On Sunday, August 27, 26-year-old runner Sam Norton was competing in the Santa Rosa Marathon when he collapsed just before reaching the 23rd mile.
Medical staff arrived at the Santa Rosa Creek Trail to offer medical assistance to Norton and performed CPR as runners continued to move past them. Norton was then taken to a hospital and later pronounced dead.
“He was doing something that he loved,” his mother, Kristen Caisse, told and was most recently the senior editorial director at on Monday.
Norton, who began running about two years ago, was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis—a rare condition in which damaged muscle rapidly breaks down and releases a damaging protein into the bloodstream—after he also collapsed near mile 14 of the Boston Marathon in April.
Norton, a resident of New York City, was running in the marathon to gain a qualifying time for the 2024 Boston Marathon.
Just .001 Seconds Separate Third and Fourth in 200 Meters Herren Project, a nonprofit that provides resources for substance abuse recovery. He raised more than $16,000 for the organization running in last year’s race.
Norton wrote a blog post for would-be donors detailing his father’s struggles with addiction, which led to his death in 2020. Norton said his father was also an avid runner, making it easy for him to use the sport as an outlet for his grief.
“There’s a unique and distinct clarity that comes when you’re miles out, just you and the road, when you settle in and feel like you could go on just like this, forever,” he wrote in the post.
“I like to think that it was moments like these that brought him some peace and relief from the anguish that was all too present for him. It’s the closest I’ve felt to him in years, even when he was alive,” he continued.
After discovering his love of running, Norton began running with the New York run club Orchard Street Runners. After telling his mother how tired he had been during the run, she thought he would switch to something less strenuous. “Nope, this is exactly what I need,” Casisse recalls him saying.
“He loves to challenge himself,” Caisse told the paper.
Three weeks after Norton’s diagnosis, he was cleared for running and successfully ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon.
Caisse says Norton was passionate about sports. During his four years at St. Johns High School, a Catholic boys' school in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, he played football and served as one of four team captains in his senior year.
Norton’s running coach, Victor Zeitoune, said Norton was a natural in building community.
“Some people just come to a space, and others come and bring an energy that people gravitate to,” he told the paper. “People gravitated to Sam.”
“He just was such a blessing to all who knew him,” Caisse said.
Laura Ratliff is a New York City-based writer, editor, and runner. Laura's writing expertise spans numerous topics, ranging from travel and food and drink to reported pieces covering political and human rights issues. She has previously worked at Architectural Digest, Bloomberg News, and Condé Nast Traveler and was most recently the senior editorial director at TripSavvy. Like many of us, Laura was bitten by the running bug later in life, after years of claiming to "hate running." Her favorite marathon is Big Sur.
