This One's for Kelvin

I don't know if any of you have been reading emails from the Chicago Marathon website. I have been getting them and skimming through them without really reading them until this morning. This caught my eye and really moved me. Like Kelvin, I lost my dad at an early age. Kelvin's blog was awesome today and I felt led to share this story of inspiration from the website:


Special Installment: Reflections of a 2006 Runner
Sara Donovan of Hinsdale, Illinois sent the following essay through our Inspiration Bank. As we approach the final stretch to race day and the challenge of the race looms, we found her touching experience a perfect way to provide encouragement in the final strides.

Angels All Around Us
As a veteran of 25 marathons, I can testify to the fact that some races are easier than others, but all are challenging at the end. First-time marathoners take heart; all of us possess the ability to persevere through fatigue, aches, and pains in our bodies and through the obstacles our mind presents as the miles wear us down. The marathon is often less about the physicality of running and more about the one’s determination born of a commitment to make the 26.2-mile journey. Many things carry us along on the way to the finish line. There are the faces and cheers of the spectators and the runners all around us. There are the wonderful volunteers, the water, Gatorade, gel, and nutrition bars to sustain us. However, as the miles tick off to 20, conversation and banter die, and we are left mostly with our own thoughts. It is then that the race begins in earnest.

Last year by mile 22, I was very tired. My mind told me that I needed to walk, even to stop. I told myself it was insanity for a 60-year-old woman to do such a crazy thing as run 26 miles, that it was too dangerous. My running partner (who was having a good race) stayed by my side and helped me along – talking, cajoling, encouraging me. By mile 24, I was desperate. I knew I would finish, but I didn’t know how. I saw my family at the water station and pushed off for the final miles.

I began praying. I found myself directing my prayers to my father who had died in 2001. He had been a miler at Marquette University but couldn’t run after devastating leg fractures he sustained when he bailed out of his flaming B-17 in World War II. A memory came to me. Shortly before my dad’s death, I entered his room as he was waking from a nap. “Oh,” he exclaimed weakly with a look of joy, “I was dreaming that I was running!”

So as I shuffled along, I fixed that image in my mind and talked to him. “Help me, Dad, please. I’m so tired. You were a runner. You understand. Run by my side. Hold my hand like you did when I was a little girl. Lift me up and carry me.”

I struggled on, but I had relaxed. I turned to my partner who was saying that we had seven-tenths of a mile to go. “I’ve got it now,” I told her. We ran up the hill at Roosevelt Road, down Columbus Drive to the chute. “Thanks for getting me here,” I said to Debbie, as we crossed the finish line. We walked along among the crush of runners and parted company to find our families.

I was so happy and felt just fine. As I walked through Grant Park to meet my husband, I heard a familiar sound from my childhood that stopped me in my tracks. It was my father’s whistle. “Oh, Dad, I forgot to thank you.” I listened for the whistle again, but it didn’t come. “Don’t go yet, Dad.” All I saw were runners and their families celebrating in the October sunshine.

Angels are all around us. They can’t take away our pain or fatigue, but they are running by our sides or are just over our shoulders. So if you feel low on your marathon journey, call upon your angels. They are there.

I have had good marathons and bad marathons, but last year was my best one. It was the one my father ran with me.