Updated About Town: Stepping Up

Phil Shevrin’s journey started last year on a simple walk home. Yesterday it ended at home plate in Fenway Park.

Phil and Gini Shevrin were walking home from the neighbors’ house on April 4, 2010. As they neared home, by way of the winding hill-ridden streets of their neighborhood, they stopped to chat with friends.

Phil thought he might be having an asthma attack. He excused himself and continued walking a few hundred feet home.

Once inside, he realized it was far worse, returned outside and called Gini.

She called an ambulance and firefighters took him to Leahy Clinic.

Phil, then 58, didn’t have high blood pressure or cholesterol, was not overweight and considered himself healthy. Doctors told him he was having a heart attack.

Three stints were implanted in his heart and a week later he was sent home to rehabilitate.

“He was allowed to walk five or 10 minutes on a flat surface,” Gini said of the work he started within two weeks of the heart attack.

At first she walked with him. “He was telling me I was going to fast,” she said.

Putting one foot in front of the other eventually made a difference. Phil was eventually walking five miles at a time. 

Those five miles still required flat areas, so he’d drive to the Militia Drive and just walk … and walk.

A Massachusetts winter put ice in the weather and on the streets, so Phil started walking on the treadmill.

“Somewhere along the line my son Jason called and said there was a race at Fenway,” Gini said.

That race was the 9K Run to Home Base, sponsored by New Balance. The runners started at Fenway Park wove through the Boston neighborhood and circled back and finished at home plate.

Each of the 2,500 runners had to raise money too. Last night's tally was $2.5 million.

That money is being added to the coffers of the Red Sox Foundation and the Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program, which offers clinical and emotional care to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with traumatic brain injuries.  

Jason's call came months before the race, when his father was walking three or four miles daily on the treadmill. For a few weeks Phil thought about his son’s challenge and asked himself, “Can I do it?”

His answer was finally “yes.” Before going online for a training program he went to the doctors for a medical blessing.

Phil said he went in for his checkup and told them about the run. They thought he was a little too enthusiastic for his own good.

“They worried I wasn’t paying attention to my body,” Phil said. “They put me on the stress test. The doctor came down and watched, which is pretty unusual.”

They soon realized Phil's heart maximum rate was back to 100 percent. He was originally told that the 85 percent he achieved a year earlier was about all he’d get.

“They said, ‘Go run,’” Phil said. He trained here and his son, who runs quite a few races, trained in Washington D.C.

Yesterday, Phil did the 9K in about an hour.

“It was a great cause to raise money for,” said Phil. "I got to do it with my older son. I couldn’t have done it without him.”

A little more than a year ago, Phil was only walking a few minutes from his house. Sunday morning he and his son ran miles. But, Phil's not impressed with himself.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “Thanks to great doctors and cardiac rehab at Leahy clinic I am still alive and was able to do this.”

Some might disagree and say it’s a really big deal – for Phil and for our veterans.