Cyndi Jeffery can still remember the moment she started dreaming of running a marathon.
It was 1984 and she’d just celebrated her 18th birthday. Her parents had returned home to rural Saskatchewan after a vacation in New York City bursting with stories about having witnessed the city’s annual marathon.
“They came back saying that this race was so magical. And they weren’t even runners. They just thought it was so cool to see all these people running the streets of New York,” recalls Jeffery, now 58 and living in Langham. “I just fell in love with the idea of that marathon and said to myself: I’m going to run that race.”
At the time, Jeffery was an avid runner, having run cross country and track through school since sixth grade. The idea of running 42.2 kilometres thrilled her — but it would be 21 years before she lined up for her first attempt at the distance and a full four decades (and two significant injuries) before she finally travelled to New York City this month to run the marathon than kickstarted her dream.
Looking back, Jeffery sometimes wonders why it took her so long to pick up marathoning after hearing her parents’ story. But then she remembers what drove her to take a break from running after high school; first she was focused on her university studies, then the birth of her first child. Then she had her second child and her third and returned to university to launch a new career as a teacher.
“It wasn’t until my kids were all born and I needed something to claim back that was mine that I started running again,” Jeffery says. “I wanted to become healthier for my own kids and just be a really good role model for them … As a young mom I would have my youngest daughter in the stroller or my son in the stroller. It was tough, but it was an important step for me to get healthy and feel like I was myself again.”
In returning to running as an adult, Jeffery remembered how much she loved the sport. She loved not only the act of running, but also the feeling of being part of a community of people who had so much passion for the sport.
“I love talking to people about running. I could do it 24/7,” she says. “It’s just a great way to meet people, a great way to connect and a great way to understand the human spirit and resilience that we have.”
Jeffery started training for her first marathon — Regina’s Queen City Marathon — in her late 30s. She was halfway through her build when she was out for a training run along rural grid roads and heard a pop in her leg. Her hamstring was in so much pain that she couldn’t walk so she started to crawl toward home. Luckily her then-brother-in-law happened to drive by and picked her up. Jeffery went to a family doctor, who told her she’d pulled her hamstring. She rested as much as she could and ran her first marathon a few weeks later in pain.
“Crossing that finish line was just a feeling of accomplishment and something that I never thought I’d be able to do. I remember crossing that finish line and going: I can do this.”
Several weeks after the race, the pain in Jeffery’s leg had not subsided so she visited another doctor who referred her for X-rays. She was shocked when the images showed she had a cracked pelvis. ‘Knowing that I could run a marathon in so much pain, I knew I wanted to try it without being injured,” Jeffery says. “I figured if I could do one with a cracked pelvis, then I can pretty much finish anything.”
Since that first marathon, Jeffery has run 28 more. She’s a regular at the local Saskatchewan and Queen City marathons and is also working toward her Abbott World Marathon Major Six Star medal, having run the Boston, Chicago, London and — most recently — the New York City marathons.
“They’re all wonderful in their own way,” Jeffery says of her 29 marathon experiences. “I love that the local races are smaller and it’s just a small field. Everyone puts so much work into them. And the big races, they’re fabulous too.”
Along the way, Jeffery had to come back from another serious injury after being involved in a four-vehicle collision in September 2022 that scuttled her fall racing plans that season. She was briefly hospitalized with whiplash, bruising and swelling.
“The first thing I remember asking the doctors in the hospital in the emergency is: When can I run again?” Jeffery recalls. “And they said: You’re a very lucky person because you’re alive and walked away from this. I was able to come back and run some other races, but it took me a long time to just feel strong enough again. After something like that, you don’t trust your body anymore.”
The toughest of the marathons Jeffery has run was London earlier this year. Things were going fine until kilometre 15, when she developed a gushing nosebleed that lasted the next 20 kilometres. “I looked like I had bludgeoned someone on the race course and the officials kept wanting to pull me off,” Jeffery says. “I was dizzy and disoriented. But I said: ‘I’m getting my third star so I have to run this race,’ so I did … even though it was a horrible experience, those are the ones that are more memorable. I love the tough stories.”
Her favourite marathon so far is the one she’d been dreaming about the longest. Running the New York City Marathon this month was, in a word, “amazing.”
The course was tough, as Jeffery knew it would be, and the steep bridges were no joke. But the atmosphere was exactly what she’d hoped for. Her experience started the Friday before the race when Jeffery was one of 30 Canadians to march in the event’s opening ceremonies, an honour bestowed on her after she wrote to organizers telling them about how she had been aspiring to run the race since hearing her parents’ stories 40 years ago.
“New York — that whole city embraces that marathon and the atmosphere for days prior to the marathon and days after. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Jeffery says.
With the New York City Marathon in the rearview mirror, Jeffery — who retired from her most recent career as a school counsellor last summer — is taking time to enjoy her accomplishment and eventually wants to run the Berlin and Tokyo marathons to secure her Six Star medal. She’d also like to jump into some half marathons, a distance she has appreciated more as she’s grown older, and volunteer for the Saskatchewan races that have been such important parts of her life.
And, of course, she can’t wait to talk to others about running.
“I love the stories of people that have run fast and all of that. But I absolutely adore the stories of struggle, and the interesting ones too.”
