Police, fans, volunteers make events a fine social gathering
The smile that Linwood “Bliley” Gray wore as he crossed the Ntelos 8K finish line in his wheelchair, arms raised in triumph, cheered everyone who saw it yesterday.
Gray, 53, who lives at a Ruxton Health facility in South Richmond, would not have made it around the course without the help of Jessica Rony, Lauren Clements and Lisa Lake, who took turns pushing his wheelchair.
This is the fourth time that Rony, a program supervisor at A Grace Place Adult Care Center, has pushed Gray around the course. It was the first time for Lake and Clements.
On a humid morning, the workout taxed Gray’s helpers. But they didn’t complain. They knew how much it meant to him.
“He goes on about it all year long,” Rony said. “That’s all he talks about.”
. . .
“Runners on your mark . . . get set . . . go!”
With those time-honored words, Terrence Pugh set more than 4,000 marathoners into motion downtown on Broad Street yesterday.
Pugh, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, was the official starter for the SunTrust Richmond Marathon. He also did the honors for the McDonald’s Half Marathon.
“Pretty simple,” Pugh, 30, said of his assignment.
He’s faced bigger challenges, to be sure. Pugh returned Sept. 12 after 13 months in Iraq. That was his second tour in that country. The first lasted 12 months, said Pugh, who twice received warm ovations from the crowd near the starting line yesterday.
A resident of New Bern, N.C., Pugh now works at the Army recruiting station on Willow Lawn Drive. Pugh, who said he’s finished runs of 10 miles or so, wasn’t sure about the length of a marathon. Told it was 26.2 miles, he shook his head.
“That’s way too much for me,” Pugh said.
. . .
With apologies to the poet, those who only stand and wait also serve.
And so it went for Richmond Police Sgt. Thomas “Tommy” Lloyd.
Assigned to the intersection of Rettig Road and Forest Hill Avenue near the 11-mile marker, Lloyd nursed a Coke Vanilla Zero before racers reached his stretch of the 26.2-mile course.
Lloyd has more than two decades with the police department—“I’m a Jurassic cop,” he cracks—and he’s pulled marathon duty almost every year.
He’s stood watch on both sides of the James River, but says the best post may be at Rockfalls Drive and Riverside Drive. Not only can you watch the race, Lloyd said, but you see the river.
One thing about working the marathon, he said: An officer must take care of business early. “You go to the bathroom before you get here because it’s a while before you’re relieved,” said Lloyd.
. . .
At Wallowa Road and Windsorview Drive, in a neighborhood of 1960s split-level and ranch-style houses, it was BYOC—Bring Your Own Chair.
Heather Caplan of Richmond was a course volunteer, along with Anne Lynn Shinault, Pete Shinault and police volunteer traffic warden Thomas Long. Caplan had been training for a marathon on the Richmond course when fate intervened in the form of a horse stepping on her toe.
Now laid up with a broken toe, Caplan—wearing a cheery red fleece pullover issued by marathon sponsor SunTrust—spent part of race day sitting down in a portable folding chair. Caplan, who’s run two marathons, said she’ll need four weeks to heal.
“It was a bummer,” said Caplan. “It’s my first broken toe, and it hurts so bad.”
. . .
Longview Drive meets Scottview Drive at the brow of a hill. There, Liz Guarnieri and her daughter Isabella’s Girl Scout troop from Mary Munford School organized hundreds of paper cups of water and Powerade for approaching runners.
The cups—arranged in tiers fashioned from outsized sheets of cardboard—covered two large folding tables. For more than 20 volunteers, including Isabella’s 5-year-old brother Gus, hygiene was job one.
Before doing anything, they all tugged on disposable plastic gloves. Powerade—gallons and gallons of the stuff—was prepared in a plastic barrel by using a small canoe paddle to blend a blue powder with water.
The color of the resulting beverage—it’s brighter than TV blue—may not exist in nature. “It depends on what planet you’re from,” an adult volunteer said with a smile.
