’s first marathon leads to a new life

Lourdes raised money through the Team in Training charity and completed her first marathon in 2008. (photo courtesy Lourdes Aceves)

By the time 34-year old Lourdes Aceves made it to mile 20, the sun was beating down at 84 degrees. It was early October, and she was running down one of the longest unshaded stretches on the 2008 Chicago marathon. Nearly everyone else around her was walking. Some were sitting on the curb with ice on their heads, their heads in their hands; some had been vomiting from the unseasonable heat. By the end of the race, 125 people had been transported to medical tents, 76 ending up in the hospital.

But Lourdes kept running. All she could think about was seeing her family.

She knew they would be somewhere in Pilsen, a large Hispanic, increasingly artsy community on this city’s near southwest side and one of the 29 neighborhoods the 31,000 runners would pass through. But she didn’t know where. When she finally turned off the brutal stretch of Ashland Avenue on to 18th Street, there they were, two blocks down. They were cheering like mad. Her father, a steel mill worker who immigrated with his wife from Guadalajara to the U.S., wore a colorful poncho and a giant sombrero. (His goal was to get on TV, Aceves says.) Her mother, a deeply religious woman, screamed and waved.

Aceves is the middle child of eight, and all seven of her siblings – plus some aunts and uncles – were making the biggest fuss they could. Her father later told her he was proud of her because he saw grown men getting sick or nearly collapsing. But his daughter, he told her, was strong.

Yet Aceves wasn’t always so strong: She had never run a mile – not even in school, where she used doctor’s notes to avoid running in P.E. – until she joined the marathon training program Team in Training – a fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society – last year. And her family hadn’t always been that supportive. When she first started training, in fact, they thought she was flat crazy.

“That’s stuff white people do,” she remembers them telling her. “Why would you want to run that far unless someone’s chasing you? If you die of a heart attack out there, that’s what you get.”

Aceves, though, knew she needed a change. She had recently separated from a live-in boyfriend of eight years – a relationship that was “so much drama, just incredible drama and fights.” Worse, her nephew had just been diagnosed with leukemia, a rude awakening to one’s own mortality. Weighing 188 pounds, she had already lost more than 20 on Weight Watchers before the break-up, and she went back afterward to lose another 20 (still without exercising). But she was still feeling depressed; she grew more introverted and picked up smoking. Soon, the only solace she found was taking her dog on long walks to dog parks several miles from her home.

“I really needed to make a positive change, and my activity level began to ramp up,” she says. As she took longer walks, she felt her body pleading for her to walk more. In effect her body was counseling what has long been known in the medical community – that exercise helps to lower levels of depression and anxiety for people. For her it became cathartic and when she heard about her nephew’s diagnosis, she decided to seek out Team in Training.

Once she decided to get fit, Lourdes lost over 50 pounds in a little over a year. (photo courtesy of Lourdes Aceves)

Aceves had planned to train for the half-marathon, but when she finished her first 13.1-mile race, she realized if she could go from 0 to 13 with no prior experience, then surely she could go from 13 to 26. The marathon team registration had closed, but she went to the Team in Training regional director and begged for an exception. She was granted it.

Her family, however, remained dubious, as did many of her friends, those whose families came from Serbia, Russia and Bulgaria. They viewed physical exercise as something reserved only for manual labor: you did it if you had to, to put food on the table, but why on earth would you do it for any other reason?

As her fitness regimen became a regular routine, the exercise and discipline provided Aceves with a psychological balance she couldn’t get elsewhere. “There wasn’t organization in my life,” she says. “My routine, my job, my partner were gone, so there was no barometer.”

As Aceves created a new identity for herself, her parents and brothers and sisters began to realize and accept how important it had become. She is now training for another marathon and the Olympic distance of the Chicago triathlon. As they have gradually become supportive, Aceves asked her mother not long ago, “Mom, do you still think I’m crazy?”

While training for her second Chicago marathon this year, she added on the challenge of the Chicago Olympic Triathlon this August. (photo courtesy Lourdes Aceves)

“You should be serving God, and that’s what I want you to be doing in your life,” she began. “But since you’re not doing that, this is good for you. It keeps you busy and out of trouble.”

For Aceves, training has become a spiritual experience. “I don’t go to church. This is my religion,” she says. And though Aceves was never getting into serious trouble, she admits she used to be the party girl until training required early morning training runs.

Despite the gratification exercise brings her, Aceves says training for the Chicago triathlon has been a whole new challenge that led to new self-doubt. Running, she could do. Swimming – not so much. After hyperventilating her way through her second open water swim, she finally finished a third swim on her own. When she did a fourth recently, she “rocked it!”

She headed to her parents, where a big meal was waiting, and told them about the great swim. Good thing, her brother told her, since they’re all planning to cheer her on during the triathlon. “If the whole family goes out to see you… let’s just say you’d better not get pulled out.”

Aceves has seen the light at the end of the tunnel as far as the swim goes, but the analogy extends to her new life as well.

“I feel strong, I’m proud, I’m an athlete,” Aceves says. “It is a completely new identity for me.”