A loving push for a paralyzed boyfriend
Her blond hair tied back in a ponytail.
Steam rising with every breath. Kaitlyn Kiely pushes a racing wheelchair filled with three 50pound bags of salt through the cold streets of Boston. She runs mostly, but she also walks.
She has miles to go and a promise to keep.
On Monday, Kiely will run all 26 miles of the Boston Marathon course — one week early — fulfilling a pledge she made to her boyfriend Matt Wetherbee last year after she ran the race for the first time.
Kiely, a 30-year-old graduate of Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan, N.J., promised Wetherbee that the two would run the race together — no mean feat, considering Wetherbee is paralyzed.
Two years ago, one week before Wetherbee was to get on one knee to pop the big question, he suffered a catastrophic accident. He fell head-first into a gym wall while playing league basketball with friends, a freak accident that would leave him paralyzed from the shoulders down.
So, every day, as she has done for months, Kiely lifts the bags of salt, places them into the threewheeled black and yellow racing chair and pushes on in preparation for the race. It has been too cold for Wetherbee to sit in the chair, so the 150 pounds of salt will have to do until race day.
She pushes the chair and the salt, sometimes more than 15 miles and some days up Heartbreak Hill. It’s more than just the name of the toughest uphill section of the Boston Marathon course for Kiely. Sometimes it’s about her and Wetherbee.
“People tell me I’m crazy,” Kiely said. “I’m told I’m the first female to run the marathon route pushing an adult male. I’m preparing.”
On Monday, the couple, along with friends and strangers who have promised to join them, will kick off their race at 9 a.m. from Hopkington, where the official race will begin a week later.
The race, Kiely said, is unfinished business she must see to the end.
So, as she pushes the 150 pounds of salt in the chair days before the event, she listens to music or digital books to be distracted. It doesn’t always work. Some days, as she runs, her thoughts are on her boyfriend and their life before and after the accident.
Kiely and Wetherbee did not qualify to run the official Boston Marathon on April 16. Unlike most races, runners must qualify to participate. The couple was told six duo teams, the maximum allowed, had already made the cut.
That’s OK, Kiely said. “If the Boston Athletic Association won’t let us in, we will run it anyway,” she said. “Can’t stop us.”