The aches and pains that go hand-in-hand with training for a 26.2-mile marathon, especially your first, aren't painful at all for rookie runner Jeff Roscoe—at least compared to what the 47- year-old Chicago resident has endured over the past three years. Just consider:
—He has had several rounds of cancer and the associated surgeries/treatments.
—He had major abdominal reconstruction surgery that had nothing to do with the cancer.
—He had a severe bout of meningitis last December that he hadn't fully kicked until March.
—He had a ruptured appendix.
—He endured the stress of dealing with his partner's lymphoma over the past year.
—And he has been HIV-positive since 1999. No wonder running 16 miles—as he did along the lakefront on July 26—is no major strain. 'It's safe to say that I've pretty much been through the wringer,' said Roscoe, a musician who grew up in Valparaiso, Ind. 'I've always been a pretty healthy guy, but to be honest, over the last 36 months, I've felt my body has turned on me.'
But to kick things back under control, even if just mentally, Roscoe has signed on to run the Chicago Marathon Oct. 12. He is training with the National AIDS Marathon Training Program for his first-ever marathon.
He has officially dubbed this his personal 'Sick Of Being Sick/Take Back My Body' summer tour. 'It's not an exaggeration to say that not a month didn't go by [ over the past three years ] that I wasn't having some major, physical problems,' Roscoe said. 'It's been bad, really bad. If it was any one of those things separately, I probably would have processed it a lot better. But I'm a Type-A control freak, to the extreme, and I basically have been able to control anything in my life physically and career-wise [ up to this point ] , but these [ ailments ] were some pretty hard balls that were thrown at me and I couldn't control them. I didn't realize the psychological impact of it right away, and I eventually was sort of freaking out a bit. I kept wondering why I couldn't fix it, make things better, especially when nothing had really gotten in my way before.'
Roscoe added: 'After my bout with meningitis, which ran from [ last ] December through March, I was really feeling like my body was gearing up on me. I decided I needed to do something. Well, running a marathon, which is something I've always wanted to do, just seemed like the most logical first step to getting back to doing something [ physically ] on a regular basis.' He is now a regular every Saturday morning along Lake Michigan with other yellow shirtwearing runners from the National AIDS Marathon Training Program.
'I have no idea what to expect [ on race day ] , especially because I never really enjoyed running,' he said, laughing. Roscoe, who has been partners with Jaime Krohn, 45, for nine years, said his HIV status has, surprisingly, had little impact on his health woes over the past few years. In fact, Roscoe's HIV status has been the one, main constant. 'Whatever the latest crisis was, HIV always got pushed to the back. My numbers are great; my load's undetectable,' he said.
'It's been three years of hell, but I'm putting an end to it.'
