An American runner struggling to push her way through a marathon gave new meaning to the phrase “keep it rolling,” after she collapsed in the final metres of the race.
The exhausted runner, Devon Bieling, had to roll over the finish line at the Tunnel Vision Marathon in Washington State, when her legs would no longer carry her.
Philip King, a race spectator who captured video of the moment on Aug. 20, says Bieling had collapsed just a dozen or so metres from the finish line.
“After not being able to stand, she begin to crawl. After crawling three or four feet, the sharp gravel rocks cut her knees until the pain wouldn’t allow her to crawl. So after felling out flat again she begin to roll. She finished the whole 26.2 unassisted, even though she had to roll across the finish line,” King recounts in his post.
“Always Keep Moving Forward No Matter What!!!” he added.
King uploaded the video to Facebook a couple days after the race, but it only gained traction after being shared in an Imgur post on Sept 17. The video has since been viewed more than 52,000 times.
Bieling herself has weighed in on the video’s virality, explaining in a Facebook post that she was trying to earn a “BQ” – running parlance for qualifying for the Boston Marathon.
She writes that she was embarrassed by the video at first, but when she read “all the nice things people were saying and how they were inspired,” she says she is now “humbled even more than I'd thought I'd ever be.”
Bieling did in fact qualify for Boston – even with the rolling finish.
