She’s Running Boston with Type 1 Diabetes and a Promise to Her Mom
As Duke Pharmacy Coordinator Krissy Lapczynski prepares for the April 20 Boston Marathon, she turns every mile into advocacy after both she and her mother are diagnosed with the disease
Every training run for the April 20 Boston Marathon that Lapczynski is running on behalf of Breakthrough T1D is another opportunity to educate about the disease that has shaped her life since she learned she had Type 1 diabetes 23 years ago at age 8.
Lapczynski’s diagnosis just before her ninth birthday led to an interest in pharmacy medicine when she once was mistakenly given the wrong type of insulin. She started paying attention to what pharmacists did, how they educated patients and realized the difference they could make in others’ lives.
“The whole reason I became a pharmacist is to advocate for patients' safety,” Lapczynski said, “especially with Type 1 diabetes.”
Her lifelong advocacy to raise awareness for research and funding for Type 1 diabetes started with testifying before the U.S. Congress at age 16 to ask for funding for development of insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors. It continued with the pursuit of her career through an intensive six-year program at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, where she took up distance running as a hobby. And it’s ongoing, as she was one of eight runners selected nationally by Breakthrough T1D to run in the 2026 Boston Marathon, her first time running 26.2 miles.
“I always told my husband that if I ever ran a marathon, it would be Boston because that community gave me my career and it gave me confidence in my disease,” said Lapczynski, who started working at Duke in 2021.
‘An invisible disease’
"Honestly, just getting out there today felt like a win. Last night my insulin pump site came out while I was sleeping, which meant I woke up this morning with a brutal high blood sugar. It took hours to get it back under control and the nausea and exhaustion that come with it are no joke. Days like that remind me how unpredictable life with Type 1 diabetes can be. "
Krissy Lapczynski, March 8 on Instagram
Of an estimated 29.1 million people diagnosed with diabetes in the United States, just 2.1 million have Type 1. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin, the hormone that helps control blood sugar.
Lapczynski’s mother, Karen Boyle, worried when her daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a child that it was a “death sentence.” Boyle’s father-in-law had died from complications related to the disease six years before Lapczynski’s diagnosis, and Boyle was unsure of how her young daughter would manage regular blood sugar monitoring and insulin shots.
But about six months after watching her parents inject her with insulin, Lapczynski asked if she could try.
“She was very determined,” Boyle said. “She told us, ‘I’m going to do this. I have to live with this disease and it’s going to be OK.’”
A few years later, Boyle suggested Lapczynski apply to be a delegate for what is now called Breakthrough T1D Children’s Congress to speak about her disease at age 16. Lapczynski overcame her shyness and beat out 82 other applicants from the state of New York in 2011 to advocate for care that many Type 1 diabetic patients use now.
“I wanted to help other people who are sick like me because being diabetic is an invisible disease,” Lapczynski told her mother at the time. “Nobody realizes that you’re sick. If I could help one person in life deal with this or make their life easier because I’ve done something to help them, that’s what I want to do.”
On Lapczynski’s Instagram and TikTok accounts, she gives regular updates on what it’s like to train for running 26.2 miles when she must know her blood sugar level at all times.
“Exercise tends to make insulin work better in your body,” Lapczynski said. “So it works really, really well when I’m running a lot. It’s a lot of math and a lot of planning beforehand.”
For her training runs around the Triangle, where she simulated Boston’s hills on Duke’s Al Buehler Trail, she carries snacks and energy gels. She plots when she will run, what she will eat before and after – and has an emergency plan in case anything goes awry. In Boston, her husband, John, plans to meet her at strategic locations with extra fuel so she doesn’t have to carry it all while she runs.
Boyle has been awed by not only Lapczynski’s training, but the way she’s seen her daughter handle Type 1 diabetes from the start.
“You think you know about the disease, and you try to help your child when they have this disease, but until you, yourself, have it, you have no idea what they're really going through and what it's really like,” Boyle said.
‘Mom, I’m doing it for us’
"For most runners, it’s just training. For me, living with Type 1 diabetes, it’s hundreds of quiet decisions made before, during, and after every mile — choices that never stop.”
Krissy Lapczynski, Jan. 1 on Instagram
In October 2025, Lapczynski’s mother woke in a hospital room to find her daughter by her bedside, explaining that she had been in a coma – and that she, too, had Type 1 diabetes. Boyle was about to turn 70, an unusually late age for the diagnosis.
It means that Boyle now often relies on advice from Lapczynski for how keep her blood sugar under control and when to take insulin.
“It’s been a good bonding experience for my mom and I,” Lapczynski said. “We relate a lot about our pancreases being broken.”
When Lapczynski learned she was selected to represent Breakthrough T1D in the Boston Marathon just before Thanksgiving, she told Boyle, “Mom, I’m doing it for us.”
Boyle said her doctors have been pleased with how she has managed her diabetes since her diagnosis and told her she must be “doing something right.”
“The something I did right was a little girl who is an absolute saint who has this disease and has dedicated her life to becoming a doctor and helping others – and she’s helping me,” said Boyle as she teared up. “She’s taken something that is a deadly disease and turned it into something that is helping her, helping me and helping others – which is always what she wanted to do.”
Lapczynski’s Boston Marathon bib number – 27909 – arrived March 18, and she posted about it on social media in an emotional video.
“There was a time I truly believed running a marathon, especially Boston, wasn’t possible for me,” she wrote. “However, because of how far T1D care and research has come, I now get to chase this dream. This race is more than 26.2 miles as it’s a reminder of what progress, resilience and community can do.”
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