Delaware man wins Myrtle Beach Marathon with sister as motivation

Steve Sinko of Wilmington, Del., won the 18th annual MyrtleBeach.com Myrtle Beach Marathon on Saturday for his first win in 14 full marathons.

Yet winning wasn’t his motivation for competing in the race.

He was participating to support someone who finished more than three hours after he broke the tape at the finish line.

Sinko’s older sister, Audrey Sharpe, has multiple sclerosis and he made a deal that he’d compete if she went through with her vow to run the 26.2-mile distance.

“Quite honestly the race is more about her than it was about me coming down and running,” an emotional Sinko said. “I can already see it, she’s probably going to come through and say I stole her thunder or something like that.”

Sinko, 38, a personal trainer and high school track and cross country coach, finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes and 12 seconds, which is about 14 minutes off the race record.

“Sometimes you just go in shooting for a time,” Sinko said. “You look at the results and I knew the kind of guys that usually win, so I thought if I had a good day I’d have a chance. If not, you just go out there and do the best you can. It’s 26 miles, you never know what can happen.”

Sinko said Sharpe, 44, has run a couple half marathons but wanted to complete the marathon distance once. “When you kind of know what MS is all about and what it can lead to down the road, she thought, ‘While I can still do this I want to give it a shot,’ ” Sinko said. “She’s going strong. She’s running a marathon so she’s not doing too bad.”

They chose the Myrtle Beach race because the family has a home in the area, they like the relatively flat course and prefer running in cool temperatures. Temperatures were in the 20s and 30s Saturday morning.

“We really like coming down here and we like the cold,” said Sinko, who hadn’t previously run the Myrtle Beach Marathon. “This isn’t that bad for us compared to what it’s like at home right now.”

Because her doctor was unlikely to give Sharpe the go-ahead to run a marathon, and many of her family members and friends would have likely attempted to talk her out of it, Sinko said only a few people knew she was entered. The support group that traveled from Delaware was limited to Sinko, his girlfriend Caroline Campbell and Sharpe’s husband Rob.

“It will be kind of a surprise to everyone,” Sinko said.

After Sinko finished his post-race interviews, he headed back on the course to try to find and support his sister, who crossed the finish line about 3:15 after he did in a little less than six hours.

Sinko guided Sharpe through her race training, and though they didn’t train together despite living near each other in Delaware, she was often the reason he put in the miles in preparation for the race.

“It’s cold, it’s 10 degrees at home and you’ve got to go run 20 miles. I’m there and I’m thinking, ‘My sister just went out and did that, I can’t be a baby. I’ve got to go out there and do it too,’ ” said Sinko, the youngest of seven siblings. “She kept me honest.”

Sinko said he was shooting for a time of about 2:40. “I’m ecstatic with that time,” Sinko said. “That’s what I was hoping for.”

His personal best is 2:24:43, but that was set several years ago when he was training harder. “I was a younger guy doing different things,” he said.

Sinko took the lead around the fifth mile, passing eventual runner-up Jeremy Lynch of Springfield, Va., who finished nearly 2 minutes behind in 2:42:01. “He took off on me and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to catch him,” Lynch said.

Sinko isn’t accustomed to running with a lead. His past marathons have often been larger races and he’d often run with a pack while trying to finish in a specific time. “Honestly, for the last mile or two, it was just hang on for dear life,” Sinko said. “I’ve never really had to think about strategy in terms of winning and that type of thing, so this was a different experience.

”And quite honestly, I did not like being out in front. I felt bad. I don’t know that anybody really feels all that great at the end of a marathon, and the last four miles I was like, ‘I don’t want to look back because then they’re going to know I’m tired if they’re right behind me. Is somebody coming?’ There were times out there where I was thinking I would have rather been chasing than getting chased. You don’t know how far in front you are, either. The last mile I wanted to stop and walk a couple times.”

This story was originally published February 14, 2015 at 10:32 AM with the headline "Delaware man wins Myrtle Beach Marathon with sister as motivation."