"Ray Brewer was less than a mile into the Rock ’n’ Roll San Antonio Half-Marathon early today when he heard bells start clanging and a familiar whistle sound. A train was rumbling across Commerce Street near Sunset Station, directly in the path of roughly 1,000 runners.
“Sure enough, the gates started coming down and I thought, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” said Brewer, a San Antonio anesthesiologist. “I said, ‘I was just getting warmed up.’ ”
Brewer was in Corral No. 4 of the segmented starts at the annual event. Corral No. 5 also was affected. The delays for participants ranged from two minutes to just more than five minutes.
Race organizers were able to stop the starts for the later corrals of runners, not impacting their times. The train rolled through at 7:27 a.m., 0.8 miles into a new route introduced this year.
“Race officials, working with law enforcement and emergency services, immediately addressed the situation, holding runners and delaying the next starting waves until the train had passed,” said Tracy Sundlun, senior vice-president of the Competitor Group, which managed today’s event.
More than 30,000 runners and walkers took part in the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon. None of the elite competitors, including men’s full-marathon winner Edward Tabut or women’s champion Evelyn Lagat, both of Kenya, were affected by the mishap.
Sundlun said that the freight train, which moved through the area without slowing, was not scheduled to arrive at that time. He added that officials would work to determine the delay times for the runners impacted, and their times would be adjusted.
Several participants in those first corrals — broken down by skill level—were trying to establish qualifying times for other major competitions such as the Boston Marathon.
“It was more that we were all just astonished,” said Leah Bird, a Houston runner who was in Corral 5. “No one was mad or anything. But you kind of looked down and it was a long train. It was whipping by.”
Six volunteers were on site at the tracks and successfully stopped runners when the unexpected bells and whistles began sounding.
“That kind of put a cork in it a little bit,” said Kari Logan, the event director for Competitor Group.
Runners bounced around and jogged in place, Brewer and Bird said, to keep loose during the delay.
Once the train passed and the gates raised, runners were allowed through.
“Everyone sped up right at that moment,” Bird said. “You could tell they were trying to make up the time.”