CAPITOL STREAK
40th start for this Cap 10K participant
On April 8, Jane Norwood will line up for her 40th Capitol 10,000.
That’s remarkable enough, since this year marks the 41st running of the race, long a harbinger of springtime in Austin. But consider this: Four years ago, doctors diagnosed Norwood, 72, with Parkinson’s disease.
In a way, the neurodegenerative disorder, which causes tremors, slowness of movement and gait and balance problems, has made Norwood more determined, providing an extra punch of motivation to keep her moving. She wants to join the rolling party through downtown Austin, a parade of people, some in costume, some nibbling doughnuts offered by onlookers, others racing like someone’s chasing them.
There is no cure for the disease, but research from the Parkinson’s Outcomes Project, which gathers data from more than 10,000 patients, has shown that regular exercise can slow the decline in quality of life for people who have it.
That’s why Norwood attends five or six Power for Parkinson’s classes a week. She says the free, one-hour classes, which include mobility work, dancing and singing, have helped keep her fit enough to keep doing the Cap 10K.
“The classes are really everything,” Norwood says. “With Parkinson’s, it’s easy to sit still. You don’t feel the symptoms if you don’t try to move. The classes help me gauge where I am and what I need to work on.”
The classes are open to people in all stages of Parkinson’s, along with their caretakers. Nobody is judged. Everyone does what works for him or her, and the classes do more than physically help the participants.
“People end up being isolated and depressed, and we feel like we’ve given them a place they belong,” says Nina Mosier, who along with Susan Stahl founded the nonprofit group five years ago after their fathers both faced the disease.
During a recent class, Norwood and 30 or so other participants raised and lowered their arms, rotated their ankles, pulled on stretch bands and lifted brightly colored balls overhead as Donna Summer’s “On the Radio” played in the background. Some remained seated during the entire class; others stood and held onto their chairs for part of it. Volunteers mingled among them, lending a hand as needed while instructor Debbie Rosenberg called out directions.
Norwood, who worked as a social worker, had just started running in 1978, the year of the first Cap 10K. The idea of an organized 10K race intimidated her at the time, and she skipped it.
“I had this vision that it would be like the Olympics, and here I would be, toddling behind,” she says.
By the next year, though, she’d gotten a few smaller 10Ks under her belt and decided the race sounded fun. She returned the following year, and again after that.
“At some point I thought, ‘Hey, I’ve got a streak going,’” she says.
That says something about someone who describes herself as a “glee club nerd” who never was athletic. “Team sports don’t appeal,” she says. “But I liked jogging because it was simple. I could put one foot in front of the other. That’s the reason I stay with the Cap 10K — it feels like roots.”
Over the years, she’s seen a couple get married near the start line, run through soaking rain with her daughter and experienced fog so thick the tops of the buildings downtown disappeared into a white murk.
“With Austin being so big, how often do you get to stand in the middle of Congress Avenue? And that view on the hill at Enfield — I like to see people pouring down that hill. It looks like a river of people,” she says.
When she reached her 50s, Norwood decided to shift from
running to walking, to preserve her knees.
Then, four years ago, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Looking back, she recognizes that the symptoms started a few years before that. She felt like her shoes were made of lead during Zumba classes, and a friend chastised her for dragging her feet during a walk.
“I couldn’t quite lift my feet or make movements fast enough,” she says. “The most obvious was I used to have beautiful handwriting. I just couldn’t write anymore.”
After a neurologist made the diagnosis, Norwood hesitated to tell others what was happening. “It scares people,” she says. “But what I’ve learned is you just have to lean into it. And if I’m going to have something wrong with me, how much better is it to have something that the treatment is this — exercise?”
These days, Norwood walks the Cap 10K course alongside her daughter and granddaughter. Their goal this year is to cross the finish line in under 2 hours.
“I do have to work at it,” she says. “You can lie back and let it happen, or you can push.”
Norwood pushes. She thinks others should, too.
“I would say to anybody with Parkinson’s, the most important thing you can do — and it’s backed by research — is move,” she says.
Besides, she says, it feels good. It allows her to keep her doing things she loves to do. And it keeps Parkinson’s from taking over her life.
“I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but I’ll feel better today,” she says.