Marathon runner passes out on course, but finishes race

BOSTON, Mass. — Three days after completing his first Boston Marathon, Matt Petrocelli is feeling the pain.

“My legs feel like I got hit by a Ford F-150,” he said. “But I feel great mentally. Like I’m just hungrier now to get back out there.”

Pertrocelli, a fourth year student at Northeastern University, hoped to finish in the Top 100 with a time of just under two hours and thirty minutes. Instead, he timed in at three hours and thirty minutes — a phenomenal finish — considering he passed out on the course about halfway in.

Yes, that’s correct: he passed out.

“I was feeling really good up until Mile 10,” Petrocelli said. “Right around then I started to feel like something was definitely wrong. My body was sort of, like, slowly turning off.”

And then Petrocelli’s body did turn off. He fainted — somewhere in Wellesley, he thinks. While his memory of the event is fuzzy, Petrocelli remembered stumbling into a medical tent.

“I woke up, I was on a gurney,” he said. “And there’s a man standing over me and he’s saying I passed out.”

For about thirty minutes, Matt Petrocelli remained in that tent. Meanwhile, near the finish line, his girlfriend, Syra Mehdi, was tracking his progress on a Boston Marathon app.

“Around Mile 10 it just stopped completely and his location was just stagnant in the same place,” Syra said.

Syra said she wasn’t worried because to that point, Petrocelli was making good time — though she noticed a bit of slowing as he neared Mile 10 — something she attributed to normal marathon fatigue.

“I started tracking his friend that I knew was running the Marathon, too, just to see if it was updating,” she said. “And it was updating his location, so I figured — and I think we all figured — it was just a glitch.”

Also tracking Petrocelli — the doctor who helped him train for the race. Rafay Mehdi, MD, a primary care physician who specializes in mental conditioning for athletes and others.

He also noticed his progress stopped.

“The first thing that came to my mind was a joint injury, or something like that,” Mehdi said.

Petrocelli said he remained in the medical tent for about half an hour — at least according to his watch.

“I don’t remember most of that,” he said.

What he does remember is someone telling him to quit the race.

“I knew I had so many spectators out there waiting for me and I just didn’t want to leave them hanging,” Petrocelli said. “I just signed a waiver and I was on my way.”

On his way to the Finish Line — some 15 miles away. After finishing the race, Petrocelli went, finally, to an Emergency Department — where doctors found nothing wrong with his heart — but did find him hypothermic, the condition which occurs when body temperature drops below 95 F.

Petrocelli said his body temperature probably started dropping hours before the marathon when, dressed in only a singlet and skimpy shorts, he waited on Boston Common to be transported out to Hopkinton on buses which, he said, also turned out to be cold.

“To me, it was like a miracle,” Mehdi said. “He took his chances. He took his risks. I would not have done that.”

In fact, though Mehdi considers Petrocelli an inspiration, he said he would have advised him to get to a hospital after the fainting episode.

“Win at all costs... is not good,” Mehdi said. “But to fight for a win is okay.”

As for Petrocelli, he’s ready to fight on. His next race is in early May — an ultramarathon of 30+ miles in Pennsylvania.

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