In 2008, then-Binghamton University student Bryan Steinhauer was brutally beaten into a coma by Serbian student Miladin Kovacevic, suffering a serious brain injury that left him nearly crippled. But Steinhauer worked impossibly hard to recover, and today he ran the NYC half-marathon in Central Park, beating his goal of 2:20 by full five minutes!
The 26-year-old Steinhauer, who is from Brooklyn, had to rebuild many of his recent memories, motor and speaking skills after Kovacevic, a basketball player who was nearly twice his size, put him into a coma for three months after crushing his skull. But he stayed resilient towards his recovery, even managing to pass a difficult CPA exam in 2010: "It's mind-boggling. It is arguably one of the most inspiring, resillient shows of force that I could ever imagine," Lee Perlman, Steinhauer's doctor at the time, told the Daily News.
Steinhauer used running to help with his therapy. "When I was in the hospital, I told them, 'I'm gonna run a marathon. Just watch me,'" Steinhauer said. "They were, 'Sure, sure, sure.'" But he trained hard, and ran today's 13-mile race in two hours and 15 minutes, only an hour and 14 minutes behind winner Wilson Kipsang of Kenya." Steinhauer, who is still working to improve his speech and mobility, plans to run the full marathon in November; Kovacevic, meanwhile, was released from Serbian prison in November.
