Natalie Olivier was excited to be running in the 2013 Boston Marathon. She hadn’t qualified by time, but she was eligible to run because she had raised money for a charity (College Bound Dorchester in Boston). Natalie had planned to run the New York City Marathon the previous fall, but it had been cancelled at the last minute because of Hurricane Sandy.

So here she was, about to run her very first full marathon, the Boston Marathon, widely considered the most prestigious marathon in the world. Everything was going fine, until the last half mile when the race came to a stop. She didn’t know what had happened. A friend called her cell phone and told her where to go to meet up with her boyfriend, Ascer, and the other friends there to support her. She remembers the sound of ambulances and helicopters overhead. She walked toward the finish and spotted Ascer on the ground. He had been hit in the leg by shrapnel. Another friend had also been badly injured. She and Ascer walked to Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he got stitches and was released.

But let’s go back in time. “Here,” as the inimitable radio commentator Paul Harvey used to say, “is the rest of the story.” Natalie Olivier had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2008. After the diagnosis, she did some research and learned that the condition is incurable and progressive, not what anyone wants to learn, let alone a bright energetic 28-year-old woman.

Natalie began taking some medications, which helped in dealing with MS, but she felt aimless, flat, discouraged. Then in 2011 an assistant at the neurologist office gave her what proved to be a psychological boost, a needed kick in the pants. “She told me, ‘Sure it sucks to have MS, but you have to move on with your life. Do something you love to do.’”

Natalie had run track in high school (the 100-yard dash and the high hurdles), so she decided to take up running again and began training hard by herself. She ran the Tufts 10K and won a medal, and she was hooked. Then she ran the Boston Run to Remember half-marathon. After some other half-marathons, she knew she had to run a marathon. She began training in earnest for the New York Marathon. But that attempt, as mentioned, was thwarted.

While Natalie had completed several 10Ks and half-marathons, she was determined to complete a full marathon after having run into bad luck in New York and Boston. So she ran the Bay State Marathon in October 2013, and just three weeks later she ran the New York City Marathon. Talk about grit and determination.

This improbable story continues. Natalie got married to Ascer in 2015. They wanted to have children, but to do so she had two stop taking one of the drugs for MS. After her first child, Gabrielle, was born in 2016, Natalie suffered a relapse. “I could barely run a mile,” she recalls.

She began taking the medications again, her strength returned and she went back to running.

So let’s recap the situation today. Since Natalie began running in 2011, three years after her MS diagnosis, she has run 10 marathons and 11 half-marathons. She has been raising two kids — Gabrielle (age 8) and Sebastian (age 5). She has held down a full-time job at a financial company in Waltham. And she has maintained a strong marriage.

Okay, let’s look ahead. Natalie still chases her dreams. There are six “star” marathons in the world: Boston, New York, Chicago, London, Berlin and Tokyo. Natalie has already completed the first four and she will be running the Berlin Marathon in the fall.

Natalie has been assured by her neurologist that her case is unusual to say the least. She supports Natalie’s ambitious running, and just urges her to eat well and stay safe.

On a personal note, I came to know Natalie Olivier when we were in the same group of charity runners training to run the Boston Marathon in April 2014, the year after the bombing. We became Facebook friends and I contributed to her marathon charity. I only learned that she had MS a few weeks ago when she posted about her condition on Facebook. I asked if she’d let me tell her story and she agreed.

Everyone faces challenges in life. They say that what counts is how one deals with those challenges. I am completely blown away by Natalie’s extraordinary success in dealing with a major health issue. Her story will stay with me. Whenever I’m down about something, I will have a picture in my mind of Natalie Olivier, leaving her home in Brockton in the early dawn hours to go running so she can realize her dreams. May the road rise to meet her.

David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary and suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns at dtreadw575@aol.com.