After just turning eighteen, senior Quinn Heyrich was old enough to run the New York Marathon this year. However, as Heyrich shared with Madison Dodger Online, it takes a lot more than just a birthday to be ready for this event.
MDO: What inspired you to the run the marathon?
QH: Running a marathon was always something I wanted to do ever since my dad started running them when I was a kid. I was inspired to run the NYC Marathon after watching the race on TV with my dad last year and talking about what a great experience he had.
MDO: How did you use the Marathon as the opportunity to help a charity?
QH: I ran with an organization called Team for Kids. This organization is a part of the New York Road Runners and raises money for free running and fitness programs for kids in underserved communities and school districts. I decided to join Team for Kids because running has had a huge positive impact on my life and Team for Kids gave me the opportunity to positively impact lots of kids—who don’t have the same privileges that I have living in Madison—through running. I’m really proud to say that I helped raise $3,340 for the team.
MDO: What was the training you did to prepare?
QH: As a track athlete, I’ve been training to run for a long time. However, I started my “official training” this spring after the track season ended. My dad gave me the training schedule he used for his first marathon, which was also the NYC Marathon, but I didn’t follow it at all. Instead, over the summer that I spent in Florida, I just ran when I felt like it, usually in the mornings or late afternoons because of the heat. However, once I returned back to Madison, soccer training started up and I was only able to work in a couple of runs during the week and a long run on Sundays. This went on until around the beginning of October when I decided that I needed to be running more and joined the cross-country team where I ran everyday. Joining the team, along with the great coaching of Doc and Mrs. Morada (Schesler), and training with Connor Riley and Noah Buzinkai really pushed me to get better and are big reasons why I ran so well.
MDO: Who did you meet at the Marathon?
QH: I met some really cool people at the Marathon! The day of the Marathon I talked with a lot of really interesting people at the start village and on the road I passed Amare Stoudemire’s (The New York Knicks’ forward-center) wife. However, on the Wednesday before the marathon, Team for Kids invited me to a press event where I was interviewed and became acquainted with Mary Shelley, the president of the New York Road Runners, some ex-NYC Marathon winners, and Caroline Wozniaki, the elite women’s tennis player who was also running with my organization.
*Note that Heyrich came in before Caroline Wozniaki.
MDO: What was the most exciting part of the experience?
QH: The whole experience was amazing and I really can’t narrow it down to one thing. However, the three coolest points of the route were the beginning, the middle-ish, and the end. At the start of the race, they fire Howitzer cannons and blast “New York, New York” as you set off running across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Around the middle, after running over the 59th Street Bridge where there are no spectators and it was quiet for the first time on the route, you are hit by a wall of sound and the biggest crowds yet on First Ave, which is also where I saw my family and friends. Finally, crossing the finish line was awesome. Coming into Central Park, I had sprained a tendon in my foot and slowed down my pace significantly. When I hit the park, I ignored the pain from my foot and was able to sprint through to the finish line which felt simultaneously spectacular and painful.
Heyrich finished the marathon at 3:21:33. The Madison High School community applauds Quinn for his incredible accomplishment.