Jeff Young, the Anchorage man who won his age group at the 2015 Boston Marathon less than a year after running his first marathon, died late last month from a disease that struck quickly, leaving family and friends stunned and heartbroken.
Nicknamed “Hardcore” by fellow runners, Young was two days shy of his 67th birthday when he passed Nov. 20 from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal brain disorder.
Young was a construction worker whose physically demanding job made him as tough as the nails he hammered. Before he gained fame in Alaska as an age-group marvel, he was a rock climber, ice climber, mountain climber — he summited Denali in the late 1990s — skier and triathlete…