Joe Drake

Award winning author (Finalist in The Wishing Shelf Book Awards, dual-Finalist in the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards (First Non-Fiction and General Fiction) and Honorable Mention in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards).

Joe Drake was born and raised on Long Island, New York, the seventh of twelve children. He attended university at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated in 1984 with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering.

In 2018, Joe was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (PD) just shy of turning 57. As is common for those afflicted with incurable neurological diseases, his life changed dramatically with his diagnosis though not necessarily for the worse. Shortly afterward, Joe retired to Seattle with his wife, Lynn, near where she had grown up and where her family still lives. Stress is a well-known trigger for PD. Hence, removing the stress of an engineering career was one way in which he managed his diagnosis.

Always one to enjoy sports and outdoor activities, Joe embraced the fact that vigorous exercise is the only therapy that has been shown to be effective at slowing the progression of PD. He turned to running as his primary mode of exercise although he still often bicycles, hikes, and plays soccer. Until his diagnosis, Joe’s running workouts had never been longer than about six miles. Post-diagnosis, he doubled down on the sport and in 2019, at age 58, Joe ran his first marathon and has run 12 marathons since.

In his debut as an author of "Run With It" and against the backdrop of his goal of running all six of the 2021 World Marathon Majors over a span of six weeks, Joe describes how exercise and Parkinson’s have become dominant forces in his life. His new purpose is to inspire others with PD, or any other disease or medical condition, to cope through a considered and comprehensive regimen of vigorous exercise.