#After nearly dying of COVID-19, marathoner fights to finish 1-mile race

He has two marathons and six half-marathons under his belt, but David Lat will soon face his toughest race yet: running 1 mile, just six months after COVID-19 left him on a ventilator, nearly killing him.

“I’ve been gradually … increasing my jog without stopping,” said Lat, the 45-year-old legal recruiter and founder of the legal blog Above the Law, adding that he successfully reached four-fifths of a mile on Labor Day. “I think I can do the mile now … not at all fast, but I can do it.”

Lat will make his attempt this weekend as part of the 2020 New Balance 5th Avenue Mile, a New York Road Runners event being held virtually until Sept. 13. And he knows that by completing it, he’ll have cleared a big hurdle in his ongoing recovery.

“I feel it will be the first step towards getting back on track — the first step to getting back to something resembling normal,” he said.

With the New York City marathon’s usual fall date approaching, reality is setting in for athletes who were struck by the coronavirus. At a time when they would have been training with 12-mile runs through Central Park, or going on their morning jogs alongside a competitor, their lungs may be so damaged by the virus that just getting to the park seems like an insurmountable challenge. Like Lat, even those whose bodies were capable of running 26.2 miles are now merely hoping for just one mile.

In early March, Lat developed a fever and chills. Over the course of a week, his symptoms worsened, and he checked-in to the emergency room at NYU Langone.

“I could barely stand [or] walk at the time I got there,” Lat said. He received emergency oxygen, but breathing became more difficult over the following days. By the end of the month, doctors sedated him and put him on a ventilator, which he stayed on for six days in the intensive care unit.

“I don’t really remember much of that, which is good,” he said, but he does remember the alarming questions he was asked before going under. “ ‘Are you willing to be an organ donor? Are you willing to be resuscitated if necessary?’ ”

Moreover, he later learned that two newspapers were reporting pre-written obituaries for him while he remained intubated — during which time his family, including his 37-year-old husband Zach Shemtob, couldn’t visit.

“I also don’t remember the … point of coming out of it,” he said. The one memory he can grasp: being able to text again. He sent one to his father, who asked how he felt. “I texted back, ‘Fine, breathing’ — and all of these random emojis that had no meaning.”

On April 1, Lat left the hospital, hardly able to walk the length of a city block. That was a far cry from his stamina in 2005 and 2007, the years when he ran the New York City Marathon in less than five hours. Although he didn’t run as often in subsequent years, in part due to trying other exercise methods such as high-intensity interval training, he still fit it in a couple times per week — and could go about 6 miles at a roughly 8-minute-per-mile pace without difficulty.

“I felt a sense of accomplishment,” he said.

That’s the opposite of how he felt as he recovered from COVID-19, even months later.

“For the first two months, I felt like I was making no progress,” he said. Shortness of breath remained, and the lingering cough “would make my back, chest and shoulders ache,” he said.

“In June, the cough and shortness of breath just disappeared,” he added.

From that point, he began walking for exercise — and graduated to jogging. It’s all come with expected challenges: Lat lost 15 pounds while ill, and not only gained it back, but added 20 pounds on top. Instead of breathing issues, he now only feels a loss of cardiovascular endurance.

“I think trying to get back in shape and losing weight is part of that attempt to return to normalcy,” he said. That normalcy also includes curling 35-pound dumbbells, even though just taking a gallon of milk from his refrigerator feels heavy.

Lat remains optimistic about regaining his endurance and strength. After 1 mile will come 2, then 3 miles.

“I don’t think I’m going to do a marathon again … but if I can even do a 5K, that would be a big thing,” he said. “Maybe after I finish this mile, that will be my next goal.”