Don Murphy’s running again
Republican and former Del. Don Murphy is running again — but not for public office.
Murphy, who represented the Catonsville and Arbutus area from 1995 to 2003, only decided last Thursday that he would sign up to run the Riley’s Rumble Half Marathon in Germantown, Maryland. The race was yesterday.
He ran the race in “2-hours 13-minutes and change,” Murphy said in a phone message on Sunday after the race.
Not bad for a guy who just started running in April after recovering from a serious leg injury four years ago.
Murphy injured himself was hiking along the base of Mount St. Helens in Washington when he stopped to take a picture of his wife near a waterfall. Murphy said he stepped out onto a rocky ledge to get the shot. When he turned to leave, he slipped 15 feet down an embankment and broke his ankle in three places.
“It was perpendicular to my leg,” Murphy explained. He still has the plate and screws in his ankle.
Nevertheless, in January of this year, Murphy said he caught the exercise bug after watching a marathon of “The Biggest Loser” reality show on television — that’s the show where people strive to eat well and exercise more as a means of losing weight and becoming more healthful.
“I made a resolution to get on that stair machine downstairs that had 15 years of cobwebs on it,” Murphy said.
He found that the range of motion in his leg returned from the workouts on that stair climbing machine. It wasn’t long before he was running with friends in his neighborhood.
“I’d never run,” Murphy said. “I ran in college in a gym class. We had to run around the track. I ran one mile one time.”
But now, after completing his first half marathon, Murphy said he is seriously considering running the Baltimore Marathon in October.