Pam Przybelski had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, where she ran cross-country, when she decided to train for her first half-marathon. It didn’t happen, and it wasn’t because of an injury.
“I found out I was pregnant,” she said. So much for running.
Now, 25 years later, that baby boy — Mike Rogers — is a landscape architect at Mahan Rykiel Associates, and both he and his mother are training for Saturday’s Under Armour Baltimore Running Festival.
Przybelski, 48, talks to her son a couple times a week, trading stories and tips, and this week she’ll fly to Baltimore from her home in Madison, Wis., to run the half-marathon, while her son tackles the marathon distance of 26.2 miles for the first time.
Knowing her son is also enduring a grueling running schedule “keeps me going,” said Przybelski, who concedes she was inspired when Rogers announced his engagement last year. “I really wanted to get in shape for the wedding.”
When Przybelski told her son she was thinking about running the half-marathon, Rogers was quick to jump on board. “Cool, I’ll do it, too,” he told her.
“I’ve always wanted to do a marathon as a life goal,” said Rogers, who moved to Baltimore a year and a half ago.
But as her son was thriving in his training, Przybelski was struggling. Her strength had been wiped out by Lyme disease a decade ago, and when she began her training for Saturday’s half-marathon, she barely made it out the door before she was exhausted. She sat on the curb and cried.
“That’s how I started running again,” she said. “Two houses down, sit on the curb and run back.”
Then over the winter, she suffered from fibromyaligia, a chronic condition that causes muscle and tendon pain, fatigue, and pain at the slightest pressure.
“You always feel like you’ve been hit by a truck,” she said.
But she kept at it — and the running got easier. On tough days she would walk on a treadmill or ride a stationary bike. By March she was running three or four miles regularly.
For Rogers, who is a cyclist, training has been “brutal,” he said. From the Midwest, he wasn’t used to Baltimore’s heat and humidity, and often the long runs were lonely without a running partner.
But the two have been on the phone together for motivation through the whole process.
“It’s exciting for me no matter how I do,” Przybelski said. “It’s just exciting my son and I have reached this goal together.”
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