ARLINGTON, Va. — Navy veteran Jay McManus leaves Sunday as the winner of the Marine Corps Marathon push-rim race.

In addition to winning with a time of 1:42:41, McManus accomplished his personal goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon.

“I was shooting [for] between an hour 35 [minutes] and an hour 45 [minutes]. Anything under two would qualify,” he said. “I pushed a little hard.”

McManus, 48, served in the Navy for nearly 22 years before medically retiring.

He was one of approximately 30,000 participants in the race.

The marathon began near Arlington Cemetery, and runners made their way over the Key Bridge into Georgetown and passed scenic spots along the National Mall and Tidal Basin in Washington.

McManus’ career and life took a turn in July 2010 after an accident in Panama City Beach, Fla. Eight months after leaving Afghanistan, he was on a trip with the Navy Experimental Diving Unit when he was stung in the left knee by a stingray. A barb from the stingray was undetected by the initial X-rays and remained in his knee for four months.

McManus had six surgeries, forcing him to medically retire in 2019. He ran the Marine Corps Marathon for the first time last year after training for three years, completing it in about 3 hours and 34 minutes.

“This year, compared to last year, really helped me kind of set my times and pacing so that I would have enough energy on this last hill,” he said. “That last hill is so hard. It takes a Marine’s ideology to set that hill that is the finish line.”

Rome Leykin, 37, of Stamford, Conn., was in good spirits after finishing the race in 1:45:34, which he said was a personal best. He and McManus spoke to one another after Leykin crossed the finish line.

Both acknowledged they traded places for most of the race. Leykin said that changed at the last hill.

“Once we hit that last hill I was going down, he was zoom,” Leykin said, emphasizing the speed McManus was going. “I was not catching up.”

Julius Kogo, 38, of Durham, N.C., won the men’s race with a race time of 2:25:56.

Navy Lt. Commander Patrick Hearn came within striking distance with a record of 2:26:18 for second place. Despite his legs being worn out afterward, he felt good about the race.

“I was probably running in seventh for the majority of the race,” said Hearn, a nuclear engineer duty officer at the Pearl Harbor shipyard in Hawaii. “It’s a lot easier mentally knowing you have people in front of you to pass and you have all of this energy.”

He said because of the coronavirus pandemic, he probably hasn’t taken a race seriously since 2019. He ran the Marine Corps Marathon in 2018 with a time of 2 hours and 23 minutes.

“It was a lot cooler then. It’s a little warm now,” Hearn said.

In the women’s race, Bonnie Keating, 38, won with a race time of of 2:50:49 after finishing third last year.

“It was really cool to see the Marines out there cheering you on,” said Keating, a strength and conditioning coach for the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. “I saw a lot of Marines from 10 years ago, so it was really amazing to see them out there.”

Featured on Instagram

previous coverage

• We can ‘achieve anything’: Navy vet competes in Marine Corps Marathon to inspire others