Jason Pyrz was four or five years old when a photo was taken of him with his mom and grandma, whom he and his brother called "Gammy." Her house was the center of his family's world back then, packed with extended family every Christmas Eve and filled with that same crowd around her pool each summer. Pyrz, whose grade school was located less than a block away, was there almost every day after class.
That world changed when Pyrz was still young. His grandmother, a lifelong smoker, developed lung cancer, and by the time Pyrz was 14, she was gone. "It's not just a sudden lights-out deal," he wrote, reflecting on what he witnessed. "It's long. It's painful. It's dehumanizing. It's also experienced by everyone around you."
That loss is what first connected Pyrz to Respiratory Health Association, and it's a connection he's carried for 15 years, now as RHA's Board Chair-Elect. Today, his motivation to support RHA is just as personal: his daughter, Lizzy, lives with exercise-induced asthma. He's watched a condition rooted in the same fight for lung health and clean air touch another generation of his own family. "I'm not on the board of directors of the RHA because I like to climb skyscrapers, ride my bike, or run long distances," he wrote. "I support the RHA so kids don't grow up with the same experience I did."
This past year, that support took the form of 26.2 miles. Pyrz and his wife, Beth, joined RHA's Lung Power Team for the
Chicago Marathon, training together starting in April. The early runs were rough. "I could barely run three miles without having to stop and reevaluate my life choices," he admitted. Training didn't stop for anything, not even the honeymoon, where the couple fit in a 13-mile run between celebrations. By the final weeks, the work had paid off. Two weeks before the race, an 18-mile run left him with something he'd never felt before: "I think it was the first time I'd ever experienced anything close to a runner's high."
Pyrz has since lost more than his grandmother to disease; his mother passed away from pancreatic cancer, and thinking of her carried him through training as much as anything else did. "I'm doing this to honor her memory," he wrote. "I'm doing this so that people have more time to make the sort of memories that I can no longer make with either of those matriarchs."
On race day, Pyrz crossed the finish line hand in hand with Beth, capping months of training with a wave of relief and gratitude for everyone who had backed them along the way, through encouragement, friendship, and RHA donations alike. As part of the Lung Power Team, Pyrz committed to raising funds for RHA alongside his training, supporting the organization's work funding lung disease research and advocating for clean air. "We need organizations like the RHA to continue providing research grants to those who are making advancements in care for lung disease," he wrote, "to continue advocating for clean air, to fight back against special interests with deep pockets."
Runners like Pyrz are proof that a Lung Power Team bib carries more than a finisher's medal. It carries a reason to keep going, mile after mile, for the people who can't run anymore and for the ones just starting to feel the effects of lung disease today.
