The Runner who Must Fall
Three years ago Kayla Montgomery was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She was 15 years old and a member of her high school track team. Since her diagnosis, Kayla has gone on to become one of the fastest young distance runners in the country. But she cannot remain on her feet once she crosses the finish line. M.S. blocks nerve signals from Kayla’s legs to her brain so she can reach speeds that cause other runners pain that she can’t sense.
But the disease also causes weakness and instability. So while racing the numbness allows Montgomery to go on autopilot, but when she stops, she loses control and collapses.
“When I finish, it feels like there’s nothing underneath me,” Montgomery said. “I start out feeling normal and then my legs gradually go numb. I’ve trained myself to think about other things while I race, to get through. But when I break the motion, I can’t control them, and I fall.”
After each race, her coach braces to catch her before she crumples to the ground. Her parents run over to ice her legs.
M.S. has no cure and Kayla doesn’t know how much longer she has before she will be confined to a wheelchair. Last month Kayla won the North Carolina state title in the 3,200 meters race; her time of 10 minutes 43 seconds ranks her 21stin the country.
“When she was diagnosed, she said to me, ‘Coach, I don’t know how much time I have left, so I want to run fast. Don’t hold back,’” said Patrick Cromwell, the coach of the Mount Tabor High School track team. In the national indoor 5,000 meter championship last year, officials forgot to catch her and she fell on her face, lying down on the track until someone came and carried her away.
“I didn’t want to be treated differently, and I didn’t want to be looked at differently,” Kayla said. At her state cross-country meet last year, she knocked into the heel of another runner in the lead pack and fell. Facedown, with her legs out of control, she couldn’t get up. But watching a fellow runner pass her, she summoned up her strength and crawled to use a nearby fence to pull herself up and place 10thin the race.
“Now I know I can do it,” she said. “It may take a little while, but if I fall, I know thatI can get up. I make myself do it. I tell myself, ‘I know you’re tired, and you can’t feel anything and it’s hard but you’re going to finish this.’”