There is never a time when an eating disorder such as the one that afflicted Norwich Free Academy graduate Jill Akus, the former three-time State Open cross country champion, magically ceases to exist.

The illness was mentally draining. It ended her collegiate running career at Bowdoin College.

The illness, physically, was life-threatening. There came a point that Akus was told she might not have lived another week if she hadn’t been admitted to a hospital.

Then came last Friday. Akus was inducted into the NFA Hall of Fame at the Holiday Inn in Norwich, among some of the most acclaimed athletes and coaches in the school’s memory, and Akus stood tall.

And she spoke.

“I talked about my eating disorder,” the 43-year-old Akus, a 1997 graduate, said in a telephone conversation this week. “It was a big thing to share but to be able to speak and share about my experience, I thought maybe I could help other kids by sharing. I think it’s always hard to share something personal and be vulnerable but that’s when we grow the most, when we get something positive out of the struggle.”

As a freshman in 1993, the diminutive Akus swept the Eastern Connecticut Conference, Class LL and State Open championships, leading NFA to team titles in all three. She was a four-time ECC champion, three-time Class LL champion and State Open champ in 1993, 1995 and 1996.

NFA, led by Akus and fellow recent Hall of Fame inductee Erin-Kate Mandelburg Aleksak, won four conference titles in addition to Class LL and State Open titles in 1993 and 1995. The Wildcats became the first Connecticut team ever to win a coveted New England title in 1995.

Akus recollects running at that time through the prisms of both joy and pain.

There were the achievements, the successes, her friendship with then-Waterford High coach and former Olympian Jan Merrill-Morin, who helped her navigate the perils of being a young female distance runner, as Merrill-Morin was at the highest level. Then there was the illness, which Akus believes started when she was about 16.

Her message Friday to the assembled crowd, including her husband, Brandon Kaplan, who introduced her, was that she wishes to be remembered for all of that, not just for the boxes of trophies her parents saved for her in the attic of their Norwichtown home.

“If my name on a wall or website somewhere is supposed to stand as an example of something, I want it to be so other young people after me who may be struggling don’t have to feel like they’re alone,” Akus said.

‘Ember of strength’

Akus believes that running gave her the will she would later need to survive her illness.

“Holding it together long enough to have the running career at NFA that I did without self-destructing took more focus and willpower than any school record or conference or state title,” Akus said. “And thank God I did. Because after that, there was a long time when I couldn’t run at all ... when a lot of people didn’t think I’d ever be able to live independently and survive.

“And if it wasn’t for everything I learned about myself running, if I didn’t have that ember of strength to carry from the trail and the track into everything that came later, they might have been right.”

Over the last two years, Akus has been running with joy again.

Previously living in Brooklyn, in the heart of New York City, Akus found it difficult to run with any semblance of peace.

Since then, she and her husband purchased a small farm in Brewster, New York, where they live with their dogs Gertie (after Gertrude Stein — Akus was a women’s studies major) and Massimo.

“It’s a gift to be out of the city, back where I belong with the trees and birds and animals,” said Akus, who has her own business as a leather artisan.

On Saturday, Sept. 17, Akus set off on the biggest undertaking of her running career, setting the fastest known time (FKT) for a women’s unsupported run on the Connecticut section of the Appalachian Trail. She traversed the 50.78 miles, with over 11,500 feet of vertical gain, in 18 hours, 28 minutes, 20 seconds.

Kaplan, whom she calls “one of the greatest things to happen to me in my life,” dropped her off at 4:20 a.m. and met her at the Massachusetts border at 10:48 p.m., with Akus required to carry all her own food, water and gear. She eclipsed the previous FKT of 1 day, 6 hours, 24 minutes, 52 seconds.

Akus limped to the finish, unable to run for the final 10 miles after falling and injuring herself earlier in the run.

Her inspiration for the long-distance trek was a miscarriage she had, using the run to process her grief.

“I wondered how far I could go,” Akus said. “I heard about this FKT thing. I thought, ‘I want to be a strong person for my daughter.’ I had never raced over a 5K before when I made that decision. Just the training for that, I really started to find my strength and happiness.”

She embarked on the run during a drought, with a lot of the streams she was familiar with having dried up. Thankfully, it rained two days before, allowing her to collect drinking water along the way. She used two tracking devices and wore a head lamp.

“I could text and call (Brandon). Mostly it’s just you alone. It’s gorgeous. A big part is along the Housatonic (River). The geology is really interesting. You’re climbing down lots of boulders and rocks; you’re not going the fastest miles. It’s really, really beautiful.”

‘Completely locked in’

NFA girls’ basketball coach Courtney Gomez, a 2004 graduate of the school who helped the Wildcats to a pair of basketball state championships, was another one of the 2022 inductees.

She called Akus’s acceptance speech “amazing” and said it comes at a time when Gomez and her peers have been planning a mental health conference at NFA for Nov. 18, involving all student-athletes.

“The amount of strength she had,” Gomez said of Akus. “Everybody sees the outside success. You never know what somebody’s dealing with. It was powerful. We’re all there getting this recognition and she stands up and tells her story ... everybody completely locked into what she was saying.”

Merrill-Morin said it was Jill’s mom who called and asked if she could work with Akus when she was in high school. Merrill-Morin refers to herself as Akus’s mentor and friend.

“All they wanted was some advice,” Merrill-Morin said. “Just observe and try to help with my knowledge, not trying to interfere. The goal was clearly to try to win the State Open cross country title. I tried to ease her through it, be relaxed, not make it ‘what a big thing in front of me.’

“It was fun. I enjoyed working with her. We still love each other. It’s a really strong bond. Her parents are great parents, just great parents; it’s a good family.”

Akus’s parents, Jan and Sandra, and her brother Mark have been her biggest advocates, refusing to concede until they found her the help she needed, a time filled with hospital stays all along the East Coast.

Akus also thanks Merrill-Morin, whom she calls “a huge support for me through my running career, she helped me with running and she helped me with life stuff; she’s a wonderful, amazing person.”

In the end, Akus said healing was up to her.

“Me understanding it was up to me to save myself,” she said. “I had to find the strength and really want to be better. It took me a little bit to get to that point. Once you start being able to have that mindset, that makes recovery a little easier to understand.

“The eating disorder is just a symptom. You have to learn to cope with your feelings, learn to be uncomfortable — joy, sadness and anger — be able to process emotions without doing it through food.”

She got an overwhelmingly positive response at the hall of fame banquet.

“A lot of people came up and thanked me,” Akus said. “Teachers, people who have family members with an eating disorder. There’s a real awareness now about mental health, much more so than when I was at school. I think it resonated with some people there. Hopefully, I can share more, give back to the community.”

Akus said she doesn’t ever remember a time she didn’t love to run, to feel the breeze in her hair as she was sprinting.

Now she runs with added perspective, her illness 20 years behind her.

“Recovery is a funny thing,” she said. “I still have my struggles but I know how to cope with them and manage them. I’m in a better place, a much stronger place. It’s not like one day you’re better and everything is fine. There’s things you still have to manage. But to know things will get better is important.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com