Marathon Miracle: After nearly losing her leg, Newburyport's Jessica Lasky-Su completes her 'sweetest' Boston ever

Apr. 22—There Jessica Lasky-Su was, making the final left turn from Hereford Street onto Boylston during Monday's Boston Marathon. It's a turn the Newburyport native has made seven times before on Patriot's Day, but as the thousands of spectators lining the sidewalks screamed and cheered those iconic final steps towards the finish line, she couldn't help but get emotional.

How was this even possible?

How did she even get here?

A year ago, Lasky-Su was preparing for the reality that she might lose her right leg, as complications from a broken ankle following a ski accident caused a serious infection. Last September, following six total surgeries and 20 months of worry and rehab, she got the great news from Dr. Michael Weaver at Bringham and Women's Hospital that her leg, and the infection, had healed. In January, the lifetime marathoner took her first steps after having not run in nearly two years.

And on Monday, just three months removed from completely having to teach herself how to run again, Lasky-Su, 46, ran 26.2 miles to complete her eighth Boston Marathon.

"It's been quite a traumatic road the past couple of years," said Lasky-Su. "I didn't know how to run, I had to teach myself all over again. So going from that to running a marathon was pretty remarkable. I had a friend, Rebecca Wood, running with me which was great, and yeah it was just super emotional when we finished.

"When I crossed the line, and he was not doing this for everyone, but Meb (Keflezighi), the Olympian and last American to win the Boston Marathon, he came out and gave me a medal, which was just a super surreal moment."

The accident

In February of 2020, Lasky-Su and her family took a ski trip up to Vermont. Everything was going along well, until she fell on a run and severely twisted her ankle.

Right away, she could tell it wasn't good.

She ended up with a spiral fracture in her fibula and her tibia, and also found out that she broke her ankle. To make matters worse, she unfortunately developed a nasty infection around the bone, making her situation similar to what former NFL quarterback Alex Smith suffered through — although not as serious — as well as what Tiger Woods experienced after his car crash last year. She went through two surgeries in which, among other things, she had a rod placed in her leg from the knee down and had multiple screws inserted.

But, for whatever reason, after those surgeries the infection refused to go away.

"Nothing was working, and that's when things got quite serious," said Lasky-Su. "If you can't heal the bone, or the infection gets serious enough, it could be life-endangering. If nothing worked, then we had to consider more drastic measures."

Luckily for Lasky-Su, those measures were never needed.

The recovery

It was Memorial Day of 2021 when Lasky-Su traveled down to Bringham and Women's to have her first surgery with Dr. Weaver. It wasn't anything too complicated, but on July 4th she was back for an extensive procedure where Dr. Weaver basically reconstructed the entire bone, even pulling nerves out of the way in order to get it done.

"That was sort of the last surgery where we were waiting to see what would happen," said Lasky-Su. "And then in September 2021, nine weeks later, was the moment of truth. and that was the point where I was sitting in the waiting room, and I turned around and behind me they had this big display for Stepping Strong. Next thing I know, I go in to the appointment and they tell me that my leg is healed.

"I couldn't believe it."

After getting the news, Lasky-Su was understandably overjoyed. and shortly after is when she started going to Brignham's Stepping Strong Center for Trauma — created in 2013 after the marathon bombings to assist those who have suffered severe injuries — to rehabilitate and rehab her leg.

The foundation got Lasky-Su back on her feet, literally, and it wasn't long until she started forming ideas in her head.

"I said to myself, if this gets healed, even if I can't run it like I did before, I'm going to run the Boston Marathon to raise money for Stepping Strong," said Lasky-Su. "Once I found out that my leg was healed, I went in November and committed to do it.

"And at that point, I couldn't even run."

The training

For the first few weeks of rehab at Stepping Strong, the focus was just trying to get some feeling back in her leg. Even now, having finished the marathon, Lasky-Su still doesn't have all of her feeling back.

But she had set a goal for herself, and she was going to push through.

When she started running again in January, she couldn't even do a mile. But each day she continued to build up more and more, step by step, and each day she could feel herself getting stronger.

"I had a physical therapist the whole time, and she never thought that I would get the flextion I have in my foot now," said Lasky-Su. "The running dramatically helped to heal my leg."

As Patriot's Day got closer and closer, the more ready she felt.

The return

To reiterate, Lasky-Su is a longtime marathon runner, accustomed to running a sub-eight-minute mile pace, who has a career-best 3 hour and 14 minute finish at Boston. But on Monday, that couldn't have mattered in the slightest.

All she wanted to do was finish, whether she had to run, walk or crawl.

When the race started she was off, and she was feeling pretty good — without any pain in her leg — until her quads started to catch fire. But, thanks to her extensive knowledge of the course having run it so many times, she mentally knew all of the milestones she had to hit. and she knew that once she conquered "Heartbreak Hill" around the dreaded miles 16-21, she would be home free.

It also helped that she was running to raise money for Stepping Strong.

"It was amazing that I was able to give back in a direct way to the people who helped me the most, which was so awesome emotionally," said Lasky-Su.

When she did reach the top of "Heartbreak Hill," she knew she had the last five miles in the bag. and at that point, drawing ever closer to that final turn onto Boylston, the adrenaline from the crowd started kicking in.

"The crowds, it was awesome," said Lasky-Su. "You can't even hear yourself because the crowds are so loud."

Around 2:30 p.m., Lasky-Su jogged across the finish line to the roars of the crowd, and a medal from the legendary Meb shortly after. Her official time was 4:04.31 — just over a 9:30-mile pace — which is truly remarkable considering where she was in her running journey just a few simple months prior.

But, again, the time couldn't have mattered less.

Lasky-Su nearly lost her leg, spent almost two years on crutches and wondered for a while what the rest of her life might look like.

On Monday, she finished a marathon.

"You often can't control what happens to you," said Lasky-Su. "But it's often less improtant what happens to you, it's how you respond to it. If I ended up losing my leg, I still would have made a positive story out of it. Even though this was my slowest marathon, this was my best. The meaning behind what you're doing is more important than the accomplishment."