Manuel Jimenez was four miles short of finishing a charity marathon in Memphis, Tennessee, when a doctor pulled him from the race after noticing the paramedic firefighter from Northport was struggling to stay on his feet.
No one could fault Jimenez for being fatigued — he’d just run 22 miles wearing his full, 60-pound set of firefighting gear in an effort to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital — but the doctor suspected there was more to it than that.
“Around the 15th mile, my shin started bothering me, and I thought it was probably just shin splints,” Jimenez said.