Elite athlete from Greensburg never thought she'd end up running for her life

In the beginning, Cheryl Collins Gatons began running for fun.

It was a great way to blow off stress after work.

She never imagined she would end up as a two-time qualifier for the Olympic marathon trials, or that years later she would start running for her life.

The 52-year-old Greensburg woman tells the story of her journey in her new book, “Farther Than 26.2 Miles,” available online at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. It details how she began running competitively at age 28 and saw her life fall apart 12 years later when her husband, fellow runner Kevin Gatons, died unexpectedly of an undiagnosed genetic heart condition, leaving her a widow with three small children.

The slender, high-energy woman, who hits the pavement every morning for a 7-mile run, finally set down her story in the slim self-published volume in hopes it might help someone else.

Running was always about fun for her, Gatons said. On a lark, she and her twin sister, Suzanne, joined the Plum High School track team to socialize. She laughs about running the mile and ditching practice to hang out with friends.

After obtaining a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, she moved to California to take a job with Westinghouse. There, she began running to blow off stress. She moved back to Pittsburgh in 1994 to be near her parents and continued to run as she moved on to a new career as a pharmaceutical sales rep.

“I don’t run for exercise. It’s just part of who I am,” she said.

After she won two 5K races she entered at her brother’s urging, Gatons began to think there might be more to her favorite pastime and reached out to a coach. Joe Sarver saw something in her she never realized and told her he could train her to qualify for the Olympic trials within six weeks.

Along the way, she caught the eye of another young runner. Kevin Gatons, a young teacher and track coach, asked her out to dinner. The pair clicked.

They married in a fairy tale ceremony at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Shadyside and settled in Greensburg, where Kevin taught elementary school and coached the high school cross country team. They had daughter Sydney in 2000. Two more children — son Quintin and daughter Lilly — rounded out their family.

Life was good.

Careful choices Cheryl had made in her life yielded blessing after blessing.

Life took a 180-degree turn for the young mother on Nov. 3, 2006.

Tragedy strikes

Kevin Gatons had traveled to Hershey that day with members of the cross country team. Samantha Bower, a young runner he coached at Greensburg Salem High School, was to compete in the PIAA state championship finals.

As he was taking her on a tour of the course, Gatons collapsed. Another coach performed CPR. Help was on the way in moments. But there was nothing anyone could do to save the 46-year-old coach.

A rare condition known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia, or ARVD, had ravaged his heart, an autopsy revealed. Only a heart transplant could have saved him, if they had known about the condition, his wife would later be told.

“They called it the backwards heart disease. Aerobic exercise brought it out. His heart was three times the normal size when he died,” she said.

Cheryl was devastated.

Her children were 6, 3 and 21 months. Friends and family rallied around her. Kevin Gatons’ students and the runners he coached launched a memorial run.

His widow began the hard work of battling back to life as a single mother shouldering an overwhelming grief.

“When someone dies this young and you don’t get to say goodbye, there’s an all-consuming grief,” she said. “You’re in this dark place that you think you’ll never get out of. You have to face it and do the hard work.”

Escaping darkness

Focusing on her children, working with multiple therapists, opening up to a circle of close friends and even seeing a medium were helpful.

But running was the key to her recovery. She began competing again in 2010.

“It was the part of me that still felt alive, where I could escape that darkness. Running has brought me a lot of happiness. It was where I met my husband. It’s the part of me that stayed true to who I am,” she said.

Last year, at 51, she won the women’s crown at the Johnstown Marathon with a time of 3:07.53. Although she has run the New York and Boston marathons and qualified for the Olympic trials in 1996 and 2000, this was a special win. It took her back to her days as a student at Pitt’s Johnstown campus.

Today, with her children on the brink of young adulthood, she’s embracing life and looking to help others do the same. She recently completed a course called “Grief to Gratitude” and is a certified grief coach and motivational speaker.

“Whatever your passion is, you need to embrace it, whether you’re a writer and artist, a singer, a runner or a hiker. And you definitely need therapy. Spend time talking about it,” she said, preparing to step out the door in her running gear on a blustery day. “It’s not like time heals all things. You have to do the work.”