Leslie Wilson spent months in bed before delivering her fourth child, Max, in July 2011. After giving birth, she was out of breath after walking around her house. To get back in shape, she took up running in October 2011.
A year later, she finished the St. Louis Rock 'n' Roll Marathon with a time of 5:13:06. She also shed 75 pounds while keeping a near-perfect grade point average in a full-time pre-nursing program at Southwestern Illinois College and keeping up with the demands of her family.
"People will ask you why you're doing something. But when they see you did it, they want to know how you did it," said Wilson, 33. "I hope that I've inspired other people."
To find the time to run and train, Wilson got up at 5 a.m. Her husband, David Wilson, 40, fed the kids and changed diapers so she would have time for long-distance runs on the weekend. He calls what his wife did "nothing short of amazing. She put in the effort."
Leslie Wilson's younger kids, Seth, 3, and Max, 1, aren't saying much. But her two older ones, Jack, 9, and Jay, 7, say they think running the marathon was a big thing. Jay said he's "proud of her."
The Granite City mother wasn't thinking about running a marathon when she started running. She had her eyes on a 5K run (roughly three miles). After doing one in March, she expanded to a 10K run in April.
Her training regimen included the typical runs and cross-training with cycling and weight lifting to ward off injury. Her runs during the week were about a half-hour, while runs on the weekend were 1-1/2 hours or longer.
"I thought I would hit a ceiling of how much I could run. When I ran seven miles, I thought I could be a long distance runner," Leslie Wilson said.
That led her to do a half-marathon in Joplin, Mo., in May and then the St. Louis Rock 'n' Roll Marathon Oct. 21.
"The actual day of the marathon, I went in saying I was going to enjoy this," Leslie Wilson said.
She discovered the marathon wasn't one run, but two.
"You get up to 20 miles, you can make it," Leslie Wilson said. The second run starts after that.
"It's hard," Leslie Wilson said. "It's a different mindset. Everything hurts, but you've go to block it out."
Just because she's completed a marathon, Leslie Wilson isn't about to give up running.
She wants to do either a half marathon or a full marathon in the GO! St. Louis Marathon Weekend in the spring of 2013. Then in the fall, she hopes to do another full marathon at the St. Louis Rock 'n' Rock Marathon.
She looks ahead to these exploits as she prepares to enter the Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish in St. Louis in January.
While it's hard for students to find the time to exercise, she said the regimen helps.
"When I run and exercise, I feel better," Leslie Wilson said.
She's already encouraged her husband to do some running. He plans to do a five-mile run in downtown St. Louis during the St. Patrick's Day festivities in 2013.
To those who ask how she did it, she makes a reference to a famous movie.
"If Forrest Gump can run for five years, you can get up and exercise for at least five years," she said.
Contact reporter Jim Merkel at 618-344-0264, ext. 138
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