Longtime BRI supporter Gretchen Schoenstein is taking on a bold new challenge: 2 half-marathons, in 2 days, on 2 coasts. And she’ll raise $20,000 for autoimmune disease research at Benaroya Research Institute (BRI).
Gretchen shares what inspired her to take on this challenge, why she supports BRI, and her experience running more than 120 half-marathons while living with multiple autoimmune diseases.
Why take on this challenge? What motivated you to run 2 half-marathons, on 2 coasts in 2 days?
I’ve run both the Rock N’ Roll Run in Washington D.C. and the Shamrock Run in Portland, Oregon before. But the schedule changed this year so Rock N’ Roll was on Saturday, March 16 and the Shamrock Run was on Sunday, March 17. I was entered in both races, so how would I choose? I realized in the middle of the night that maybe I didn’t have to.
I found a direct flight from D.C. to Portland the evening after the first race. I really wanted to do both because March is Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month – the perfect time to rally people around awareness and fundraising for autoimmune disease research.
I’m passionate about this because I’ve lived with these diseases since I was a kid. My most recent diagnosis was sarcoidosis in 2006. This disease affects the lungs and in my case the joints. The doctors said I’d never run again, which honestly wasn’t a huge deal because I wasn’t a big runner at the time. I spent the first few years walking on eggshells. Then, I decided to prove those doctors wrong. Now, I’ve run 120 half-marathons and counting.
