By Mile 16 of this year’s Chicago Marathon, first-timer Laura Durden was convinced her day was over. The 44-year-old mother of two had walked the long, hot course with a small group from Team in Training (TNT), which raises money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, but with 10 miles left, the Barrington woman was too tired to go on. Disappointed and sore, she sat down on the curb along Jackson Boulevard and cried.
That’s when Bill Snyder of Wheaton, a Team in Training triathlon coach, swooped in and saved the day.
“I ran past this lady sitting on the curb, crying, saw the TNT jersey, didn’t recognize her and thought, ‘She’s having a horrible day. I should probably stop,'” recounted Snyder, 51, though he wanted to keep going. The savvy coach, whose race resume includes a dozen marathons and one Ironman, quickly figured out that Durden was OK, but he was surprised to learn that she was walking the marathon — and that’s what he’d be doing if he stayed with her. After discovering that she’d run/walked some other races, he got her to jog a couple hundred yards, then walk, “but she got more sore so we kept walking,” he said.
For more than two hours, Snyder insisted Durden drink fluids and cool down with ice as well as grab some Tylenol from the medical tent at Mile 20. In between encouraging words from her new coach, Durden took an occasional break to rest and shed a few more tears.
“He kept saying, ‘You can do it, I’ll stay with you. If I have to carry you across the finish line you’ll finish it,'” Durden recalled.
Durden and Snyder crossed the finish line at 2:15 p.m. — amid deserted streets and empty viewing stands — giving Durden a time of 8:15 (her group started the marathon two hours early, at 6 a.m.), while her knight in shorts and singlet notched a personal worst of 6:11.
Though he had hoped to break four hours, the low-key Snyder said it was worth doing the right thing: “That was cool, to help her finish her first marathon and see her sense of accomplishment.”
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