Marathon Me

Most of us would be upset if something added 20-25 minutes on to our marathon time, but to Patrick Conrey, it was time well spent. And in this case, I don’t think anyone will argue with that, especially not Bobby Edwards.

55-year old Bobby Edwards is what’s known as a streaker. No, he does not run the marathon naked. Streaker means he’s had a streak. He’s run every flying pig since the race began. This year, Bobby Edwards not only lost the streak, but almost lost his life. “As a matter of fact, at mile ten I had a heart attack,” he said in a phone interview.

Luckily for Bobby, he happened to be running in front of some local firefighters, including Patrick. Patrick was running in 75lbs of Firefighter gear in honor of three fallen comrades and to raise money for their children.

“We saw him collapsed, and I said, ‘It’s time to go to work, boys,’ ” said Patrick Conrey, an EMT from Clearwater, Fla.

And go to work they did. The group running with Conrey formed a phalanx around the fallen Edwards and then took care of business.

“We did what we normally do to help out,” Conrey said in a television interview with NBC affiliate and News Channel 8 sister station WLWT-TV. “He appeared to be down. We rendered aid.”

Bobby’s daughter Stephenie Rabius has called the group of Firefighters, Guardian Angels, but they are what firefighters typically are, just plain heroes.

“I could be planning a funeral right now,” Rabius said Sunday. “He had a heart attack. If they hadn’t been there, my father would be dead.”

In typical firefighter fashion, Conrey didn’t want to take any credit for saving this man’s life.

“I don’t want to take too much credit,” Conrey said. “I was just there handing them drugs. Those paramedics running with me, they saved his life.”

Edwards, a security guard at Good Samaritan Hospital, lay on the course for about 20 minutes while paramedics applied emergency procedures to him, including chest compressions.

In a lesson for all of us to never take anything for granted, sometimes you get lucky.

Edwards had been in good enough shape to regularly run the Flying Pig and Heart Mini-Marathon races. But the Cleves resident had a blockage in his chest, Rabius said, that will require a hospital stay of two to three weeks. But his condition was stable Sunday night.

“You almost feel like that was the reason we were running the marathon today,” Conrey said. “It was 20 minutes well spent on the course.”

So this story has had a happy ending, a life has been saved. Who knows what would have happened with this group of heroes, but luckily everything ended well this time.

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