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The Jimmy Mac Valentine 4K at Red Creek Park in Hampton Bays didn’t quite go as planned on Saturday.
Despite heavy snow cover and unfavorable, even dangerous conditions, Southampton resident and Amagansett School teacher Jason Hancock ran with everything he had and won the race.
“We weren’t taking it easy,” Hancock said, noting that his friend and the race’s beneficiary, Jim MacWhinnie, inspired everyone to run their best.
The snow from last Wednesday’s storm remained over the trail and race organizer Bob Beattie of Island Timing and the East End Road and Trail Runners Club said he was forced to reduce the planned distance to 2 kilometers instead of 4. “There are sections of the trail that are a foot deep,” he said after the dedicated participants began running on Saturday morning.
“You start racing, you don’t watch your footing,” Beattie said, explaining that the snow was compact and very slippery in other areas. In the interest of safety, he asked the runners to finish the course, but avoid full-fledged racing.
Nearly 50 people braved the rough trail to support MacWhinnie, a Southampton resident, avid runner and triathlete and trainer at Core Dynamics Gym in Water Mill. The 38-year-old suffered severe injuries on December 10 after being crushed by an oil tank, which he was helping his father move.
A step gave way beneath MacWhinnie as he attempted to move the tank up a flight of stairs and the massive object lacerated his liver and trapped him beneath the stairwell for nearly two hours. He had six surgeries, 100 blood transfusions and part of his liver removed since the accident.
“It’s just a miracle he’s alive,” Beattie said, but MacWhinnie did not have health insurance and his astronomical medical costs are nearing $250,000. The 4K is just one of a series of fund-raisers for the recovering athlete. “It’s been a real community effort, he said, noting, “This is just peanuts.”
Beattie said MacWhinnie is a friend from the running scene, his former assistant at Gubbins in East Hampton and he once helped out the race organizer when he really needed it.
“He’s such an inspiration,” Hancock, the race winner said, explaining that MacWhinnie is his good friend and training partner at Core Dynamics. He said the fellow Southampton High School graduate was supposed to recover in six months to a year, but he’s already up and walking after two months.
Both Hancock and Beattie credited the swift recovery to MacWhinnie’s level of fitness.
Another runner and the owner of Body Tech gym, Mike Bahel said MacWhinnie is already swimming and he ran 2 miles in 20 minutes on the treadmill at Core Dynamics. “That’s faster than 80 percent of people in the world,” he said. “He’s doing great.”
MacWhinnie said he got out of the hospital a little earlier than he anticipated. “The recovery is just going really well,” he said. “It’s amazing. So many people have been so generous.”
MacWhinnie trudged through the deep snow, found a position some 50 yards ahead of the finish line and cheered for each runner by name as they completed the course on Saturday. “It was good to see him,” Hancock said, noting that Saturday’s race was his first since November’s Turkey Triathlon in Montauk. “This was fun,” he said.
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