Local teacher beats cancer and more

Yellow Springs High School Special Ed Teacher and Assistant Track Coach Dave Johnston approached this year’s Air Force Marathon with cautious optimism. Having finished fourth in the race a couple years before, he knew he had a shot to win it.

“That was the game plan,” he said in an interview at the high school on the Monday after Saturday’s race, “to position myself to be able to win.”

But early in the contest he was faced with a serious tactical decision. Another runner was pushing the pace. Johnston thought he might be taking it out too fast.

“I had to decide if I should let him go and try to reel him in later.”

And that was what he did. About midway through the race the leader drifted back to him. As Johnston pulled alongside him, the spent runner confirmed his earlier decision. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he muttered as Johnston passed him. The man would finish in third place, ten minutes behind Johnston’s winning time of 2:30.41, a new PR in just his fourth marathon.

A 1992 graduate of Yellow Springs High School, Johnston had a great deal of success on the track for his Alma Mater, running the mile, two mile and a leg on the 4 x 800. He also ran cross country. He was a six time state qualifier and made all-state twice in track and once in cross country. That earned him a scholarship to Ashland University where he competed in cross country and the steeple chase.

“He ran everywhere he went,” retired Antioch School teacher Bill Mullins recently recalled of Johnston in the fourth through sixth grades. “No one could keep up with him.”

But Johnston learned how to be patient, fight through the pain and exhaustion, and persevere to defeat his opponent in a different arena. His senior year at Ashland, at the end of a college career that was marked by injury and illness, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a form of lymphatic cancer. For six months, every-other-week, he would return home on Friday to receive chemotherapy and return to school on Sunday night. The running was curtailed for awhile.

“My running experience made going through the treatments easier,” he said. “My body was able to focus on getting well.”

Johnston started running again just one week after his last treatment and ran in his first marathon less than a year later.

As for the patience he exhibited in his most recent race, “I had faith in my training,” he said. (He ran 402 miles during the month of July.) “My race plan worked,”

According to Johnston, much of that training is a family affair. His wife Christina, whom he met at a race, is also a distance runner. They have been married for three years. They train together once a day, and take turns watching the kids while each does a long run on their own. When they run together, Johnston pushes the couple’s 16-month-old son Kyle in a running stroller and seven-year-old stepson Cobi follows on his bike. Christina competed in the half-marathon division of Saturday’s Air Force Marathon.

They live in Xenia, about a mile from the bike path where most of their training is done. While Johnston’s family moved to Yellow Springs when he was twelve and he would prefer to live here now, affordability on a teacher’s salary is an issue.

In a newspaper interview a few years ago, YSHS Track Coach Vince Peters credited Johnston with helping then state high school mile champion Sam Borchers reach that achievement. Indeed, it is rare that a coach can push such a talented runner on the track.

“I never thought I would be a teacher,” Johnston said. “If it hadn’t been for the running, I probably never would have graduated from high school.”

He says fell into to teaching when he was looking for work and applied for a position at Mills Lawn School. He was actually a licensed massage therapist at the time. He found he liked working with kids. So he got his Masters in Teaching from Antioch McGregor and moved up to the high school.

“My IEP kids from Mills Lawn are starting to graduate to the high school,” he said with pride.

As if beating cancer was not motivation enough, Johnson said he drew inspiration for his achievement from several tragedies that have befallen his friends and neighbors. One neighbor, who is stationed in Iraq, just lost his three-year-old daughter after having his father pass away; a fellow local runner was struck and killed by a car while training for the marathon; and Johnston’s own father, who was in the hospital before the race, had one wish – to get out in time to see his son run. He did.

At age 35, Johnston thinks he is just reaching his peak. “I know I can go faster,” Johnston said of his winning time. “I was just trying to win this race."

He has no specific goal in mind for a next race. Boston, New York..? Maybe Chicago, he said. “I might be ranked in the top 25 in Chicago.”

While most runners would have taken at least a day or two off to recover from the grueling ordeal of a 26.2 mile race, Johnston ran in a 5k race the next day. He won.

“It was just a small race,” he said.

Related post: YSHS Teacher Wins Air Force Marathon