photograph by frank murtaugh
Sharon Murtaugh at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, one day before the race.
Sharon Murtaugh had a pacemaker implanted in her chest last February. Eight months later, she ran the Boston Marathon in less than four hours (3:54:18).
While impressive, Sharon’s is not the most herculean of achievements, this year or any year. But in a time when metaphors, symbols, standards, and goals are desperately needed to steer us through the remainder of a pandemic, my wife is the personification. Those first two sentences don’t seem to go together (read them again), but that’s where we are as 2021 fades toward the annual exchange of calendars. From crisis, we must retain hope and aim for achievement … even the kind that hurts along the way.
Friends and family have called her “bionic,” and that’s okay. As long as they know it’s shorthand for superhuman.
Some backstory: Sharon’s cardiologist diagnosed her with tachy-brady syndrome last winter. Her heart, at times, would beat too rapidly and, at others, not fast enough. The latter is especially concerning. Being an electrical problem (as opposed to the heart’s mechanical components, the ventricles, arteries, and veins), it didn’t suggest an imminent heart attack, but what if Sharon lost consciousness while driving, while swimming … or while running a marathon? Not the kind of risk an active person can take.
So Sharon now drives, swims, and runs (often quite far) with a pair of very thin wires measuring her heartbeat, the pacemaker itself there to correct the rhythm if it falters. Friends and family have called her “bionic,” and that’s okay. As long as they know it’s shorthand for superhuman.
Which brings us to the Boston Marathon, the most famous test of human endurance on the planet. Sharon qualified for Boston (“BQ”) by running a 3:38 marathon in Arkansas way back — it truly feels way back — in November 2019. But then came the worldwide Covid shutdown, and the 2020 Boston Marathon became a “virtual” race, not the kind a 51-year-old rookie would consider a mission accomplished.
The pandemic stretched — lingered — into 2021, and this year’s Boston Marathon was postponed from its typical April spot on the calendar to October 11th. For the first time in 125 years, fall foliage and Halloween décor would accentuate the run from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, into Boston. Even with a reduced field, Sharon’s 2019 time qualified her to run, but the postponement merely extended and somewhat amplified her training requirements, now with a full Memphis summer in the mix. Twelve miles to run on a 98-degree Saturday? Sharon found trees where she could.
Let Sharon Murtaugh’s Boston Marathon be a metaphor for a current struggle you face, or a current climb we must confront together. It will remain frustrating, and it may linger. But let’s work with what we have.
Any distance runner will tell you the physical challenge of 26.2 miles is intensified by the mental anguish, and one reaches the finish line only by ignoring the latter while overcoming the former. Sharon ignored the details she couldn’t control — weather, schedule, etc. — and chose to make the enemy her friend. Sweltering Mid-South heat would make early New England fall feel like natural air conditioning. Her legs and lungs would be grateful along those final few miles.
Not even a mile into the race, the GPS on Sharon’s watch — her tool for pacing the 26 miles — malfunctioned. This was the equivalent of a sailor’s compass breaking at sea, with no stars above. But she didn’t panic. She communicated with nearby runners, asking their pace, listening to others’ times as they passed one mile marker after another. As she told me a couple of days later, “I was frustrated, but could only work with what I had.” This woman, powered by a pacemaker, outran technology, a singular twenty-first-century victory if you ask me.
There were some tears and a lot of discomfort across the finish line, but Sharon smiled. She smiled big. The smile that captured my heart over 30 years ago. A winner’s smile. A survivor’s smile. Family members and a few special friends who hosted us near Boston hugged her … gently. Her medal was passed around, identical to thousands of others earned that day, but this was Sharon’s Boston Marathon medal. A tangible representation of more than two years of effort, determination, and patience.
Dare any of us hope for a “finish line” to a pandemic as another year reaches its culmination? That seems too tidy, too clean for a crisis that has killed more than four million people worldwide. But I, for one, remain determined and patient. I’ve seen someone confront a serious health threat and address it. I’ve seen her adjust her goal — dramatically — but remain on course to attain it. And I’ve seen my extraordinary wife achieve a form of agonizing bliss that she earned with millions of steady strides. Let Sharon Murtaugh’s Boston Marathon be a metaphor for a current struggle you face, or a current climb we must confront together. It will remain frustrating, and it may linger. But let’s work with what we have.
