Kiley Lyall, 24, fell in love with running when she was 8 years old and completing the final leg of a Special Olympics relay. Her team was in last place when she took the baton, and they ended in first.
Her family has a motto: “Anything you want to do, you go for it.”
Lyall embodies it.
A south suburban Bourbonnais native, Lyall was born with autism, mild cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Her seizures sometimes flare up when she runs — during her first half-marathon, a year ago, she had a seizure at mile 10 and another at mile 11, but she pushed on and finished the race. She ran the Chicago Half-Marathon in September without incident.
In January, she’ll grace the cover of Women’s Running, the largest national magazine dedicated to female runners. She’s believed to be the first runner with autism ever to appear on the cover of a national fitness magazine.
“There is a misconception that runners are a certain kind of people who have to look a certain way or run a certain speed,” Editor-in-Chief Jessica Sebor told me. “What we want to push forward is the idea that every body can run. What that might look like is very different for each person, but we believe in the power of fitness and health, and we don’t want that to be an exclusive club.”
For the third year in a row, Sebor and her staff invited readers to nominate themselves or other inspirational runners to appear on the cover. She said they received more than 5,000 entries, including Lyall’s, submitted by Lyall’s mom, Kathleen, with whom she runs racing events.
“We always hear from others what an inspiration she is,” Kathleen Lyall said. “I figured, what the heck? I’ll send in the story and see what happens.”
What happened was that more than 10,000 readers weighed in, and Lyall won in a landslide.
“Knowing that we can open doors for other athletes who may have cognitive disabilities but like to compete physically means so much to us,” Kathleen Lyall said. “It doesn’t matter your abilities. It matters your heart and your spirit.”
The previous cover contest winners are Lindsey Hein, who underwent a double mastectomy in 2013 and works to raise awareness about BRCA2 gene mutation, and Dorothy Beal, who turned around a life of overeating, overdrinking and smoking by taking up running. Now she’s a healthy mother of three.
Women’s Running flew Lyall and her mother to San Diego this week for a cover shoot, and treated her to a new running wardrobe.
I spoke with the Lyalls via phone, from the photo shoot. It can be difficult for Kiley Lyall to speak, but her mom relayed her enthusiasm, and when I asked Kiley how she felt about her chance to be a cover model, she told me: “Happy.”
Same here. Women’s magazines have an opportunity, and I would argue a responsibility, to shift the notion of what it means to be cover-worthy in today’s culture. I have railed against them in the past — particularly Women’s Health — for using good health and weight loss interchangeably, as though we’re all on a quest to take up as little space as possible.
We’re not. We are, plenty of us, grateful to inhabit the body we inhabit and would love to read more ways to strengthen, feed and celebrate it — rather than shrink, starve and re-shape it.
The Kiley Lyall cover is a beautiful step in so many right directions.
“To open doors and open people’s minds to accept individuals with different abilities and include them,” Kathleen Lyall said. “That’s our goal. It’s pretty amazing to have this stage to inspire others and to change people’s perceptions.”
I hope other magazines follow the lead.
Heidi Stevens will join U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky and several members of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense at 4 p.m. Nov. 15 at The Wine Goddess, 702 Main St., Evanston, 847-475-9463. Admission is free but registration is required: Go to Eventbrite.com.
Twitter @heidistevens13
