NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Michael Ring was always a runner.
“I was the guy that ran two or three marathons a year just for fun,” the Brooklyn native told 1010 WINS.
But in 2014, Ring’s streak came to an end. He was suffering from a case of food poisoning that turned into a rare disease known as Guillain-Barré syndrome. The autoimmune disease causes nerve damage, and in extreme cases, can lead to paralysis.
“I walked into the hospital, but by the next day, I couldn’t walk at all,” the father of two said.
Ring, now 61, experienced paralysis in his legs and feet. He suddenly was facing an extended stay in the hospital, and the grueling task of relearning how to walk. He used a wheelchair for about a year.
“I was always training for events where the finish line is beyond the horizon. So here I am, you know, healing from an illness, and I don’t know how much better I’m going to get,” he said. “So the goal of physical therapy and healing, it was beyond the horizon. I didn’t know when I would level off, when I would stop getting better, but I kept trying to get better.”
Now, 10 years later, he is only days away from crossing the Verrazano Bridge again and completing the 26.2 mile New York City Marathon, which will send him through all five boroughs.
“In my mind I was always going to run again. Never occurred to me I wouldn’t, and I did,” Ring, who uses foot orthotics, said.
The 24-time NYC Marathon finisher will be assisted by ankle braces and two helpers from Achilles International, a nonprofit that works with athletes with disabilities. He first took this approach in 2017, and he’s done it every year since but one.
“It’s hard to hold back the tears because, you know, 10 years ago they thought I would die,” Ring.
Ring is a disability advocate with a Master’s in Social Welfare from Stony Brook University. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of Disabled in Action of Metropolitan New York, the NYC Advisory Committee for Transit Accessibility (ACTA) and is co-coordinator of the Transportation and Voter Accessibility committees for the Downstate New York chapter of ADAPT.
According to the ACTA, due to his partial paralysis, it will take Ring twice as long to complete the race. Last year, he crossed the finish line at 8:36:15, with a pace of 19 minutes and 42 second per mile.