Team Drea Foundation

By 2013, I had run a marathon and done 9 triathlons, including a 70.3-mile half Ironman.

In 4 months I went from the strongest I’d ever been to walking with a cane – and I was diagnosed with ALS in May 2014, at the age of 33.

So what do you do when you’re told that you’re going to die in the next 2-5 years? That there is no treatment and no cure.

And that before you die, you will lose the ability to walk, talk, move, eat, and breathe?

My husband and I had just bought a house. We were planning to start a family.

I realized is that if there was something I really wanted to do – I needed to do it now.

We bought a recumbent trike and I signed up for my “last” triathlon, which became the most extraordinary day of my life as more than a hundred people stayed to cheer us in.

Since most people with ALS die between 2-5 years, reaching my 5th anniversary in May 2019 felt like a huge milestone. But I realized there’s a big difference between not dying’ and LIVING. So I decided to take on the craziest goal I could think of , a marathon in all 50 states. At the time, I was at state #7.

The journey that followed was harder and more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. States that were just checkboxes on my way to 50 became places, people, memories that I will always treasure.