Brian and Lisa Schmidt’s training for the 2017 Ottawa Marathon took an unexpected turn on Sunday.

The Schmidts were 20K into a 30K long run when, near the Champlain Bridge, they came upon two men in the cold waters of the Ottawa River fighting for their lives. The two, who were not wearing life jackets according to Brian Schmidt, were canoeing in strong currents, in part because of recent rain and flooding, before the boat capsized.

“At that point, my wife and I turned around and we were about 30 feet away,” Schmidt, 47, recalls. “No one else was around on the Ottawa River pathway so my wife started shouting for help as we didn’t have phones. The one gentleman was neck deep in the water and the other was hanging onto a tree branch. The man hanging onto the tree branch was like a flag in the wind.”

Wearing only running clothes, Schmidt stepped into the 3 C waters of the Ottawa River. “With the rushing cold water, I could feel the blood leaving my legs,” he says. “When I reached chest-deep, I thought, this is life or death and I need to think about what I’m doing. I took an inventory of my life thinking I have to be smart about this in the next 30 seconds to a minute or I’ll be dead.”

The athletic director with Woodroffe High School was able to corral the younger of the two men to safety before attending to the older gentleman, who was much farther from shore. (Schmidt estimates the two were aged 35-40 and 60, possibly a father and son.) Separating Schmidt and the man in distress was about a two-metre gap of fast moving water with rapids down river. “The gentleman on the tree branch said ‘I’m going to die,’ and I said ‘You’re not going to die,'” Schmidt recalls. “I couldn’t get to him and I knew time was running out of time, I was losing the feeling in my legs and the cold was paralyzing.”

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Schmidt, who is training for his first marathon at the end of May, told the man he has one shot to try to grab a hold of him. The canoeist managed to push off from the tree and Schmidt got a hold of his shirt while holding the tree with his left arm. When the two capsized men reached shore, Schmidt admits that he went into “teacher mode,” outlining what the men could learn from the experience. Lisa, also a teacher, had a few choice words for the men, who remain unidentified, as they put Brian’s life at risk.

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When the Schmidts heard the sirens and the group of people that had come to the scene, the two, in what seems to be a runner’s thing to do, completed the final 10K of their long run, the longest he’s run on the lead-up to the end-of-May marathon. “There’s no better way to warm up than to run,” Schmidt says. “I don’t really remember that final 10K because of the adrenaline of what happened.”

The experience began to sink in the following day, Monday, when Schmidt returned the site of the incident. “I couldn’t believe how emotional returning there was,” he says. “It hit home thinking about how fine a line it [going into the water] was between stupidity and bravery.”