CHICAGO — It's a wonder Sarah Wunder can run at all, let alone complete a half marathon.
But the North Center resident will participate in her third 13.1-mile run during Sunday's Chicago Spring Half Marathon despite losing most of her toes and portions of her feet to a bacterial meningitis infection 18 years ago.
"I didn't run when I was younger and before I got sick. ... Today, it's my therapy," Wunder said.
Wunder started running about 10 years ago. At first she didn't think she'd be physically able to sustain the activity because of her feet, but she said "it became an obsession over the years." She runs 4-5 times a week, either at OrangeTheory in Lincoln Square or around Horner Park.
Wunder has skin grafts on the bottom of her feet from skin taken from her inner thighs. Her biggest issue when running is her feet bleeding because the skin grafts don't callus, but instead break open and bleed when she runs too much.
Wunder lost all of the toes on her right foot and the second digit on her left foot. The bacterial meningitis infection also took most of the flesh on the bottom of her feet.
Her previous two half-marathons were the Rock 'N' Roll Chicago event in 2015 and The Star Wars Dark Side race at Disney in 2016. For her 35th birthday in 2015, she ran 35 races of varying distances that year to celebrate.
Wunder, who's been married for 11 years and has two daughters, 7 and 5, said running is "sometimes the only alone time I get all day."
"It's where and how I sort through problems and clear my head," said Wunder, who works in marketing/PR at Weber Shandwick.
