Joe Boyle on the Run

Bowling
Green’s Joe Boyle really was born to run. He just didn’t know it.Not until he was a 30-something,
married father of two with an undeniable spare tire around his midsection."If they’d had awards for
least athletic I probably would have qualified," Boyle says of his days at Grand Rapids Elementary
and well beyond.It wasn’t until the high school social studies teacher accompanied a group of students
from Bowling Green State University, his alma mater, on a two-week trip to North Africa in March 2010
that he had an epiphany."I was a pretty overweight guy and we went to climb up this mountain at
Chebika (in Tunisia) to find this source of water on the other side of the mountain. I’m watching all
these kids ahead of me, and I’m huffing and puffing."Finally reaching the top he discovered
"there’s this 18-inch crack in the wall of rock to get through."He managed the hike, but it
wasn’t pretty. One unavoidable thought came to him."I had bad knees growing up and I had asthma,
and was fat. But I thought: ‘If I could do this, what else can I do?’"Back home in Wood County,
Boyle decided to find out."In May 2010 was the Couch Potato 5-K here in BG and I registered for the
race. I had not trained at all, not one bit. To my surprise I ran a mile without stopping."It was
the same kind of moment I had back in Tunisia: Hey if I can run a mile, wonder what else I can
do?"After that 5-K, Boyle "wanted to do this for real. I started running pretty much every
night after that."He uses the language of a lover to describe his enthrallment with the solitary
sport."It’s the only time my mind and my heart were totally still."Boyle had no way of knowing
there was a time bomb ticking away inside his body that would soon threaten not just his newfound love,
but his life itself.He got up to 10-K distance with no problem and in the winter of 2011 started
training for marathons, beginning with the March 20 Churchill Half Marathon in Maumee."It was
nonstop fun; it was a great run."The week after, I started having stomach pains. The pain didn’t go
away. I ended up in the emergency room at Wood County. They do a CAT-scan thinking maybe I’ve got a
burst appendix."Instead, what doctors found was a tumor the size of a Nerf football growing out of
Boyle’s kidney and up toward his heart."I’ll always be grateful to the doctors at Wood County; they
sent me straight to Cleveland Clinic" where a diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma was
confirmed."At Cleveland they took my right kidney, adrenal gland, about 90 percent of my lymph
nodes."He was hospitalized for another week, then sent home."It’s April and I can’t wait to
get back outside running again."He and a runner friend, Elizabeth Gorski of Haskins, "had
decided we were going to run 1,000 miles in 2011" so Boyle had big goals despite the onerous
chemotherapy regimen he was facing.On April 30 he and Katie, his wife, hosted a birthday party for their
son. At 2:30 a.m. the next morning "I had this pain in my groin and the top of my leg."He
hoped it was a hernia, but in fact it was a massive blood clot. The leg was swollen to twice its normal
size.Boyle was readmitted to Cleveland Clinic."One of the first things this doc told me – ‘You’re
never going to walk again.’ That was the first time between the cancer diagnosis and everything else I
felt nearly hopeless."That’s when the book "Born to Run" landed in his life.A friend had
handed the best-seller to him a couple weeks earlier and he had hardly cracked the cover."But while
I was home from the hospital," recuperating from the blood clot complication, "I had nothing
but time. I started reading that book. I think I nailed it in two days. I could not stop reading it. All
I wanted was to get out there and start running again.""Born to Run" is the city of
Bowling Green’s "Community Reads" book for 2013 as well as the Common Reading Experience book
for all freshmen at BGSU this fall. Author Christopher McDougall is coming to town Tuesday for a serious
of events including an 8 a.m. Fun Run, a 5 p.m. reception/author Q-and-A at the Carter House, and a 7:30
p.m. public talk at the university."Born to Run" tells the true story of a charismatic if
quirky runners’ guru named Micah True, known to his stateside followers and the Tarahumara Indians of
Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons alike as El Caballo Blanco (The White Horse). The Tarahumara are an
extremely reclusive tribe widely considered to be the world’s best long-distance runners, able –
according to the cover blurb – "to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury." McDougall,
himself an often-injured runner, becomes transformed by his encounters with True, the native runners and
a colorful band of ultra runners from up north.McDougall, the author, "runs the Copper Canyon and
lives happily ever after," Boyle says, offering a one-sentence synopsis of the book."I was
thrilled to hear he was coming" to BG, Boyle said of McDougall. "For a lot of runners"
Born to Run is something of a bible. "This book spoke to the reason you got into running in the
first place."And whether or not you got involved in the footwear argument you found souls that you
could understand in this book," he added, pun-intended.Boyle’s definitely planning to join
Tuesday’s run alongside McDougall, BG Mayor Dick Edwards, BGSU President Mary Ellen Mazey and anyone
else who registers in advance."I’m going to do the run that morning and go to the library reception
that night."Boyle was befriended by ‘Yoda of runners’Joe Boyle is one
of a relatively small number of people who can actually say they had personal dealings with the elusive
Caballo Blanco.It all started when the Grand Rapids native and mild-mannered social studies teacher at
Rogers High School in Toledo, faced with a devastating cancer diagnosis, surgery and then complications,
first learned about Caballo from the pages of “Born to Run.”“He’s basically Yoda; the guy who’s been to
the other side of the mountain, who’s learned all the secrets.“Soon after I got done reading it I went
on Facebook and started ‘following’ the book after listing it as a favorite,” said Boyle.“Micah True,
who is Caballo Blanco, had posted a pretty inspirational thing on that Facebook page and I commented on
it along the lines of, I was sick but I was gonna come back and run again. To my great surprise — like
the next day or day after — I have a ‘friend’ request from Micah True.”Boyle says the thrilling Facebook
exchange over that Memorial Weekend was occurring at exactly the same time his doctors “were trying to
decide if I was going to be able to take part in a clinical study for a different chemo.“It was like the
greatest thing at the worst moment. I wrote him back and told him my story. (Caballo) wrote back: ‘Run
free, don’t let them get you down, you’re going to do great.’”Caballo even invited Boyle to come down to
Copper Canyon and run with him some time.No more than a week later, Boyle started walking around the
block. In later summer 2011 “I got my first 5-K again, the Soaring Eagle in BG.”“I’ve been running ever
since. The book just meant so much to me because I was in this place where I wasn’t sure what was going
to happen and there’s these people telling me I’m never going to run again.“I still have the cancer.
It’s metastasized to my lungs, but I’m still running. I guess it’s why I see the running as a big part
of my treatment, of my therapy, because it’s just about the one thing I can control.”Boyle, 38, is
passing his love of running to his children. Sons, Joey, 8, and Mark, 5, both run cross-country at St.
Aloysius School, with dad serving as a coach. “And my daughter (10-year-old Ellie) helps out with the
team. She’s run a couple of 5-K’s with me; a good time.”Ironically, Boyle, despite his frightening
diagnosis, is still running and active, while Caballo Blanco has since died.“True ended up having a
heart attack last year,” Boyle explained. He was out for a solo trail run in New Mexico’s Gila
Wilderness and his body was discovered several days later by a search party of fellow
runners.Tuesday’s ‘Born to Run’ events• 8 a.m. — Join Born to Run author
Chris McDougall on a fun run/walk from BGSU’s Jerome Library to the Wood County Public Library, and back
to Jerome. Advance registration, waiver required.• 5 p.m. — BG Community Reads reception for the author
at the Carter House, 307 N. Church St. An opportunity to chat informally with McDougall. Free tickets
for the event are available at the county library’s check-out desk.• 7:30 p.m. — Author presentation,
Q&A, and book signing in the Lenhart Grand Ballroom of BGSU Student Union. Open to all.