Sarah Berg runs the New York City Marathon

By Ken Johnston
Editor

The third time was the charm for Rainy River’s Sarah Berg.
That is how many times it took for her to win a chance to run the New York Marathon. After running the Manitoba Marathon twice in 2006 and 07, she decided she wanted to run one of the “Big Five” Marathons and applied to run in the NYM. In both the first two times applying she was not accepted. However, earlier this year she received word that she was in.
Berg said that only elite marathon runners get to “qualify” for the event. The rest of the field are put into a lottery. “If you are turned down three times in a row they will automatically grant you a spot the fourth time,” she explained. To be an “elite” runner Berg said, “You have to be sub-three hours to qualify.”
So one year shy of that equation she was in, with 45,000+ other runners. Berg began an 18 week training program in late April. She chose a program recommended by a magazine (Runner’s World). It involved running four days per week and two cross-training sections (things like lifting weights, cycling, jumping rope, etc.). Towards the end of training she was running about 50 miles per week and spending 25-30 hours training, plus working full time at her business and being a mom. Berg is the pharmacist and owner of Rainy River Drugs. The week before the race she began carbohydrate loading and after every workout she upped her intake of protein.
Berg travelled to New York for the first time and stayed in Manhattan, near the finish line of the 26.2 mile race. Even though the city is gigantic, Berg said it was surprisingly easy to find her way around the city.
The race started in Staten Island and travels through all five boroughs. She said she took the ferry at about 6:30 a.m. on race day, Nov. 7th, but did not run until 10:10 a.m. “It was cold and seemed like a long wait to race.”
She said the 45,000 runners were started in three waves with seven corals in each wave. “I was in the middle of the start.”
She said it was so overwhelming. “They had media helicopters all over the start and fireboats spraying water in red white and blue!”
Having run in Winnipeg twice before Berg was expecting the congestion at the beginning of the race to thin out as she went, but it didn’t. “We ran so close together the entire way that we were losing time as we went,” she said. The runner also had to dodge obstacles. Sometimes it was a runner cutting in front of them to go to the sidelines for water/fruit. Other times it was spectators cutting across the route and others it was banana peels. “I had to stop and start several times. That was hard on my knees!” Berg noted that in all the training she had done she did not experience any pain in her quadraceps. “With all the stops and starts, they were on fire for the first few days after the race.”
Berg said the terrain was quite a bit more challenging than Manitoba. “Some of the bridges were very tough. Manitoba was flat as a pancake!”
She carried a Global Positioning System but it quit working at mile 16. Up to that point she said it told her she was adding .4 miles for every mile they had run, due to the obstacles and congestion. Having to run 10 miles without anything to monitor her pace did not phase her, even though there was a lot of media the previous week about the effects of long distance running on people’s hearts. “When I caught up with the four hour pace group I knew I was on track still.” She ended up finishing with a time of four hours, six minutes and 48 second (4:06:48). She said her goal was to run it in about four hours, so considering the delays, she was happy. And because she was under 4:30:00 she got her name in the New York Times! “I was thrilled!”
Berg said there were three million spectators along the route and they were loud. “Many runners had to shut off their i-pods as they could not hear the music over the crowd noise!”
Berg said that she began to cry when she finished the race but it was not a cry of pain or disappointment. “The entire experience was very inspiring and I felt such a sense of accomplishment.”
She said she received some updates via the internet and encouragement from so many people. “It gave me even more motivation for doing it!”
A few minutes after she crossed the line, her cell phone rang. Her sister Katie Seguin called as if she knew Sarah had finished. “It was almost surreal. I felt like there was no way I had spent fours running!”
Berg said she injured her right calf about three weeks before the race but that was not going to stop her from going. She iced and taped it and kept training. She is so glad she did, but was still nursing it on Thursday when the Record interviewed her.
Once recovered, she said that she and another local long distance runner, Kim Chorney, are talking about entering another one of the big five marathons; Chicago. The other three are Boston, London and Berlin.
Berg said she began running in University to stay fit and eventually became hooked on the sport. Perhaps the hardest part of the entire experience was leaving her 2 year old daughter at home. “We had never spent more than one day apart before.”
But it was an experience she said she would do all over again. “It was amazing and so well organized. I mean they did a great job having to shut down the city for 10 hours!”