PHOTOS PROVIDED Darby Lewes, a 71-year-old marathon runner, aspires to run six of the most notable marathons in the world. She is pictured running, swimming, riding a bike and posing with a dog.

A­­­­­t age 68, Darby Lewes weighed 200 pounds, took 13 medications, ate 1,100 calories daily and did not exercise. Fast forward four years later, Lewes is now a marathon runner and she is trying to raise $1,500 for Crohn’s disease for the Chicago Marathon.

At 68, she was married to her former husband, and they loved each other very much and still do, but their lives had gone in different directions. The only thing they had in common was eating and dining out — burgers, fries and Chinese food — and she was gaining weight, she said.

“My doctor said at 68, you’re gonna last about five years,” Lewes said.

Post-divorce, she started eating 2,000 calories versus 1,100. She was eating what she wanted and when she was hungry and started losing weight, she said. She was in the habit of walking dogs and began walking them faster over the years and eventually started to jog.

She is now on no medications, eats better, feels healthier, wakes up at 4 a.m. and goes to bed at 8 p.m., she said. Running has become a social activity for Lewes and her dogs love it, too.

“You know those dreams where you are trying to run and you can’t — you’re so slow? That was me — me in real life. I started to get stronger and stronger and then finally I got down to my goal weight, which was 120 pounds,” she said.

Friends had told Lewes that she should run a 5K. When she ran her first 5K, it came with complications, she said. She got lost, her equipment wasn’t working and her pants were too baggy.

“Everything went wrong and it took me 65 minutes to run a 5K and I went back and as I was leaving the guy said ‘don’t feel bad you beat all the people who were sitting at home eating donuts on their couch.’ ”

One week later, Lewes raced in her second 5K, finishing in 45 minutes and won a medal for her age group, she said. “I wore that medal all day long, I wore that medal to bed. And I was hooked on 5K races.”

She started collecting more medals because she was the oldest racing and began running 10Ks, she said. She then had the idea to sign up for the half marathon KMF Race for Ovarian Cancer in Oct. 2015, which she ran in 2 hours and 41 minutes, her mile time at 12.17 minutes, according to her running time records. She spent the summer of 2015 preparing and practicing and that day she won another medal after finishing it.

“It was just a matter of time till I finally decided to do my first marathon. All through the marathon, I was saying, ‘this is horrible, this is horrible. I’m never gonna do it again, never again,’ and as soon as I crossed the finish line, ‘when’s the next one?’ Since then, I’ve been doing them,” she said.

With running marathons comes lifestyle changes. A big change was by cutting barbecue ribs, Chinese food, and her favorites, wine and chocolate, she said. When Lewes drinks wine, she mixes it with soda water so she is able to have two glasses of wine with it only being half a glass of a normal serving.

To practice for marathons, she runs, does interval training, short sprints and running half marathons, which, since beginning, she has ran about 40, she said. Lewes does not run every day but she does cross-train and also participates in triathlons where she swims 500 meters, goes on a 15-mile bike ride and runs a 5K.

Lewes has ran six marathons, the most recent being Newport News One City Marathon, ran in 5 hours and 13 minutes with a mile time of 11.57 minutes, stated in her run-time records. She will be running the Erie Marathon in September and the Chicago Marathon in October.

“For my bucket list, I am 71. I’m not gonna last forever, I’ve decided to do … a series of six marathons that are the best marathons in the world,” she said.

The six cities include New York, Chicago, Boston, London, Tokyo and Berlin, Lewes said. She has already ran the New York Marathon in 2017 and is entered in the Chicago Marathon. Lewes hopes to run the London marathon in April 2019.

For the Chicago Marathon, Lewes had missed the entry date by two weeks and her family was heartsick, she said.

“My daughter called me and said ‘Mom, Mom, I’ve been on the webpage and it says they’ll let you on late if you can raise money for somebody, for a charity,” Lewes said.

She had picked Crohn’s disease and has to raise $1,500 to race because she kept running into and realizing she knew people affected by Crohn’s — such as her ex-husband’s partner, she said.

Lewes also found out her young hairdresser had Crohn’s, she said. Then she got her puppy, Griffin, who has intestinal bowel disorder — the dog form of Crohn’s — and settled on raising money for Crohn’s disease.

“I just thought it meant you have to go to the bathroom a lot — it’s horrible, it’s painful. She goes to doctor after doctor and has all sorts of problems and they are talking about surgeries but the surgeries are too dangerous,” she said. “It just seemed like for a while, everybody I was bumping into had Crohn’s.”

Lewes’ daughter, too, had surprised her, prior to deciding on raising money for Crohns, with sweatshirts for her New York Marathon that said “Game of Crones,” a play on the HBO television show “Game of Thrones.” Lewes’ daughter and friends like to call themselves the “Cronies.”

Since beginning to run, Lewes has inspired others to lose weight, too, such as her friend who used to weight 350 pounds, but since exercising with Lewes, now weighs 150 pounds, Lewes said. She also has ran her first and second marathon with Lewes.

“Anybody can do a marathon if you’re stubborn enough,” she said. “If you can run a half marathon, you know you can finish a marathon, even if you have to walk the last two miles.”

For more information about Lewes’ Chicago Marathon or to help raise money for Crohn’s disease, visit http://online.ccfa.org/site/TR/TeamChallenge/AllChapters?px=3646704&pg=personal&fr_id=7519.