2 Naperville marathoners share stories of being hit by cars

This year's field of runners in the Edward Hospital Naperville Marathon and Half Marathon illustrates the diversity of life experiences among people with one thing in common: a long-distance running hobby.

For example, runners who will take the starting line at 7 a.m. Sunday at Naperville Central High School will include:

• A woman who said she would never run a marathon, but is now on her fourth;

• “A beer drinker with a running problem;”

• A military member who ran a 50-miler six months ago;

• A runner who doesn't care for the term “half marathon,” but likes to run one “13-er” every year;

• A brain tumor survivor;

• A former college soccer player;

• A man in the midst of a quest to complete 50 marathons in 30 states in 365 days;

• Runners from Arizona, Colorado, Florida, South Dakota and overseas in Bogota, Colombia, and London, England, among other locations

• A handful of people who will be racing on their birthday;

• A St. Charles cyclist who plans on biking to the race, “weather permitting;”

• And a runner who's in it to “prove my asthma wrong.”

As if that's not enough, this year's race also includes two 28-year-old men who have been hit by cars. Not only did Joseph Evans of Carol Stream and Matt Keating of Naperville live to tell the tale, but they also lived to fight — actually, to run — another day.

Evans will be running in his second marathon Sunday, hoping to improve on his recent Chicago Marathon time of 5:57, and Keating will be racing in his ninth marathon as he checks off the first handful of states on a quest to run one 26.2-mile race in all 50 states across the nation.

Here are their stories:

Joseph Evans

An IT guy, a rock climber, an obstacle course racer, sure. But Evans doesn't consider himself a runner.

He's running now mostly because he can. Because until about a year ago, he couldn't.

Evans was a 12-year-old heading home from school in Darien on a hand-me-down bike in 1997 when he was hit by a driver who rolled past a stop sign at an intersection where bushes blocked everyone's view.

“I never even saw a vehicle. Next thing I know, I'm on the ground with some man putting a flannel jacket on me,” Evans said. “I was knocked out instantly. I have no recollection of the incident.”

Evans' left shoulder was torn and he had a bad case of “road rash” on the left side of his face. His left eye was basically swollen shut and he felt like he had a rock in his cheek. (It turned out to be scar tissue buildup). His nose hurt and the septum was smashed to one side, but he said that was the least of his doctors' concerns.

Recovered from the crash, the young Evans noticed he was constantly sniffling. He never felt like he could breathe out one side of his nose. He blamed it on allergies.

“I don't think I ever ran over a mile without stopping or slowing down tremendously,” he said.

Fast-forward to 2013 and one of Evans' friends has sinus surgery, which gets him thinking.

“I finally got a full-time job with health insurance and I said, ‘I need to get this fixed; I've suffered too long,” Evans said about the breathing problems that nagged him for 15 years.

Turns out his left nasal passage was 85 percent blocked. The surgery he had last year to clear the blockage opened a whole new world of athletic possibilities.

“Now that I have this ability to breathe, I need to use it,” he said.

Evans, who said he enjoyed running around the yard barefoot as a boy, jumped headfirst into the sport, racing first in the Allstate Chicago Half Marathon last summer. He recognizes his interest in running might stem from a “people want what they can't have type of thing,” but he's gearing up to run Naperville anyway.

In Vibram Five Finger shoes that have separate sections for each toe and allow wearers to run as close to barefoot as possible, Evans wasn't the happiest with his first marathon time of 5:57 in Chicago last month. The thin shoes work fine on trails or grass, he said, but after 8 miles of Chicago pavement, the pain in his feet was pretty bad.

He also didn't follow a training plan, just ran as much as he could each day after work. But he still expects to finish faster in Naperville with the switch to more traditional running shoes.

But even with his nasal passages open, Evans said he carries one remnant from his collision with a car:

“I'm a lot more cautious about crossing roads than I used to be and/or making a point to stop at the stop signs instead of rolling past them,” he said.

Matt Keating

A quarter-mile into a half marathon training run in 2010, Keating was on the sidewalk at Boughton Road and Brighton Lane in Bolingbrook as a light turned yellow.

What seemed like a safe spot to stop turned out not to be as one car made a U-turn and another swerved out of the way, heading toward Keating. He jumped, but so did the car, in a way, and both he and the Honda Civic went through a fence into a backyard.

Four hours in the emergency room and two months of recovery later, Keating was left with a permanently separated shoulder and the realization he wouldn't be running the Rock ‘n' Roll Half Marathon in Chicago that year.

At the time, Keating was 24 and six months into a running regimen he began with a former girlfriend.

“The relationship didn't make it, but I started running because of her and just kept going ever since,” he said.

Overweight as a child and young adult, Keating and his then-girlfriend started running to get healthier. It's turned into a hobby and a habit for the accountant who works in Oak Brook, as he brags that he even ran 300 miles outside during the “Polar Vortex” that was last winter.

Keating, who now is married to a physical therapist to whom he proposed at a marathon finish line, even continued to run despite being hit by a car a second time, in fall 2011 in DeKalb, where he was studying finance.

At a “T” intersection, a minivan was waiting to turn right on red and Keating said he waved to make sure the driver saw him. He must have misinterpreted a hand gesture by the driver, thinking he was being signaled to cross. When he started moving, so did the minivan, and he jumped up and rolled onto its hood.

“It felt like a spin in ice skating,” Keating said. “I was just angry that it happened again.”

The biggest change Keating has made in his running behavior is to be as visible as possible.

“I'm more cognizant at intersections and I wear brighter colored clothing. I ran a 5K in a bright pink shirt,” he said. “People were joking that I looked ridiculous, but I said ‘Hey, I've been hit before. This matters.'”

As Keating lost 50 pounds to a weight of 175, he started working toward the goal of completing one marathon in each of the 50 states. He's done seven so far — Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina and Wisconsin — so the Naperville race won't help him check another off the list.

“I'm only a mile from the start line,” Keating said. “This is a race I have no excuse not to do.”

As Keating continues training, his shoulder feels “old man-ny, I like to call it,” as he can sense when the barometric pressure changes and a storm is coming.

“Other than that, it just pops and cracks occasionally,” he says. “Nothing painful.”