anne hunter smith myers '97: marathon Mission accomplished
Amid thousands of highly trained, adrenalin-fueled compatriots, Anne Hunter Smith Myers completed the Boston Marathon this past Monday in the very respectable time of 3:49.02.
Each step she took along the scenic, point-to-point course, she felt the enthusiastic support of a seemingly endless gauntlet of spectators. All the while, though, vivid in her mind were the days not long ago when she struggled alone over the roads of rural Tennessee simply to put one foot in front of the other.
“This was the culmination of a dream and a journey much longer than the distance between Hopkinton and Boston,” said the 1997 Collegiate graduate. “It was such an honor just to be there.”
A dedicated distance runner since she was 14, Myers contributed greatly to championship teams in high school, continued her career at Sewanee, and, more recently, blended it with her cross country coaching duties at the Webb School in Bell Buckle, TN.
In fact, she was cruising along quite nicely until a moment two-and-a-half years ago when her world changed drastically and without warning. On October 9, 2003, she had accompanied her team to a meet in Chattanooga, then returned to Webb, then hopped into her Volkswagen Jetta for the 45-minute drive to McMinnville where she lives with her husband Ben. A few miles from home, a young man just off work at a fast-food joint lost control of his Dodge Stratus, veered across the median on Highway 55, and crashed head-on into her car
“It was stunning,” she recalls. “I couldn’t believe what had happened.”
Forty-five minutes later, medics and firefighters arrived and began the delicate work of removing her from the wreckage. First, they transported her to River Park Hospital in McMinnville, then to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville an hour and 20 minutes away.
The tibia and fibula just above her left ankle were broken. She suffered an acetabular fracture, the condition created when her (left) femur was driven forcibly into her pelvis, shattering it. She also cracked her right wrist. In the next few days, she underwent three separate surgeries to set the damaged bones.
After a 10-day hospital stay, she returned home to weeks of physical therapy, which, in typical Anne Hunter fashion, she approached as if on a mission. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, this is my job now…to get better,’” she said.
She tossed aside her crutches around New Year’s Day. She returned to school after the Christmas break. She took her first run – tentative, awkward, and painful – in March.
“I’d been walking around the fields at Webb,” she said. “One time, I decided to run a little. “My stride was very choppy, not good at all. The image that came to mind was Quasimodo. “It was a run, but it really wasn’t much of anything.”
But it was a start. Before long, Myers had worked up to several repeats of three minutes of easy running followed by a three-minute walk. “I was really excited,” she said, “but it was extremely exhausting.”
She returned to Richmond in early April to jog/walk the Monument Avenue 10K with her mother. “I was very slow,” she said, “and there was a dull ache, not just in one place, but a very general ache.”
Her confidence and conditioning were improving, though, and she ran regularly through the summer and fall and built up to 20 miles a week. What a few months earlier had been a massive undertaking had now become therapeutic.
In addition to her coaching responsibilities, Myers is a Spanish teacher and the chair of the foreign language department at Webb. She’s enrolled in a M.A.T. program in Spanish at Middle Tennessee State University.
“It seems crazy,” she explained, “but I really needed my runs. “That’s where I sorted out things and got my ideas for my graduate classes and my classes at Webb.”
On an unseasonably pleasant day in January 2005, she extended a workout to 8 miles. “I thought, ‘Well, that wasn’t too bad,’” she recalled. The competitive juices that made her an all-state track and cross country athlete at Collegiate were flowing once again.
The Country Music Marathon in Nashville was scheduled for the last Saturday in April. Completing it became her goal. “This was the time,” she said. “I needed to see what I was made of. I wanted to prove I was back.”
On a cool, drizzly, overcast day, she crossed the finish line in 3:39.41. Her time qualified her for Boston. Her recovery was complete.
“I couldn’t believe my body allowed me to run 26 miles,” she recalls thinking as she crossed the finish line. “My parents (Pat and Joe) were there, and they were ecstatic. My father was crying. That brought it home to me. “I was very grateful to be back, to be able to run, to participate in this crazy activity.”
Last fall, she ran the Richmond Marathon in 3:34, and in her buildup for Boston she averaged around 40 miles per week with long runs in the 20-mile range.
On Monday, the temperature was in the mid-50’s – “insanely perfect,” she said – and not even a sore left foot, possibly a stress fracture, that had bothered her for a couple of weeks could dampen her enthusiasm.
“It was definitely challenging,” she said, “but it was euphoric just to be running. “My foot hurt, sure, but not running at all would have hurt much more.”
