Mike O’Callaghan was exhausted and in pain after what was a long day on Sunday, Sept. 13. But the day wasn’t close to being over yet. In fact, the clock hadn’t even struck 11 a.m.
That was the day that O’Callaghan chose to run his virtual Boston Marathon. He began the race when it was still dark outside, just after 5 a.m. The 26.2 mile track O’Callaghan laid out went throughout Camp Verde and culminated with a lap-and-a-half around the Camp Verde High School track. When O’Callaghan finally entered the track at 10:40 a.m., he was being cheered by family and friends, many of whom are fellow members of the Camp Verde Running Group.
It wasn’t an entirely new experience for O’Callaghan. He’s been running since he was in seventh grade, ran his first marathon in Tucson in 1969 and has participated in more than 30 marathons in the subsequent 51 years. But while the experience wasn’t new, the feeling he had at the end of this marathon was. Minutes after finishing, O’Callaghan exclaimed, “This is the most tired I can remember being.”
“A part of that is your brain going, ‘You’ve only got two kilometers to go. You’ve only got one-and-a-half. There’s the finish. One more lap of the track and you’ll be good,’” he said. “Mentally it’s just, boom, you’re done. Your body, at least today, just kind of quits on you and says ‘You’re done.’ Which, for as weird as it might sound, is really kind of good. From how I felt there at the end, I know that I put out a really good effort for me.”
O’Callaghan used to serve as head coach of the cross country and track and field teams at Camp Verde High School, and still works with both in an assistant role. Through his years of coaching the teams, as well as his own personal training, he got to know most parts of the area he ran well. While he did say that the miles started to feel longer as he got closer to the end, he also acknowledged that his experience on running those routes helped offset the negative feelings.
O’Callaghan completed the race in 5:49.36, which he said was the longest he’d ever been on his feet. This is largely because, since meniscus has been removed from his knees, his run was actually more of a power walk.
Even with the challenges, O’Callaghan had a number of things working in his favor. One was the weather. The recent heat wave dissipated and it was only 58 degrees when his race began. He even wore gloves to keep his hands warm at the start. This was a stark difference from a recent workout in which O’Callaghan covered the final 20 miles of his run. On that day, it was 75 degrees to start and 98 at the end.
He also had a lot of support. That came in the form of his wife, Jeni, driving alongside him at the start of the marathon. Different Camp Verde Running Club friends were also there to cheer O’Callaghan on and give aid. While O’Callaghan was the only one to run the entire race, he was not alone.
“It was great — Jeni was my support crew for the first 10 kilometers,” he said. “Then different members from the running group were there for two to three kilometers, with water, Gatorade, goo — and cowbells — just there to support. It was nice to have someone there for every bit. And several people ran with me for parts of it.”
The opportunity for O’Callaghan to race on his home turf came when the COVID-19 pandemic led to the Boston Marathon being rescheduled and then canceled from its original April 20 date — the first cancellation in the marathon’s 124-year history. But while the actual run in Boston was canceled, the virtual run became an option.
O’Callaghan signed up with the Brigham Stepping Strong Team to race in support of the Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation in Boston. Reny was an 18-year-old high school senior during the 2013 Boston Marathon. As she stood at the finish line with her family, awaiting her sister’s finish, she was wounded by the infamous bombings.
“I’m glad I did it,” O’Callaghan said. “It was very nice of the Stepping Strong team to say, ‘yeah, you can be part of our team.’ That was nice. It gave me a nice cause to do this for instead of just for myself.”
Additionally, because the in-person 2020 race was canceled, those who had signed up for it can also run the real thing in Boston next year on April 19, 2021.
And the exhaustion O’Callaghan felt after complet-ing the 2020 virtual marathon did nothing to dull the enthusiasm
of racing in the famed marathon in 2021 — which his wife Jeni dubbed “the shining castle on the hill.”
“Hopefully next April I actually get to go to Boston,” O’Callaghan said. “Part of Boston is, it’s Boston. To anybody who’s doing marathons, those two words say it all. It’s Boston.”
