When Bear River history and government teacher Matt MacDonald set out to train for a marathon, he didn’t expect to witness a life-saving procedure on the route. Halfway through a 26 mile run from Folsom to Sacramento, MacDonald and his childhood friend, Pat Terrassa would help save a life – but their journey began long before that.
MacDonald had been wanting to run a marathon for years, but an injury two years ago had left him sidelined.
“(The marathon) was incredibly rewarding. It was something that I’d been wanting to do for a couple of years,” MacDonald said. “I tried to run it two years ago, and I got an injury about two weeks before. I had to drop out and wasn’t able to do it.”
He explained his reattempt at running the marathon as a personal ‘redemption’.
“Two years ago our volleyball team played in the section finals and we lost in five sets,” MacD said. “A couple of days after I went out on a long run on Sunday and did 16 miles; I got some shin splints.
“It was kind of a tough, emotional few weeks – we’d just lost this game that we’d worked so hard for, and I got injured for this race that I was training for for months.
“For me, it was kind of more of a redemption thing, an individual thing. And then this year, we were able to go back to section finals – we won for volleyball.”
Despite school and the busy volleyball season, MacDonald trained everyday, even going down to Folsom to run.
“In the mornings, I’d get up early at 5 o’clock and I would go in the living room, jump on the treadmill, and I’d watch volleyball film,” MacD said. “I’d watch our games from the night before while I was running, to kill two birds with one stone. It wasn’t easy doing it in the fall; it would be a lot easier in the winter or spring when I’m not coaching, but that’s just the way it worked out.”
The California International Marathon was Dec. 7, 2025. As a qualifier for the Olympics and the Boston Marathon, MacDonald and Terrassa ran alongside 11,000 others from across the country.
“Our pace we were attempting to run at was a 4:20, four hours and 20 minutes to try and finish it. But we had an interesting story,” he explained. “We got to the halfway point, at mile 13. My buddy I ran with, he’s a doctor now, and we were running past this lady who was down on the ground. She was in cardiac arrest.
She needed CPR, so we stopped. Somebody was screaming for a doctor, so my buddy and I ran over there. He gave her CPR in the middle of the race – we brought her back, got her loaded in the ambulance, and she ended up surviving. Then we just kept running.”
MacDonald added, “Obviously, we didn’t meet our target time, but we figured that’s okay, we saved a life that day. It was kind of an interesting hiccup in the run, but it was certainly an inspirational thing to watch. One of my best friends saved this woman’s life, and then after, had to go run another 13 miles.”
