‘Trail angels’ help wheelchair athlete find the finish
Inside a virtual Boston Marathon, a flat tire and an act of kindness
Just as it was for most people, this year was a little different for Harry McKinstry.
McKinstry, 54, of Middletown, is a wheelchair athlete. He competes with the Connecticut chapter of Achilles International, which helps people with disabilities participate in running events.
He wasn’t able to get as much quality training in as usual due to the pandemic. And his big marathons, Boston and New York City, turned virtual.
So last Saturday, he was out on the Farmington River Trail in Burlington with a group of his Achilles guides, pushing his wheelchair backwards with his good right leg, 16 miles into his 26.2-mile virtual Boston Marathon when — bam! — his chair collided with a pole which prevents vehicles from going on the trail.
He was fine. One of his tires was flat. And nobody had any extra tire tubes.
“We were thinking, ‘Oh my God, is our race done now? What are we going to do? We’re going to have to do this whole thing again tomorrow,’” said Traver Garrity of Glastonbury, one of McKinstry’s running guides. “People would drive by, they would see us. We had Harry propped up against the
fence. You can’t change the tire with Harry in the chair.”
People rode by. No one had a tire tube. There was talk of going to a nearby bike shop, of using a dollar bill to patch the tire somehow. McKinstry’s leg started to cramp up. One of the guides, Kate Plummer, is a massage therapist and worked on his leg.
Then McKinstry’s “trail angels” showed up.
Marianne Haynes and her husband Tom, of Southbury, were riding their bikes 25 miles as part of their virtual experience of the Closer to Free ride, which benefits the Smilow Cancer Hospital and the Yale Cancer Center. It’s a cause close to their hearts, as Tom’s first wife died of cancer at a young age.
It was a beautiful day, they had coffee in Collinsville, and then they came upon the Achilles crew, trying to fix the tire.
Marianne had a few tire tubes; Tom started to help. It was challenging because the tire was damaged, but they finally fixed it.
“We were all so excited because I don’t think any of us wanted to come out again on Sunday,” Garrity said.
The tire was good. They got McKinstry back in the chair and off they went. Even with the blowout and the 20-minute delay, McKinstry still finished the marathon in under five hours, 4:56.
“I have such a great team,” McKinstry said. “I wasn’t worried at all. Thank God for my team and the bikers. I knew someone would help out.”
McKinstry has been competing in marathons since 2017. In 1990, he was hit in the head by a two-ton steel beam at a construction site and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He was in a coma for three months and spent a year and a half recovering at Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford. He has use of the right side of his body, his leg and his arm.
He started wheelchair racing about five years ago after he heard about Bill Reilly, a wheelchair racer with cerebral palsy nicknamed “Backwards Bill,” who raced backward, using one leg to propel himself along.
“I was overwhelmed by his grace and his strength,” Marianne said of McKinstry. “We would have done anything to help them.”
But there was more. Garrity woke up the next morning, thankful she would not have to run another marathon that day, and discovered a donation to her Achilles fundraising page from Tom and Marianne sent with “Love from Harry’s Farmington Pit Crew.”
“It introduced us to this amazing organization,” Marianne said. “Really, we were the ones who benefited from this.”