A Sunday Morning Triumph

It was a sleepy Sunday at Denver’s Harvard Gulch, a May morning seemingly like any other. In the park people partook in their daily running ritual. But for one person, this morning’s run held special meaning.

Alonit Cohen was running a 5K. This 5K was a run celebrating courage, affirmation, and the triumph of an amazing woman who never knew if she’d ever be able to run again.

Six years ago Alonit was in a car crash in Israel. The accident was bad. For hours she lay on the side of the road certain she was going to die, and for days after that she lay in the hospital as her future remained uncertain. The doctors eventually told her that she’d live to make it out of the hospital, but never walk again. The months and years following the accident were plagued by crutches, frustration, and desperation from the loss of free movement.

Alonit never let her injury keep her from chasing her dreams. Following the accident she excelled in her studies at American University, and graduated with a degree in International Relations in 2005. She spent the next three years teaching in Belgrade, Serbia, and is now pursuing a dual JD and Masters degree at the University of Denver. She had only a few days before she was going to leave for Kosovo for the summer, where she was going to help set up the country’s first legal aid clinic.

She also refused to accept the fate the doctors had assigned her. It took many years of practice and training, effort and failure, but at length Al was able to walk without help. The Boulder native once again climbed a mountain.

And this Sunday, she went for a run.

Running is many things to us. But at its best, and most beautiful, it is an act of celebration of the wonder and fortitude of the human spirit. It is a dance, an expression of journey, of the magic of everything that is possible and the beauty of what, if we hope, if we believe, can be.

When we run, we are alive and free, and each step we take reaffirms the miracle that being is.

Congrats, Al, from all of us at BTG. Amazing steps from an amazing person who is going to race triumphant into the future :o).