Derek Hogg said he kept his head down when medics came to ask if he was okay. He looked straight at his hands clasping a red jogging stroller and the asphalt underneath, painted with evenly spaced white parking lines. Each white line was a new milestone. Each one proved he was still moving forward.

He kept his head down when his mother-in-law came to grab his 3-year-old son, Paxton, out of the stroller. She told him it was okay to stop.

He said his head stayed down as race organizers stacked the orange cones marking the course. The rest of the 700 runners in the Strike Out ALS 5K, which benifited the Les Turner ALS Foundation, had finished long ago. Many of them were already at a nearby bar, and most had no idea there was still someone out on the course, which circled a parking lot outside of Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field.

Hogg was diagnosed with ALS in May of 2013. Two months later he ran the Strike Out ALS 5K in 22 minutes. A firefighter in a suburb of Chicago, Hogg was accustomed to keeping in shape by leading weekly workouts with the rest of his department.

ALS has no cure. It chips away at muscle strength slowly. The disease attacks motor neurons from the brain that tell muscles when to move. Hogg could run for months after his diagnosis, and he continued his work as a firefighter for more than a year. But by July of 2015, the 32-year-old struggled to raise a fork to his mouth. He needed support to walk, and he couldn’t hold a phone up to his ear.

Everyone told him he shouldn’t sign up for this year’s Strike Out ALS 5K. His doctor said he was crazy. Holly, his wife, was concerned he wouldn’t finish.

“The only person that wanted me to do it was my 3-year-old son,” Hogg told Runner’s World Newswire. “I asked him, ‘Do you want daddy to cross that finish line?’ He said ‘Yeah, you can do it.’”

He started with the walkers at the race on July 14. They shuffled past. He was in last place within the first tenth of a mile, pushing his son in the stroller while his wife watched their 18-month-old son near the finish.

“It’s like you’re telling your body to take a step and it’s just not doing it,” Hogg said. “It’s like when you sit on your foot and it falls asleep.”

To move forward, Hogg swung his torso side to side, gaining enough momentum to swing one leg at a time forward a few inches. He wore sandals, because shoes add extra weight.

It took him more than an hour to finish the first mile, a rate nine times slower than two years ago. He knew he was moving too slow to complete all 3.1 miles, but he wanted to finish. A medic rerouted Hogg, guiding him to the final half-mile stretch.

He kept apologizing to a race volunteer for taking up so much of her time. She told him they wouldn't take down the finish until he crossed it.

Word spread at the nearby eateries and bars that Hogg was still on the course, so patrons filed to the finish line to cheer him in.

“As I was going through this, my body was telling me there was no way I could finish,” Hogg said. “But then I thought, if I cross this finish line maybe I can help raise awareness for ALS. Maybe out there somewhere there is a neurologist lacking motivation. Maybe if they see me giving 110 percent, they will too.”

Hogg kept his head down even when he heard the first cheers. With 40 feet to go, his left toes had curled under his foot. He said every step was painful.

It’s pretty easy to give up when you know a disease that has no cure will deteriorate your ability to move. Hogg said he just wanted to prove he hasn’t given up. Sure, the disease has slowed him down, but he can still move forward.

It took him more than two hours to finish a mile and half across the asphalt parking lot. When he crossed the finish line, he finally looked up. He saw more than 100 people cheering. Most were crying. Some were in wheelchairs—a spot Hogg said he expects to be in a few months.

“This disease just wants to beat you down; you don’t have any good days,” Hogg said. “It keeps getting worse and worse. But if I can inspire a lot of people that have this disease to not give up, that would be a huge accomplishment.”

Kit Fox Special Projects Editor Kit has been a health, fitness, and running journalist for the past five years.

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