I have a confession to make. Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t really know what cerebral palsy was. In fact, the little bit that I did know about it was gathered from a childhood encounter while out with my parents. I had to have been 11 years old or so, and I was out shopping for shoes with my mom (yes mom still picked out my shoes) when I first saw someone with cerebral palsy. The memory is so vivid that I can remember a young girl, in a wheelchair, down the same aisle that I was in. I remember staring at her and being overwhelmed by a sense of discomfort and fright because the person in front of me was so different than me and my friends. And as embarrassing as it is for me to admit this, I remember scurrying away from that aisle and asking my mom “What’s wrong with her?? Is she ok?” in a voice so loud that the mother of the girl overheard me and replied “She’s ok, she just has cerebral palsy.” I asked my mom what that was and to be honest, I don’t really remember what her answer was. 

Flash forward 20 years, and I’ve finally learned what cerebral palsy is. And I’ve learned about it through one of the most inspirational individuals I’ve ever met, Jason Pisano. A 38 year-old from West Warwick, RI, Jason is a graduate of the University of Connecticut, a freelance reporter, and recently began motivational speaking. He was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that affects his brain and impacts his muscle tone, movement, and motor skills. Jason has no use of his arms and also has difficulty speaking. And oh, he’s completed 51 marathons. 

His story is anything but simple. He’s had to fight against the odds his whole life. When his mother went into labor she fought through two days of complications. When he was delivered, he had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, had double pneumonia, and doctors gave him a 50-50 chance of survival. Even recess in grade school was perilous. Jason almost died one day when his wheelchair tipped over, leaving him submerged in a puddle unable to breathe. But it was also in school where his love of competition grew. 

When asked how he became involved, Jason explains “I’ve always liked to compete since I was 8 years old. I played wheelchair handball which is like football. And I was the first wheelchair athlete on a public school track team in Rhode Island.” Jason’s love of racing continued to grow until about 18 years ago, when he got the idea to compete in the Ocean State Marathon by pushing himself backwards – in his wheelchair – with his left foot. When word leaked that he was planning to compete, local police threatened to remove him from the course if he became an obstruction. Proving just about everyone wrong that day, he finished in 13 1/2 hours. “Rhode Island was the best because nobody thought I could finish,” he told us while recalling his favorite race. 

Eventually, his passion for racing and hunger to compete became insatiable. His goal of completing 51 marathons was born out of a friendship with boxer Vinny Paz. Vinny had notched 50 victories in the ring and one night, while joking around, Jason bet that he could outdo him by completing 51 marathons. They laughed at the time, but the thing was, Jason wasn’t joking. He started taking down once race after another in his own unique way. In 1996, he attempted to unofficially race the Boston marathon after organizers refused to create a special handicap division, and was removed from the course at mile 20.  He came back two years later, this time with an official entry in hand and triumphantly crossed the finish line. Since then he’s completed countless other races, carried the Olympic torch, and even claimed 2 world titles at the 2005 Cerebral Palsy World Games. 

Some athletes just can't be stopped. Jason is one of them.

If you’ve run a marathon, you know all about the challenges to overcome simply to make it to race day. First there’s the training. For Jason this means “running 5 or 6 days a week, usually on grass, and hills. And I weight train at the gym 4 or 5 times a week.” And then there are the inevitable rough patches that we all face. But Jason’s rough patches are more like battlefields littered with landmines. As he explained, “I’ve had a lot of injuries, I’ve raced in awful weather, and I had to fight to even get in the races at the beginning of my career. Doing marathons is hard enough but when you have people hoping you will fail, it makes it even harder.” 

So what keeps him going when seemingly everything and everyone is working against him? Jason told us, “I always use it as an incentive to keep going. I also feel it’s important to stay positive even if I am not having my best day.” He makes it a point to surround himself with supporters who constantly encourage him to be his best. He’s always uttering downright inspirational quotes like “IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING! Don’t let anybody tell you what you can do, just go out and do it!” But as he explained it to me, those are more than just some snappy quotes to put on a bumper sticker, “When people see a guy who only has use of one leg, they think: how do I ever go 26.2 miles? But what they don’t understand is everything I do is a struggle, so competing in marathons is just a metaphor for my life in general.” 

So this year he finally did it. After 18 years of hard work, stubbornness, and rule-breaking he reached number 51 by completing the New York City Marathon in 9 hours and 40 minutes. Time to hang up the shoes and enjoy his retirement? Maybe send an email to Vinny to rub it in a little right? Well, yes, but not yet. After all, in another great Pisano-ism, Jason’s been known to say “It hurts to go 26.2 miles, but I think it would hurt far more to quit.” Quit indeed…Jason just announced he’s racing Rhode Island in 2011.  

-Adrian 

Aside from being a marathoner, Jason is also a motivational speaker and writer. Learn more at www.teampisano.com. 

Feature image courtesy of Derek Dudek Studio.

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