Matthew Aberant was your typical 45-year-old competitive runner last September when the unthinkable happened.

What he described as a feeling of immense pressure in his head followed by a headache led to his wife Laura rushing him to the St. Luke’s Anderson Campus Emergency Room. While en route, he became nauseous and started vomiting.

He was diagnosed with a subarachnoid hemorrhage stroke, a medical emergency identified by bleeding into a space between the brain and the tissue that covers it. Matthew’s headache is what is known as a thunderclap headache, one that comes on suddenly and is so intense it is often described as the worst headache of a patient’s life.

After spending 12 days in the St. Luke’s Bethlehem Campus neuro-ICU with around-the-clock care and two neurosurgical procedures, Matthew was thankfully able to continue his recovery at home. In the long run, he faced no permanent symptoms of a stroke, like facial paralysis, loss of hearing, or arm and leg issues.

On Sunday, April 26, Matthew will make his triumphant return to racing by taking part in the St. Luke’s 5K, part of the St. Luke’s Half Marathon that starts at William Allen High School in Allentown. He and Laura will be running with a team of friends from all over the East Coast to celebrate his return to competitive running.

“I’m a little nervous,” admitted the sustainability consultant from Bethlehem, “but definitely excited to see how it feels when I get back out there.”

The couple picked this race “because it was sponsored by St. Luke’s and we wanted to show some small support for everything St. Luke’s did for us when I was going through my stroke.”

Matthew’s story is just one of many for runners taking part in either the St Luke’s 5K or the St. Luke’s Half Marathon.

From first-timers and people looking to celebrate overcoming odds like Matthew, to running in memory of loved ones, overcoming personal struggles and more, there are plenty of stories of why runners and walkers will toe the line and commit to the finish line for the St. Luke’s Half Marathon.

Race weekend kicks off with the St. Luke’s Race Expo 9 am – 4 pm Saturday, April 25 at St. Luke’s SportsPlex, Home of Pickleball Lehigh Valley at 4636 Crackersport Rd., Allentown.

St. Luke’s Youth Run will also take place on Saturday, April 25, at 1:45 pm from the Lehigh Valley Road Runners Clubhouse in the Lehigh Parkway, with four different age groups and distances, from 3-4-year-olds running one-eighth of a mile to 9-14-year-olds running a full mile.

Sunday’s St. Luke’s 5K starts at 8 am, followed by the St Luke’s Half Marathon at 8:10 am.

For complete details, go to https://stlukeshalfmarathon.com/

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network with annual net revenue of more than $4.5 billion. With 23,000+ employees at 16 hospital campuses and 350+ outpatient sites, it is the Lehigh Valley’s biggest employer.

The Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital is based at the Bethlehem Campus.

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school. It also operates the nation’s oldest continuously operated School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 60+ fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 550+ residents and fellows.

In 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ranked St. Luke’s #1 – ahead of Houston Methodist and Mayo Clinic, two of the nation’s most prestigious institutions – as the nation’s top health system for quality, safety and patient experience. This objective recognition, based on public data reported to the government, reaffirms St. Luke’s preeminent position as THE BEST OF THE BEST among the most respected health care systems in the United States.

St. Luke’s has been named a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital. It is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare’s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction. In 2025, the Network earned straight A’s from Leapfrog across all of its acute care hospitals. It has earned 100 Top Hospital designations from Premier 11 years in a row, including in 2021 when its flagship University Hospital was identified as THE #1 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.

Information provided to TVL by:
Sam Kennedy