Greenville resident Brad Hathaway and his three local running partners were disappointed all day Friday after learning the Mississippi River Marathon, scheduled for Saturday, had been canceled due to bad weather.
Then, Hathaway got the idea Friday night that he and his partners should run the race anyway.
So, Hathaway, Lauren Ott, Chad Freeman and Kevin Smith — who made up the running group — met at the Mississippi River Bridge at 6:30 a.m. Saturday.
Despite the 27-degree temperatures, all four ran the 13.1 mile half-marathon together in less than two hours.
They finished at downtown Greenville, and talked about the last 12 hours.
Said Smith, “I was mucking around my house Friday night when Brad threw out a text, ‘Hey, why don’t we run tomorrow?’ At first, we all thought he was joking, but then we all agreed to run.”
Freeman, meanwhile, had just finished a big meal when he got the group text about the run.
“I was indulging in some heavy duty pizza last night when I got that text. I said, ‘Oh my gosh! This is too much peer pressure from my running group. I guess I have to run.’”
The early morning run by the four friends was a way to keep the spirit of the marathon alive, despite it being canceled, said Hathaway.
“Just because a local race is canceled does not mean we are not going to get together and run. If you are going to run in Mississippi, you are going to have to run when it’s hot, when it’s cold when it’s wet and when it’s windy,” Hathaway said.
Hathaway, the chairman of the Washington County Economic Alliance, said the cancelation of the race hurt local hotels and restaurants.
“I know what the cancelations meant to the community given the restaurants that got prepared for it and the hotels who I am quite sure had cancellations,” he said.
John Conner, the race director of the Mississippi River Marathon, said the decision to cancel the race was a tough one.
“The decision to cancel was based on the weather conditions forecasted in the region for Thursday and Friday. Those are the big travel days for our runners and we had already had many cancellations earlier in the week as they had made up their minds not to risk the trip here. Many runners were appreciative as they were going to try to make it anyway through treacherous road conditions,” Conner said.
“Our race production company was worried about making the trip from Memphis and the busses had some concern about their trip from eastern Mississippi,” he said, noting that organizers of the marathon always try to hold the event each year.
“We put on a race in the middle of COVID last year and in 2014 we put on a race with a quarter-inch of sleet on the ground but everyone had already arrived into town and the course was set-up and ready to go, but the weather this year was something we had decided not to risk,” Conner said.
After the event was canceled, the Mississippi River Marathon announced that the race would take place virtually this year, where runners run at their own home courses and submit their own finishing times.
“So far, we have had a good response from the virtual runners,” Conner said. “We’re going to be shipping out a lot of packets in the next few weeks. We’ve given them a deadline of March 15 to submit their results and have a packet shipping to them.”