. . .
Sean Cusack, a 45-year-old accountant from Glen Allen, was hard to miss, even amid the thousands of runners gearing up for the marathon. Cusack had on his yellow “Sportsbackers Training Team” singlet. Atop his head was a Viking helmet, complete with horns. He planned to wear it the entire day.
“Last year, I had planned to wear it for the first five miles,” Cusack said. “But people liked it so much that I kept it on.”
Cusack wasn’t in the marathon to finish. He is a coach for the Sportsbackers training team. He planned to run five miles, then move between miles 16 and 18, encouraging his trainees. After a while he planned to do the same between miles 22 and 26.
He began running marathons when he was 39 and considers the Detroit Marathon to be among his favorites.
“You run in the United States and Canada,” he said. “And you finish at Ford Field, running into the indoor stadium.”
. . .
The National Anthem before all three races was sung by the Greater Richmond Children’s Choir under the direction of Hope Armstrong Erb. The arrangement was unique, done in four-four time instead of the standard three-four time.
Or, as Erb’s husband Martin explained it, “It’s done at march tempo instead of waltz tempo.”
The children did the Anthem great justice, which made the Erbs proud, especially Hope. One of her first students, Brian Throckmorton, did the arrangement. Throckmorton now is a copy editor at the Lexington Herald newspaper in Lexington, Ky.
“The arrangement gives the Anthem more breath,” Hope Erb said.
. . .
The marathon course closed at 10 a.m. at Party Stop No. 1 at the north end of the Huguenot Bridge.
Billie Adkins, 14, of Leesburg, and Barbara Lesso, 46, of Jacksonville, Fla., were the last two runners ahead of the police car’s flashing lights. Both were determined to finish.
For Lesso, this was her first marathon. Adkins was trying to run with her dad on his 23rd marathon, except he’d slowed down and was behind the pace car.
Billy J. Adkins said he’d realized that a tingling in his legs had been caused by clothing that was too tight. He’d made an adjustment and was feeling better.
“I always manage to finish in time,” he said. “They give you seven hours.”
. . .
Ray Patterson, sitting on a motorcycle as course manager, said runners decide to quit the course for a variety of reasons. When a section of the course closed, he would ride back to ask stragglers if they wanted the sag wagon to pick them up and take them to the finish line.
“You can just have a bad day,” he said. “You may have felt you were ready, but for whatever reason you had to come out.” About that time, he got a report that someone had decided to stop just south of the Huguenot Bridge.
Weather was one of the factors in play yesterday.
“It feels cool, but it’s muggy,” he said. Later in the race, when the sun came out, temperatures seemed to soar. Some runners doused themselves with water to cool off.
“It affects people in different ways,” Patterson said. “People get to a certain point and say I can’t do it.”
. . .
The Bellevue Civic Association sponsors a water stop just inside the stone arch on Pope Avenue at Mile 21, “which everyone considers the wall,” said Nancy Reynolds, 61.
“We actually love this. It has become a neighborhood tradition,” she said. “I guess it’s a mutual admiration society. The runners love us and we love them.”
She has no intention of ever joining them.
“I’m into yoga,” she said, as she clapped and cheered on another group of runners. “This is my marathon contribution. It’s a wonderful thing for the city.”
. . .
“Who wants a shot? Who needs a shot?” yelled one of the partiers in the last few blocks of Fauquier Avenue around Mile 22 of the marathon route.
About 40 runners had accepted a tiny cup of whisky or beer when the half-marathon had passed by earlier. More than midway through the marathon, the tally was about 25 shots. One runner even requested a splash of Coke to go with his shot.
“That, baby, is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” the runner said as he stepped away, “but, it was good.”
Co-host Andrew Salp said he’d run the Chicago marathon in 2006 and remembers what it was like.
“Especially at this point in the course, you need inspiration,” he said. “I thought it was a good thing to do.”
- Republished from inRich.com
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