“She was wobbling all over the place and just looked like death,” she said.
It was then 20-year-old Emma Jarvis, who was on the final stretch when a mix of heat exhaustion and dehydration hit her hard.
“She went past me and I thought, no, that girl needs help,” Marsh said.
She raced to her car, grabbed some wipes and caught up to Jarvis.
“I said, ‘Look, excuse me, would you mind if I help you?’ And she said to me, ‘Oh my god, I love people like you’.”
Marsh encouraged Jarvis to keep walking while she cooled down to get “back in the right space”.
They started chatting and Marsh told Jarvis she was so inspired by all the runners that she was considering taking running up again, after giving it up 20 years earlier.
Marsh told Jarvis that whenever she was ready, she’d jog alongside her in her jeans.
Eventually, off they went together.
“I just thought, oh my god, I’m just loving this,” Marsh said.
She let Jarvis run the final stretch before meeting her at the finish line to celebrate together.
Now fully inspired, Marsh went for a walk along the stopbanks near her home the next day to see if she still had it in her.
She completed an 8.5km walk “around the block” in about an hour and 40 minutes.
She woke up the next morning feeling great, which she credits to her Pilates exercises.
That’s when she knew she could run the 42.2km of the marathon.
Marsh geared up and started her training.
All was going to plan until she tore her hamstring in January.
But thanks to her physio at Havelock North’s Focus Health, Marsh was able to develop a walk-run technique that gave her the confidence that she’d be able to finish the full marathon, despite the training setback.
This will be Marsh’s first marathon since the 1992 Rotorua Marathon, where she “hit the wall” with 11km to go.
She stopped at an ambulance, where a medic took her vitals and gave her some instructions similar to what she passed on to Jarvis.
“He said, ‘Look, honey, you’re too fit, there’s no way you’re not going to finish. Up you get’.”
She did – and finished the race.
Now, Marsh wants to inspire others to tie up their running shoes and give a marathon a shot.
“I just really want to impress on people that it’s not a cheat, run-walking, it’s an actual method a lot of people do and it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.
“In fact, I think people should feel proud of doing it that way.”
The Hawke’s Bay Marathon takes place on Saturday, May 16.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.
