A Master Flag Bearer

by AL Tingley
(St Albert, AB, CANADA)

I also ran the The Athens marathon, and it was an incredible experience. Race day started at 4:00 am. Dark, cool, and pouring rain, we walked a few blocks to get on the buses that took us to the start line in the city of Marathon.

At the start line area, we stood for about 2 hours, in the rain, as everyone got lined up. There were around 12000 people standing in line getting ready for the gun to go. The mayor of the city had all runners raise their right hand as the “Oath of the Olympian” was repeated. Then it was 9:00 and the gun went off.

The rain was starting to ease up, but it was still wet and cool. The first few miles were very congested as people get their pace figured out and the lineup of runners stretched as far as you could see in both directions.

All the Team Diabetes runners were wearing team shirts. ‘Canada’ is printed on the bottom of the front but not very prominently.

At about mile 3, I was running on the right side of the road when this little old lady leaning on a cane stopped me. She was on the sidewalk. She pointed at me and asked “Canada?, Canada?” I told her that “Yes, I’m Canadian”. She handed me a small Canadian flag, and said “You take, You take”!

A few hundred meters from her was a large group of spectators. As I passed, they all started cheering “BRAVO CANADA, BRAVO”. This actually happened for the next 23 miles.

Every group of spectators cheered our flag as I passed.

The last 2 miles of the race are downhill, and finish in the old Olympic stadium. As I entered the stadium, I held up our flag. The finish line is at the opposite end of where you enter, and the crowd screamed “CANADA BRAVO BRAVO” as I ran through the finish.