Doyel: He climbs mountains, will run Boston marathon at 77. And has Parkinson's.
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Steve Gilbert is a logical man, good with numbers, even ones that might not make sense to the rest of us. Like these: He’s about to run 26.2 miles in the 2023 Boston Marathon despite recently suffering two broken bones and an even more recent bout with Covid. He will do this on Monday at age 77. In a field of 30,000 entrants, he is older than all but 20.
Not trying to pick on Gilbert here, just trying to put his age, and his gift for numbers, into perspective:
He nailed all the standardized tests out of high school, scoring so high that he went to Purdue to become a rocket scientist. True story. He figured he’d fly rockets or build rockets or whatever it is rocket scientists do. Like I’d know. Problem is, Gilbert’s brain was working at a higher level than his high school could teach in the early 1960s. It didn’t offer advanced courses like calculus, for example, so he arrived at Purdue less prepared than all those future rocket scientists, fell behind, switched majors and transferred to Ball State.
“Just a small country school,” Gilbert’s telling me of his high school.
What school was it?
“Pike,” he says.
So, yeah. Gilbert’s on the far side of the age spectrum, but good luck finding someone tougher than this guy. He walks into his boxing gym several times a week, wraps up his gently trembling hands – yes, at age 77 – and hits the heavy bag.
“He’s fierce,” says his longtime boxing coach, former World Boxing Federation light welterweight champion Kristy Rose Follmar. “He puts on those gloves and becomes an animal. It’s all hard work. He gives 100%. But he’s a gentle soul and a brilliant man.”
A man like this, a man of sound logic, appreciates the mathematics behind the marathons.
“It’s so measurable,” says Gilbert, who lives in Fishers. “In running, the clock and yardsticks don’t lie. I’m a lot slower, but you can compare yourself to elite runners and see how your times compare. I’ve stayed comparable over the years. My running has not declined with my age.”
They’ve always made sense to him, the numbers. But not everything computes. Every now and then, even now, nearly 20 years after one of the darker days of his life, Steve Gilbert doesn’t understand. He was speaking to a neuropsychologist recently, and his confusion came tumbling out in a single question:
“Why is it that most good things that have happened to me in the last decade,” he asked, “have happened because I got Parkinson’s?”
The answers are all over the place, from the peak of Machu Picchu in Peru to the final turn of the Drake Relays in Des Moines, Iowa, but if you want to know where this whole thing starts, go back to the World’s Fair in Chicago. That was 1933.
'The most positive person I know'
James Cureton had a job in the 1930s, and a good one – Steve Gilbert’s grandfather was good with numbers, too; he was an engineer – but it was the Great Depression. Times were tough. With the World’s Fair coming to Chicago, James and Helen remodeled their house to take in borders at 75 cents a night. Breakfast? Well, that was a few pennies more.
"The most positive person I know"
“Those were our mom’s parents,” says Bruce Gilbert, Steve’s younger brother of 73. “Steve’s the most positive person I know, and I think it comes from our mom (Ruth). Nothing was ever bad. And if it was bad, it was about to get better.”
This was a family that made do. Years later, James and Helen Cureton would move in with Steve’s parents, crowding into that house where Woodland Drive dead-ended into 46th Street. Steve’s father, Ron Gilbert, was a sportswriter with the Associated Press. He was at Hinkle Fieldhouse on March 20, 1954, writing the story that informed the world of the Milan Miracle. The three Gilbert boys – Dave, Steve and Bruce – delivered the Indianapolis Star.
“If it was 20 below and the wind chill was worse, we did it anyway,” Bruce Gilbert says. “Too much snow, we still did it. There wasn’t negativity in there. You do what you had to do.”
Doyel in 2015: Steve Gilbert's dad was the sportswriter for the Milan Miracle
This was Steve Gilbert’s childhood, and the boy grew into a man who majored in psychology at Ball State, minored in business, then sold premium adult beverages to wholesalers until he “retired” at 57.
“Early retirement was foisted on me – kind of an ‘age regression’ thing,” he says. “That was a little disappointing, but I went out and did things I couldn’t have done if I’d had a real job.”
Like going to Florida to do housing inspections for FEMA. Like going to Michigan Road to grade the same achievement tests he once nailed.
“Played a little more bad golf, too,” he says.
Ask him if he’s ever shot his age, and this is what he says.
“Not yet. I’ve got to get a little older.”
On a good day he shoots around 100. This is an optimistic man.
Puts his response to Parkinson’s in perspective.
This started at Rock Steady Boxing
The emails from Steve Gilbert come with the same signature.
Just let me have the day. I will do with it what I can.
This is how the man thinks. It explains why he walked into that boxing gym in 2007, the first of its kind – Rock Steady Boxing, they called it – and asked for a pair of gloves. Understand, Steve Gilbert had never considered himself an athletic man.
“When they picked teams, I’d be picked last,” he says of his childhood at the small country school, Pike (current enrollment: 3,400). “When they started cutting teams, I didn’t make it. I went to math club while they were at football practice.”
Gilbert hadn’t started running yet when he walked into the Rock Steady Gym in 2007. Well, he’d run the Indy Mini a few times in his mid-30s, but he didn’t consider that racing. He didn’t train, barely finished, and halfway through his fourth attempt he was muttering words that people in the Gilbert family just didn’t say:
“I don’t like this, I don’t enjoy it, I’m going to quit.”
