Notes
An email that circulated around the GR Marathon Pace team members:
Thought you guys would like to hear about this, courtesy of Hank & the Pi Pace
Team.
Rick
Rick, see the message below- one of the runners from the race Sunday tracked
down Ben and I. This young guy had tried and tried to qualify for Boston,
missed it by just a hair more than once. He came through the finish Sunday with
our pace group, literally right between Ben Semeyn and I. It was clear several
miles from the finish that his body was trying to shut him down. His form was
dropping, he was acting sluggish and non-communicative. We had several runners
with us 6-8 miles out from the finish. One by one they started to drop off, I
went back a bit for each of them, tried my best to reel them back into our pace
group. Cory actually looked worse than the others. Cory was the only one that
came back up and stayed with us through the end. Ben and I talked about it
several miles from the finish, we were both worried he wouldn’t hold together.
Ben held back towards the back of our group for awhile when it started to get
real tough, tried to help Cory and these guys along and encouraged them to take
fluids when it appeared they were not.
Before the race, one of our other pacers (an older guy) cornered me, twice, to
talk to me about Cory. He basically stared me down, deep and strong when he
told me how important it was to this kid to qualify. I am not sure if he is
related to Cory, or just a close friend. (could be his father?) anyways, the guy
told me how Cory had tried and tried to qualify for Boston and hadn’t made it.
How important it was to him in his life that he do it, and that he needed the
3:14 time to get there. I think Cory missed it by 1-2 minutes more than once
before. I had no idea who Cory was, but he showed up at our pace spot just
before the race.
Cory PR’d by nearly 5 minutes Sunday. That doesn’t say anything relative to how
he looked and how hard it was, how strong he had to be mentally to stay with the
group and maintain pace. Cory might not be the fastest runner out there, but
believe me, I could see in his eyes Sunday, when he set his mind to getting
through that, he had determination as tough as nails to do it. Impressive. The
guts that make someone a champion. More guts and determination than 99% of the
rest of the world.
My “story” from this year’s GR Marathon has nothing to do with me or how I ran.
It’s all about helping out others and that day was Cory’s. He’s my Grand Rapids
Marathon Champion. He made it for me, I felt it deep down when he kept pushing
like he did. I’ll carry that feeling with me for a long time. I am sure it
will help me the next time I am in the same position and start to weaken in my
mind and give in to fatigue.
Thanks for having me on as a pacer, it’s not about the free entry, it’s all
about memories like this.
Hank
From:cmcdiarmid@itwifi.net [mailto:cmcdiarmid@itwifi.net]
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 3:31 PM
To: Risley, Hank
Cc: bsemeyn@comcast.net
Subject: Boston bound
Hank/Ben:
I wanted to THANK YOU ALL for the help, pacing, support, coaching, and
everything else you did yesterday. There's no way I do that alone. You guys
Rocked!
I managed to get your email addresses. I know there were several others helping
out that day. Could you tell them I said THANKS when you see them again?
Hope to see you around...
Cory McDiarmid
(I just registered for Boston!!)