extra ordinary
saturday morning broke with the realization that we received 15 inches of heavy/wet snow (on the first full day of spring). trying to run in the semi-plowed streets would be challenging at best. my buddy dana called me at 7:30AM and neither of us really felt much like running. i figured it would be best to just get it out of the way so i said i’d meet him down at the pettit center for some left turn indoor running.
we got rolling by about 20 minutes to 9AM and admittedly we weren’t moving awful fast. about 20 minutes into our run, a guy (Carey) i had run with a few weeks back showed up and ended up joining us. this is the guy who was a 2:20-something marathoner in the 70’s. he’s now 61 and has no issues running along with guys in their 30’s. we started talking about duathlon – which is his primary sport – and just rolling through the laps.
a little after 40 minutes into the run, we were rounding the turn on the east side of the building. i was on the outside of both Dana and Carey and noticed someone laying on the outside of the track flat on his back. a few other runners were gathered around him and i could see his face was purple. i took another couple of strides, came to a stop and started back toward the situation. Carey and Dana stopped as well.
as we approached, i could hear the other runners gathered saying "I can’t find a pulse"…"He’s not breathing"…"Did someone call an ambulance." Dana charged into the fray and grabbed the guy’s blackberry which was on his belt. It was password protected and Dana flipped it at me and ducked back into the fray. The blackberry at least had the guy’s name it as well as where he worked. I didn’t try guessing his password so that the device wouldn’t be wiped from unauthorized attempts.
After it was determined that the guy wasn’t breathing and that a pulse wasn’t found, they started doing CPR on him. Dana was down giving chest compressions while another guy was giving the mouth to mouth. At this time the Pettit Center employee who was calling 911 brought over the defibrillator. Luckily a nurse happened to be running and she stopped to give assistance. She helped coach the folks doing the CPR and unpacked the defibrillator.
Once the defibrillator paddles were placed and the device was charged, Dana and the other guy giving CPR stepped back and the man received the first shock. The defibrillator audibly said to stay clear of the patient while it took readings. I believe it rolled into a second round of a shock to the patient. I’m not real sure as that’s when the EMTs came running in.
I was able to give the name of the guy to the EMT who had the paperwork and handed him the guy’s blackberry. Looking at the situation, we figured we’d done what we could do and slowly trudged back onto the track. We started to talk about how none of us carry any identification on us when we run. As we kept moving around the track we caught updates on his status from onlookers. Soon enough, they had oxygen on him and then had moved him onto a stretcher and were wheeling him out.
The situation really sapped me (and likely many of the other runners) of any desire to run so after looking at my watch we decided to run a few minutes longer to get to an hour. Dana picked up the pace for a few laps, no doubt to burn up some extra adrenaline. We wrapped it up and Carey turned to Dana to say that at 61 years old he needs to have someone like him to run with in case he drops over. He went on to say that it was an honor and a privilege to have run with us.
We packed up our gear and headed toward the atrium. Dana stopped at the front office to leave his name and phone number with the person at the front desk. I congratulated him on his efforts and we headed back to our families.
What lingers in my mind is that if we hadn’t gotten a freak spring snowstorm, would that guy have been running indoors? Honestly, we wouldn’t have opted to have been running indoors this late in March except under the circumstances. It is a rather humbling experience to see a situation like that transpire. It makes the silly things we get upset about seem trite.
At this point, I haven’t heard any further status on the guy. Nothing has been said in the local paper or on the Badgerland Striders message board. Hopefully this man pulled through and can get back to a normal life. Regardless, the efforts of those involved were truly heroic.
(7.5 miles)