Latrobe man fulfills dream to run marathon, despite upcoming surgery

Joe Peroney of Latrobe has two “jobs” tomorrow — tasks to which he has devoted a lot of time and energy.

While most people will take it easy Saturday morning, Peroney’s first duty of the day is to start at 6:45 a.m. running five laps, and then about a mile more on a 5-mile course around North Park Lake in Ross. The point is to run the 26.2-mile marathon he has been training for, but not the Dick’s Sporting Pittsburgh Marathon he intended to run on May 1.

What is keeping Peroney from running the Dick’s Sporting Pittsburgh Marathon is a planned April 27 surgery to remove a benign brain tumor from the optic nerve behind his left eye. His doctors figured it would not be in his best interest to put his body through a grueling marathon four days after surgery.

“The doctors gave me the OK to do it,” Peroney said Friday morning as he prepared to run one last short training run at Lynch Field in Greensburg.

Running the marathon will break new ground for Peroney, who has never run farther than a half marathon — 13.1 miles. He is confident he can finish the marathon because when he ran the half marathon, he “felt like I could keep on going. I had more energy.”

He will not be running alone but will be joined by coaches and athletes of Victory Multisport, who provided him with a training plan for the marathon, Peroney said. Some of his fellow runners will go 5 or 10 miles, while others will be bicycling to keep him company. That companionship will be crucial, Peroney said, “because the biggest struggle is the mental battle” of running for that long of a distance for what he anticipates will be more than four hours.

Peroney, who grew up in Perry Township, Fayette County, was on track to join thousands of other runners testing their endurance in the Pittsburgh marathon when he started to notice vision problems in his left eye in February. They were sporadic at first, but became more frequent and bothersome, prompting him to undergo medical tests. Doctors learned there was a tumor under the left eye, but “thankfully it was away from the brain stem.”

His other job tomorrow will be cooking at the prestigious Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, where he has worked for the past year. Peroney is a chef who used to own his own restaurant near Washington, D.C., for about five years before returning home.

It was a simple job-related task last year that got him motivated to get in shape as he approached his 40th birthday. He tried on one pair of uniform pants, but they did not fit. He tried on a larger pair of pants and the same result. It took a few tries before he found a pair that fit.

So, he started running before work, sometimes logging 10 miles in the morning before heading to the kitchen at Rolling Rock.

“It’s a lifestyle change,” Peroney said, noting he has lost 30 pounds since he started running.

Peroney said he won’t stop at the marathon because he wants to shoot for the Ironman Triathlon — a 26.2 marathon, a long-distance bike ride and a swim — after he recovers. It may be a challenge for someone like Peroney, who doesn’t bike and can’t swim, except for a simple dog paddle to stay afloat.

He has a positive attitude toward running the marathon on Saturday and his upcoming surgery, which he was told will last anywhere from four hours to six hours.

Using a sports analogy, he said, “We got the ball and its fourth-and-goal we got to get it over the goal line. There’s no reason to stop and pursue another game plan.”