Ashley Carson was among the top 3,000 finishers out of the 5,000 in Savannah's Rock 'N' Roll Marathon in November.

Earlier this month, the 28-year-old trimmed her time to less than an hour in the Tybee Run Fest 10K. She also ran in the Jingle Bell 5K in 2009 and the Hilton Head Island half marathon in February 2011.

Carson's accomplishments as a runner aren't record breaking, but they are significant for someone who has been fighting multiple sclerosis since 2005.

"Some days I can run a marathon and others I do good just to get out of bed," Carson said.

Carson, a Hilton Head Island resident, is training for the three-day, 50-mile Challenge Walk MS: Charleston Challenge, which raises money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. MS is an unpredictable, often disabling disease of the central nervous system for which there is no cure yet. The 2012 event is March 2-4 from historic Charleston to the Isle of Palms.

She started running just before her senior year of college to lose weight. "While running I started noticing some weird things going on with my body," Carson recalled. "When I bent my neck to look down to tie my shoe, I felt an electrical shock from my spine into my leg and a lot of numbness and tingling. I felt like I was going to fall."

It continued with what she describes as a sensation of fireworks in her body. "My symptoms started with the tingling," Carson said. "And there was weakness and very minor balance issues. I had achy leg pain and fatigue, which are very common factors with MS, and I deal with this on a daily basis."

Her official diagnosis came the day before she began her senior year, studying athletic training at Lees-McCrae College in Banner Elk, N.C.

The diagnosis didn't stop her from 2 1/2 more years to obtain her graduate degree in occupational therapy.

Today, she is inspired by her patients. She is an occupational therapist at Coastal Carolina Hospital, where she works with adults, and at the Hilton Pediatric Rehab Outpatient clinics on Hilton Head and in Bluffton, where she works with children.

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Multiple sclerosis won't slow down Hilton Head woman