This 2019 Boston Marathon story begins on the side of a road outside Lake Placid, New York, 30 miles into the 2012 Ironman Lake Placid triathlon. “I was having a horrible day,” Tim Gerry remembers, and was about to pull over, when he saw another athlete who had wrapped his rear derailleur into the gears and was waiting for the sag wagon to pick him up.
“Take my bike,” QT2 athlete and coach Gerry said to Matt Daley, “I’m throwing in the towel.” They had different pedals, so Gerry took off his shoes, pushed them over, and Daley got back into the race.
“What’s your name, man?” he asked Gerry before riding away. They’ve been friends ever since.
Both competed in the Ironman Mont-Tremblant, finishing within a minute of each other in 2016, and then went on to compete in the Ironman world championships in Hawaii the same year.
“Now we text almost daily,” Gerry said.
Daley got into triathlon the way most athletes do: someone he admired was doing one, and it looked like fun and a little bit badass, so he decided to do one too. In this case, the former smokejumper and present-day Ottawa firefighter, did a 70.3 in 2006 because his brother was doing an Ironman, and hasn’t looked back since.
Triathlons and marathons for almost everyone, including Daley and Tim, are internally competitive: they won’t see a podium after the finish line; they are competing against themselves, and their own goals, and their own limitations. So it was for Daley, through a decade races, including the 2012 Ironman Lake Placid where he finished on Tim’s bike, and a handful of marathons.
At a restaurant on his birthday in 2018 with his wife and three children, Daley ran into Stu McGregor, who he hadn’t seen since the two of them ran track together at Western University in the early aughts.
“I think I’m going to run the Ottawa marathon,” McGregor said.
“Let’s do some training together,” Daley responded.
This reunion might have been unremarkable except that McGregor, 40, isn’t just another age-grouper. Naturally fast, McGregor ran cross country and track in elementary school, but his vision started to fail when he was 11 and he was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, an inherited condition that damages the light-receiving cells at the back of the eye, leading to loss of peripheral vision. Or, as McGregor describes it, “it’s like looking through a paper towel tube.”
He ran track in high school, and then since the condition didn’t affect his legs but did impact his ability to steer through a crowded field, he ran for a decade with the Canadian Paralympic team, competing on the track in Atlanta (silver in the 1500 meters), Sydney, and Athens (a bronze each in the 800 meters). Poised to have his best year ever in 2006 - McGregor was 0.3 seconds off the paralympic world record in the 800 meters - it all came to a stop on a cold, dark, rainy road crossing when an out-of-control Nissan Pathfinder shattered both bones below his left knee.
Fast forward through the birth of three children - one a hockey player, one a runner, one to be determined - a career as a fourth-grade teacher and physical education instructor, with a side gig as a trainer, and the former paralympian was ready to transition to the marathon.
There are several challenges inherent in winter marathon training in Ottawa for the visually impaired runner with a family and a full-time job: fewer than nine hours of daylight each day, an average 88 inches of snow, and an average high temperature in January of 22 degrees Fahrenheit. All of this can be summarized in one word: treadmill.
Naturally, the former paralympian ran his debut marathon in 3:03, and qualified for the Boston marathon.
Racing as a visually-impaired athlete who has intact central sight requires overcoming three major challenges: roadway obstacles such as train tracks or potholes, the chaos around fueling stations, and the unpredictability of other runners. In most races, guys running a 7-minute pace will quickly find themselves with enough space around them to allow unfettered navigation. However, in Boston, where a 3:03 won’t get you in the race until you are 35 years old, the pack was never going to thin out. For the guide, there is another major challenge: keeping up with a guy who runs a 3:03 marathon.
Enter Daley, who called Gerry, who said, “of course,” and McGregor had his two guides - one for each half of the race. The three of them met at the expo in Boston, and practiced running with the knotted rope that connects them.
Daley’s ‘knotted rope’ connected him to more than McGregor. His dad was visually impaired, and his experience training and racing with McGregor created its own significance: “Just the camaraderie of pushing one another along in training to reach for our personal goals has tremendous intrinsic value,” he said. “I’m blessed to have Stuart as a friend... I truly get more out racing with him than I think he gets from me.”
The first 13 miles, from Hopkinton to Wellesley was Tim’s half, and it went by without a hitch. As McGregor described it: “It was busy from start to finish, and Tim did an awesome job. The tether is long enough that we can both swing our arms, but Tim can wrap it around his wrist to shorten it if he needs to steer. He did a great job being vocal to the other athletes around us.” Gerry was equally appreciative: “I believe in Karma and paying it forward so to me if i can do a good deed and have that positive butterfly effect change even one person’s feelings or emotions in a positive way then its worth it,” he said.
Soon after the half, disaster struck. A water bottle rolled in from the right, and Daley caught the edge of it, twisting his ankle. He let out a yelp, and the two of them stopped. “I couldn’t even bear weight,” Daley remembers, “so I told Stu to keep going.”
After a minute, Daley picked it up again, willing the pain away, and caught McGregor a couple of miles later (he would circulate a post-race photo of his grapefruit sized ankle). “I wouldn’t have done it for myself,” Daley now reflects, “but I wanted to make sure Stu had a chance for a smooth race.”
By the time the two of them heard the roar of Boylston Street, Gerry had made it to the finish. McGregor’s time, 3:12, put him atop the podium in the visually-impaired category.
Talk about teamwork.