Determined marathon runner crawls over finish line, finishes third

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Hyvon Ngetich wasn’t going to give up.

At the 23-mile mark of the 2015 Austin Marathon and Half Marathon on Sunday, Ngetich was the leading female runner.

As the 29-year-old Kenyan woman neared the finish line, however, her body gave out. She collapsed from exhaustion.

Race volunteers rushed to her side with a wheelchair, but she refused. Instead, Ngetich finished the race on all fours, crawling across the finish line.

“For the last two kilometres, I don’t remember. Finish line, I don’t remember,” Ngetich told CBS affiliate KEYE-TV.

Even with the physical setback, she was the third woman to cross the finish line.

“You ran the bravest race and crawled the bravest crawl I have ever seen in my life,” Austin Marathon race director John Conley said to her after the race.

“You have earned much honour, and I am going to adjust your prize money, so you get the same prize money you would have gotten if you were second.”

The winning female was Cynthia Jerop of Kenya, who crossed the finish line in 2:54:22. Ngetich’s personal best in the marathon is 2:34:42.

On Sunday, she crossed the finish line in 3 hours and 4 minutes.

“Running, always you have to keep going. You need to die running,” she said.