SUBMITTED PHOTO
Kathleen Callaghan of Medicine Hat poses with her medal after posting a qualifying time at the Red Deer Marathon in May 2022, earning herself an opportunity to run in the Boston Marathon on Monday.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Kathleen Callaghan is prepared to be emotional at the starting line of the Boston Marathon on Monday.
The 56-year-old Hatter is running in the 127th Boston Marathon for the first time, with husband Gord, her brother and sister-in-law watching on the sidelines of the 42-kilometre run. When the starter’s gun goes off, Callaghan will be achieving a milestone she set for herself while undergoing breast cancer treatments in 2018.
“I had to go to chemo and have surgery and when I was going through chemo I said, if I ever feel strong enough again and qualify for Boston, I’m going to do it,” Callaghan said. “That kept me going through chemo.
“So last year at the Red Deer marathon, I ran my first marathon post cancer and that’s where I qualified. I thought, I guess I have to do it now as a, ‘take that cancer.’ I feel great now, the whole cancer thing seems like a distant memory.”
Callaghan is in the third wave of runners on Monday, each wave contains 7,000 with 30,000 runners competing in the marathon as a whole, with her start time set for 10-11 a.m. EST.
She says her husband and family will be waiting in Natick, the fourth community along the race course as runners eclipse the 10-mile (16 km) mark, hoping to catch a glimpse of the breast cancer awareness-inspired pink she will be wearing. After that, they’ll grab a pint of Samuel Adams and wait for her to finish the race on her pace of four hours and meet up once she’s done.
“It’ll be more exciting for them to see me than for me to see them,” Callaghan said. “When I’m running I’ll be really focused on not going too fast or too slow. I have a pace in my head and I’ll be trying to make sure I don’t trip and twist my ankle. I’ll be excited to see them. I really hope we get to meet up at some point, I’m not going very fast, so they’ll have lots of time to see me.”
Monday’s race is the third time she has qualified for the world famous marathon, as she previously qualified in 2013 and 2014 but did not run in those races because her qualifiers were 10 months before and it just didn’t work out.
Callaghan says her usual pace of running, a four-hour marathon, would have lined her up at the finish line around the same time the Marathon bombs detonated in 2013, killing three and injuring hundreds. With this race being the 10-year anniversary, paired with the emotions of achieving her goal while undergoing chemotherapy, Callaghan is sure she will be feeling a lot of emotions on marathon day.
“I get emotional just thinking about it. Plus the fact when you’re done, you’re just so exhausted and you’re so emotional anyways. Right? But when you think of the horrors that happened at that finish line 10 years ago, it’ll be really something.”
Once the race gets underway and she runs through the emotions, Callaghan says she is a little nervous to be amid 30,000 other runners, but is just excited for the experience. Whether it’s fellow runners like herself in the third wave, or those racing for first place in the opening wave, she’s glad to be part of the event.
“We’re all there, we’ve all qualified so we all have that in common,” Callaghan said. “Eliud Kipchoge, he’s an Olympic record holder, the world record holder, he’s running in this marathon. Like, oh my god, but of course I won’t see him but to know he’s there. And all these other Olympic athletes running, it’s quite a field. So I think normal people like me will all be a little bit starstruck just knowing that we’re breathing the same air as some of those guys.”
Callaghan has been a runner her whole life, starting in high school and running 10K’s before she had kids. Once her three daughters turned into teenagers she decided to take up running so she could get out of the house more and they could all have their own space.
“They were big fans as well, the girls would ask, ‘Are you going for your run mom?’ I used to think, ‘Oh, they’re so supportive,’ but they just wanted me to get out of the house.”
She jokes her motivation for running now is to get away time from Gord, in reality she says she chooses to run by herself to experience fresh air and think about nothing for a little while with no one around. Something that will be a change of pace come marathon time.
