With a wide smile and a glance at the heavens, Diane Kovacev completed her first marathon Sunday in Toledo.
One down ...
“Only 600 more to go,” race director Clint McCormick told her as she crossed the finish line inside the Glass Bowl.
OK, maybe not quite.
But the granddaughter of Toledo running icon Thian “Sy” Mah had to start somewhere, right?
“I knew if I ever was going to do a marathon and make it to this level, the first one would have to be here,” said the 34-year-old Ms. Kovacev, who now lives in Lake Jackson, Texas, outside of Houston. “It had to be the Glass City Marathon.”
Mr. Mah, of course, was once the most prodigious distance runner on Earth. As certified by the Guinness World Records, the former University of Toledo physical education instructor held the record for the most lifetime marathons — 524 — at the time of his death from leukemia in 1988. He was 62.
That mark has since been surpassed many times, including by Larry Macon, a 73-year-old from San Antonio who recently became the first American to run 2,000 marathons.
Still, the story of the Canadian professor who took up running in his late 30s to thwart the heart disease common in his family — and kept going ... and going ... and going — endures, including in the spirit of Ms. Kovacev.
Whether she ever dreamed it would or not.
Growing up in suburban Columbus, she knew little about Mr. Mah. “When you’re young and you have a famous relative, ‘You’re like, ‘OK, this is the color red, this is the number 6, and, oh, yeah, I have a famous running grandfather,’” she said.
Besides, she was a musician and a fencer, not a runner, which pleased her mom, Nicole, the youngest of Mr. Mah’s four children. As much as Nicole adored her dad — who sometimes ran three marathons in a single weekend — his pastime burned her out.
“Play tennis instead,” she told her daughter.
Rarely did they talk about Mr. Mah.
“I’ve held on to all of his records and all of his Guinness things, but truthfully, it was too painful for me to even address these last 30 years,” Nicole said. “He died too young.”
As time went on, though, Ms. Kovacev — who earned degrees at Baldwin Wallace and Florida State before moving to Texas to become a music teacher — began to learn more about her grandfather’s past, then followed in his running shoes after she and her husband, Ted, welcomed a baby daughter four years ago.
“I was just trying to look for something to do to get in shape,” she said. “I used him as my inspiration.”
She started with a a baby jogger, and soon enough, she was hooked. Neighborhood runs gave way to a 5K, then a half marathon, then ... crazy thoughts. “A marathon became a running joke,” Ms. Kovacev said, “no pun intended.” Finally, on New Year’s Eve, it became all too real. She signed up for the Toledo marathon.
Four months later, Ms. Kovacev regretted that decision about midway through the 26.2-mile run Sunday, her legs fading. But she found a second wind at the 17-mile mark as the race turned down Sylvania Avenue past Olander Park, where a life-sized statue was built in 2002.
“It was really nice running past grandpa’s statue,” she said. “It put a little pep in my step there.”
She finished in 5 hours, 28 minutes, 16 seconds, then fell into the arms of her mother, who battled her emotions at the finish line.
“I had to look up at the sky,” Ms. Kovacev said. “It’s just been so amazing.”
Asked if she could see herself doing a few hundred more of these, she smiled.
“Oh, my gosh, no,” she said. “I'm not even sure about another one. We'll see.”
First Published April 28, 2019, 9:52 p.m.
