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Celeste Maisel, who battled a rare disease, ran in the Nike Marathon on... 
Yes, it's been a struggle, but Celeste Maisel is up and running.

And running. And running.

The Saratoga 17-year-old decided to tackle the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco over the weekend. She tried it because she could, as the old joke goes, but also because she wanted to do something to help those who battle dreadful diseases.

Maisel knows something about dreadful. When she was in middle school, a strep infection led to a mysterious neurological disease.

It caused depression, achy joints, twitches and violent tremors. She was in and out of the hospital. She missed weeks of school. She found herself in a wheelchair.

"I couldn't control my muscles," Maisel said sitting last week on the campus of De Anza College, where she is enrolled in an accelerated program combining high school and college course work. "I was really sick."

Doctors determined that Maisel was battling Sydenham's Chorea, a rare ailment. The experts attacked Maisel's disease with antibiotics, which apparently also attacked her digestive tract, leaving her with stomach trouble even today. But her neurological symptoms improved.

Maisel has always loved sports. She was the only girl on her Little League baseball team. She played basketball before she got sick.

By freshman year at Cupertino High School, she was anxious to compete, though she was still having days when her body would not cooperate. P.E. teacher Susan Ganske suggested swimming - low impact on her joints, good aerobic exercise. Her friends encouraged her. She joined the swim team and did her best.

"She would come in laps and laps behind everybody," said her mother, Susan Stanaway-Maisel, "but she'd just keep going."

During sophomore year, Maisel heard something on the morning announcements about wrestling tryouts. Girls are encouraged to join, the notice said. Maisel was in. All 5-foot-3 and 119 pounds of her.

"I kind of wanted to show that girls could do it," Maisel told me. "I wanted to show that I could do it - to myself and to the coaches and the other girls on the team."

Early in the season, Maisel tore a muscle in her shoulder. Wrestling was out. Swimming was out. But Maisel kept showing up for wrestling practice. She'd warm up with the team. And when her teammates were wrestling or lifting weights, she would run and run. And she hated it.

"At the beginning I was like, 'Why am I doing this?' "

That was December. Then her brother showed her a flier for the 26.2-mile marathon in San Francisco - a race to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And Maisel knew. She knew why she was running. And she knew it was time for her first marathon.

"When I was sick," she explained, "so many people helped me. I want to do something for other people now."

Some day she might become a medical researcher seeking cures for confounding diseases. But now?

"This," she said days before the race, "is something I can do, that I'm good at."

So Maisel lined up $2,500 in pledges for the race that ultimately raised more than $18 million. And early Sunday morning she took off with thousands of marathoners running from Union Square to the Great Highway. She ran like a machine, finishing in four hours and 43 minutes - just below the top 25 percent.

"When I got to mile 22, it was like I'm actually going to do this," Maisel told me just after Sunday's race. "Once the finish line was in sight, I just sprinted."

Amazing, yes. But maybe the story here is not that Maisel finished. Maybe the story here is that she had the courage to start.

Read Mike Cassidy's Loose Ends blog (www.mercextra.com/blogs/cassidy). Contact him at mcassidy@mercurynews.com or call (408) 920-5536.