Excitement was crackling around the local internet last week with the story of several Mountain Community runners who competed in the Carlsbad 2009 Half Marathon, a 13-mile run along the California coast in San Diego County.

All the registered Frazier Mountain entrants finished the run. Brenda Martin, 69 a retired registered nurse who founded and coordinates the Pine Mountain Apache Divas walking club averaged 14:43 minute miles; David Koskenmaki, 64 a retired chemical engineer and a devoted outdoor adventurer, ran 8:25 minute miles. Debra Sheets, 51 logged in with 13:09 minute miles, despite an unexpected 45-minute detour.

Sheets, a registered nurse with a Ph.D. in gerontology who teaches at Cal State Northridge, was on the last leg of the run when she saw something that triggered her professional concern. This is how she tells the tale:

“At mile 11.5 I was clocking 10 minute miles (not bad given my lack of training) when I saw a young woman in her late 20s clearly having problems walking, with a confused look on her face. She was fit and had run 13 miles many times before—but had a cold the week before. I helped her off the course and onto a chair. The volunteers called the paramedics and it took 30 minutes for them to arrive. Meanwhile I tried to keep her from passing out because she kept going in and out of consciousness and was having a lot of cramping in her legs.

“Good to be in the right place at the right time. No one else stopped—it was me and some volunteers. If it had been something serious like a heart attack the response would have been too slow to do any good, even with all the people around. Once the paramedics took her off to Tri-City Medical Center, I ran the final 1.5 miles.

"It was a wonderful run and I’m glad I was slow enough to be in the right place to help the young woman."

Marie Valencia was not officially entered into the race, she went along to help “pace” Brenda, but she did finish the half marathon with the others, as did David Martin.

The Martins were there with their whole family, celebrating their daughter Eleanor’s birthday.

They are all winners in our book!

—Reported by Diane Duquette

This is part of the February 06, 2009 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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