Help from Herald puts daughter at mum’s finishing line
Danielle Harpur had an elaborate plan to farewell her mother at the airport before getting a flight days later to surprise her as she did the Great Wall of China Marathon. But Harpur hit a stumbling block. Mum Kaylene Henderson had decided on her 50th birthday six years ago to run 10 marathons in 10 years.
Saturday’s feat was marathon No 7 — a gruelling run on top of the Great Wall in a mountainous part of Tianjin province northeast of Beijing.
Her daughter farewelled her at Auckland Airport on Tuesday. Little did Henderson know, Harpur had also bought a ticket to Beijing. But marathon rules don’t allow the public at the finish line unless they pay for a $2000 race package.
So Harpur, who is a communications student with the Southern Institute of Technology, asked the Herald for help. The newspaper secured a media pass and Harpur, also an art and media technician at Auckland’s King’s College, got to fol- low her mother to the end. She turned up at the start of the race on Saturday with a big sign reading, “Hey Kaylene from NZL! Surprise!”
“I wanted to be there at the begin- ning to give her a boost,” Harpur said. The boost was needed. Not only was Henderson on the back foot thanks to an injury, she found herself running in 34C heat.
Given the option to run a half marathon due to the temperature Henderson declined, determinedly running the whole thing.
“She said I was what she needed to finish,” a proud Harpur said.
“It was nice to be there with her and be there for her.”
Harpur and her brother, Bobby Harpur, have been their mother’s biggest backers ever since their father died when Bobby was 8 and Danielle was 2.
Bobby, who lives at Hanmer Springs, ran the Amsterdam marathon with his mum and started in the Hanmer Alpine Marathon with her last December.
“It was just after the [Kaikoura] earthquake and he stumbled over a rock and got injured so he couldn’t finish. But Mum finished,” Harpur said. “Even though we are so far apart and we are all quite busy, we try to do things together as a family. Doing marathons is a way that we can actually do things together.”
Henderson, an anaesthetic technician, ran the Auckland marathon before she resolved to do 10 more.
“She started running with one of my brother’s friend’s parents, but it was never serious, just fun running,” Harpur said. But she was not surprised when her mother set her ambitious goal for her sixth decade. “I think she is a very strong woman and she works really hard at what she does, and she has kind of instilled that work ethic in us.” So far she has run marathons at Hanmer, Queenstown, New York, Amsterdam, Paris and Rome.
She plans three more: Barcelona next March, a run wildlife in South African game parks, and a finale at Marathon in Greece.
Now the mother-daughter pair are preparing to spend week sightseeing in China before heading back to New Zealand on Saturday.
“Hopefully I win daughter of the year — here I come,” Harpur joked.