In November of last year, John Foster, 36, and Rachel Foster, 35, decided to go electric scooter riding in their Edmond, Oklahoma neighborhood while they were out on a date. Rachel Foster suddenly lost consciousness and fell off her scooter for unknown reasons. She ultimately suffered a fatal brain injury in addition to 17 shattered bones. Five months later, she successfully ran the Boston Marathon. (Provigil)
Rachel Foster runs the Boston Marathon
35-year-old chef, Rachel Foster was cruising with John, her husband around their neighborhood when she fell. “She was about 20 feet in front of me and she just fell. There was nothing on the road; there was no car. I didn’t know what happened, I thought she just had road rash. I pulled up right beside her and she was unresponsive,” stated John. Rachel sustained a severe injury to the brain in addition to 17 broken bones.
“They said a severely catastrophic brain injury, which I later found in medical literature, is a term for pretty much the worst type of brain injury, where there’s not a chance of coming back,” explained John. Rachel was placed on life support and doctors did not think she would survive. Moreover, she was one day away from having the life support machine switched off when she woke up. She was alive but a long way from recovery.
More on her challenging journey
She was only able to start walking on 22 January but, she had the impressive goal of finishing the Boston Marathon.
“My goal to get through all of the therapy, in the back of my head, it was always ‘Boston’s coming up, Boston’s coming up,” stated Rachel. She qualified for the challenge in 2022 after completing the OKC Memorial Marathon. She underwent surgery and spent months in rehab.
“I’ve been so excited for this day. It helped me walk again. I know that sounds crazy, but the thought of doing this, and being here, helped my first walk, then jog and then run. know it might sound a little bit crazy, but I am there mentally and I’m getting there physically, so I’m getting geared up for it,” recounted the chef. Her efforts paid off on Monday as she crossed the finish line of the 127th Boston Marathon.
Rachel Foster, who’s run about 10 marathons previously, had qualified and paid to run Boston before the accident. And she wasn’t going to let her goal slip away “I’m a runner at heart, and I enjoy running a lot. I get a lot of stress alleviation from it,” she claims. But I was aware that I wasn’t physically capable of running because I could hardly move.