Marathon featured various quirks as well as repeat male and female winners
When 64-year-old Terry Odom ran the half marathon as part of the ninth-annual Wrightsville Beach Marathon Madness event, he decided to spice things up by incorporating one of his hobbies: juggling.
The Greensboro native has been juggling since he was about 30 years old. When he started running to keep his weight down, he chose to incorporate juggling to keep things fresh.
“Running is boring,” he said during Saturday's event that featured more than 3,000 runners and stretched from Wrightsville Beach to UNCW. “I saw in a juggling magazine where this man was setting a record for a marathon while juggling three balls. And I thought, ‘Well, I can do that,’ so I got started then and I’ve done lots of races and several half marathons.”
What makes for good juggling conditions while racing? Minimal wind.
“Wind kills it,” Odom said. “If it’s windy, it’s all over. But it wasn’t bad today – I had a quite a few drops and I was disappointed in that, but I can’t blame the wind. It was a good day.”
He wasn't the only one with peculiar interests to share during a run.
Half-marathoner Christine Hennessey, 35, was running in the Wrightsville Beach race for the seventh time. She has a tradition of her own – she likes to count the number of dogs she sees on the course from start to finish.
“This year there were 61 dogs,” she said. “That’s a pretty good number. Last year there were 62, but not every year can be a record-breaking year.”
Winner, winner
A pair of runners made history as the male and female marathon winners each became the Wrightsville Beach Marathon’s first two-time champions.
Charlotte native Walt Guyer was the first to cross the finish line. There was no exclamatory celebration, just a few hugs and smiles. He acted as if he had been there before – because, again, he had.
With a time of 2:32:45, the 38-year-old first won the race in 2014.
“It feels pretty amazing. I had a great race today, PR’d and had some strong competition,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to pull off the win, but I was happy to do so.”
Guyer said there were times in which he hit a wall physically. There were 16 weeks of intense preparation going into the race, so he couldn’t help but persevere and push himself through to the end.
“It happened for me around mile 18 or 19. It just guts you, but you go to this dark side and you’ve just got to trust the training, push yourself and hope you come through on the other side,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, Wilmington’s Erin Hogston successfully defended her title as the race’s top overall female. Her time of 2:53:54 was nearly a full five minutes faster than the time that won her the race a year ago.
“I’m actually kind of still in shock. I knew it was going to be really hard to win two years in a row,” she said.
Hogston didn’t have a race plan. In fact, how she approached the marathon was dependent on how she felt when she woke up Saturday. She felt good through the first 11 miles and decided to take off from there.
She said the wheels came off around mile 22, and that the final two miles were the hardest, but she kept her pace.
“It’s hard – there’s a lot of pressure,” Hogston said. “I’m always really competitive. I thought that I could do it, but there were some fast girls and really good talent this year, so I was a little more uncertain than I was last year.”
The half marathon was won by Joe Borg of Tampa, Florida, who finished in 1:11:56. The top overall female finisher for the half marathon was Raleigh’s Sarah Rapp (1:18:41).