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Photo Credit: KYE EHRLICH

Pierre Lipton, who lived in Providence, co-founded 1440 Media, which provides a daily email newsletter of unbiased news to 2.3 million people

From Edward Fitzpatrick on Globe.com:

Pierre Lipton loved numbers.

Numbers told the story of the company he co-founded, 1440 Media, which provides a free e-mail newsletter with a compilation of unbiased news to more than 2.3 million people each day. It is named for the year that the printing press was invented — and the number of minutes in a day.

Numbers charted his early success: After graduating from Brown University in 2020 with a 4.0 grade point average, he was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for media in 2022.

Numbers chronicled the speed he achieved in road racing: On Oct. 1, he finished first in the Jamestown Half Marathon in 1 hour, 27 minutes, and 11 seconds.

Numbers also captured the triumph and tragedy of his final day: On Feb. 4, he finished the Mesa (Arizona) Marathon in 3 hours, 10 minutes, and 5 seconds — maintaining a pace of 7 minutes and 15 seconds per mile for 26.2 miles — before collapsing and dying.

He was 26 years old.

Those who loved him say Lipton — who was born in Charlotte, N.C., and lived in Providence — made each moment count.

“He lived life to the fullest in every way,” said his mother, professor Siu Challons-Lipton.

“He never did anything less than 100 percent,” said his girlfriend, Eleanor Pereboom.

He had countless plans and dreams.

He wanted to run all the major marathons. He longed to play for the national soccer team in Tonga, the South Pacific nation where his mother was born.

He spoke English, Spanish, Arabic, and was learning Italian in anticipation of a trip in May. He liked to build things — whether with Legos or new business ventures — and he wanted to make a difference in the world.

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While some runners fuel up on IPAs, Lipton stayed away from alcohol and caffeine while training. “He was healthy,” his father said. “He took such good care of himself.”

So Lipton and Pereboom were prepared when they flew out to Arizona to run the Mesa Marathon on Feb. 4. Temperatures ranged between 46 and 69 degrees that day — pretty good conditions for running.

At the starting line, he kissed her goodbye. At the finish line, an official photo shows him looking relaxed, gliding with both feet off the ground, sunglasses reflecting the Arizona sun.

Pereboom finished less than 15 minutes later — in a time of 3 hours, 23 minutes, and 56 seconds. She chugged a bottle of water but didn’t see Lipton. After finding her phone, she texted him but received no reply.

Pereboom called him, but he didn’t pick up. She figured he was recovering somewhere and not looking at his phone. Then she used a phone tracker app to see where his phone was. “I’m that annoying girlfriend,” she joked.

The app showed that Lipton was at a hospital. “That’s when I started to get worried,” she said.

Pereboom found race officials beneath a tent and soon learned what had happened. “He basically fell right into the arms of paramedics,” she said. “They tried to do CPR. They tried everything. We still don’t know what happened.”

His father, an emergency medicine specialist, said, “The working diagnosis is he might have had some sudden electrolyte imbalance that caused arrhythmia.”