But he read about Rock Steady Boxing in the same newspaper he’d delivered as a boy, a gym for Parkinson’s patients co-founded by Follmar, the boxing coach, and former Marion County prosecutor Scott Newman – who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s at age 40 in 2006, and discovered high-intensity workouts slowed the disease’s progression. Today there are Rock Steady Boxing affiliates in all 50 states, and 17 countries. It works.
And in Steve Gilbert it unleashed something daring. After three years at Rock Steady, when his brother Bruce visited from Kansas City in 2010 to run the Geist Half Marathon, Steve thought:
“I can do that.”
He finished in 2:45. A year later he ran his first marathon, the 2011 Monumental Marathon, in 6:22.20. Within five years he was working with local coach Matt Ebersole of Personal Best Training, routinely reaching the podium after races, then winning his age group in 19 consecutive races. Over the years he has set Carmel Marathon Weekend age-group records in the 5K, 10K and marathon.
Then he started climbing mountains.
Is that Steve Gilbert at Machu Picchu?
Enzo Simone is the man’s name. A mountain climber, this guy. A fundraiser. Years ago he was working on a project he called Ten Mountains, Ten Years – it became a movie – to raise awareness for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Simone visited Rock Steady Boxing. Steve Gilbert was there, because he’s always there.
Next thing you know, Steve Gilbert is straddling the peak of the Medicine Bow Mountains in Wyoming, more than 12,000 feet above sea level. Then he’s going higher, reaching the 14,264-foot summit of Mount Evans in Colorado. Then he gets the fool idea, this Parkinson’s patient – sorry, this Parkinson’s athlete – to hit the Inca Trail in Peru, and climb Machu Picchu. Dozens of hikers have died on that climb, but there’s a picture of Steve Gilbert, after four days of hiking, atop Machu Picchu.
Doing a plank.
“Steve’s one of the most optimistic people any of us have ever met,” Follmar says. “He’s always smiling, never has anything bad to say about anybody or even about his own disease. I hope it becomes a global story because people around the world need to hear this hope. He’s the perfect poster boy to share what’s possible when you’re diagnosed with Parkinson’s.”
Gilbert takes none of this for granted. He knows – he knows – Parkinson’s hits everyone differently. He does what he can, climbing mountains and running marathons. So do other Parkie’s, as they’re called. They walk into Rock Steady Boxing. They hit the punch mitts, do sit-ups, practice falling down and getting up. For some that is victory, and it’s glorious.
“There are people at Rock Steady Boxing working equally as hard without the apparent results,” he says. “They’re just happy they can pick up their grandkids again. I’ve been blessed that my symptoms are not as movement-challenging as many.”
More Doyel on Rock Steady Boxing: Gym teaches 'Parkies' to fall – and get back up
This happened: Doyel fights Chris Lytle (!!) for Rock Steady Boxing
From 2016: Rock Steady Boxing chimes a 10-count for the late Muhammad Ali
Gilbert being a numbers guy, he studies the clock and the calendar carefully, looking for signs of regression.
“If I have a run not up to my expectations, sometimes I get paranoid: ‘Could this be the end?’ Then I go out next day, and it’s OK,” he says. “I’m thrilled at the end of a good run. At the end of a bad one, I say, ‘Tomorrow will be better.’”
Runs like Forrest Gump – everywhere
Over the years his journey has taken on a Forrest Gump quality, in that Steve Gilbert seems to turn up … everywhere. And not just the emergency room, though he was there in December after a fall during training, when he suffered a broken nose and finger. He also has battled prostate cancer and more recently Covid, but he keeps coming back, keeps winning races and setting age group records, because it’s like he says:
“You must be present to win.”
The HBO show The Fight Game hosted by Jim Lampley did a story on Rock Steady Boxing in 2016, and there’s Steve Gilbert pounding punching mitts held by Follmar. A friend who once directed the Monumental Marathon, Blake Boldon, moves onto the iconic Drake Relays in Iowa and in 2019 he invites Gilbert to run the master’s division 800 meters, to show what’s possible with Parkinson’s. The elite runners take off and leave Gilbert, and by the final turn he’s alone on the track, still competing, finishing to a standing ovation.
“I look at my disease as an opportunity,” he says. “It’s opened doors for me that were never opened before the Parkinson’s.”
The next door is in Boston, where he will run his fourth marathon in an age group that includes past winners Bill Rodgers and Amby Burfoot. Gilbert qualified as mobility-impaired, as recognized by World Para Athletics, beating the six-hour standard by 22 minutes in the sleet and snow of the 2022 Carmel Marathon.
In a field with more than 400 runners from Indiana alone, he will be the oldest Hoosier and he will not be running alone. His brother Bruce, who has run the Boston Marathon several times, will be his support runner. Steve will run for the Parkinson’s athletes who can’t be here, those who wrap their hands and punch the mitts so they can pick up their grandkids for one more week, one more day, one more time.
“What am I doing with my life if I can provide some inspiration and don’t?” says Steve Gilbert, a man of numbers, and a man of deep faith. “I feel like somebody’s giving me this opportunity – I know who – to do this, and I feel some obligation to do it as well as I can.”
Get involved
Steve Gilbert is running the 2023 Boston Marathon to raise money for Rock Steady Boxing. To help, please visit his Facebook page. If you or someone you know is interested in finding their local affiliate, go to rocksteadyboxing.org/find-a-class/
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indianapolis man running 2023 Boston Marathon at 77, with Parkinson's
