This past March, Helen Panayiotou, curriculum leader for science and STEM at Leaside High School, joined a special, elite group of marathon runners when she completed her sixth and final race of the Abbott World Marathon Majors in Tokyo.
Helen started running as a student, but when she moved to Toronto and Leaside High School, she kept getting lost on the winding neighbourhood streets during cross-country training runs. So, she gave up running for a few years but then took up road racing as an adult. She returned to LHS as a teacher in 1998 and started to coach cross-country and track when long-time coach, Dave Christiani, was about to retire. With many seasons under her belt, this year she coached cross-country, but is taking a break from track.
Helen began running marathons in Toronto and was thrilled to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2011. The celebrated Boston Marathon is part of a series known as the Abbott World Marathon Majors, and completing them is a life goal among marathoners. This was her first major, but she says, it was “so disastrous” that she took a break from full marathons for a few years before running Chicago as her second major in 2016.
The 2020s have been busy running times for her. In 2021, she was one of just four teachers in Canada (one of only 50 in North America) selected to run New York City as part of the team for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the title sponsor for several marathons. Then she ran Boston in 2022, London and Berlin in 2023, and Tokyo this year, to complete the series.
Each marathon is unique for different reasons, Helen says. She enjoyed Boston for the “honour of qualifying for it and its challenging course.” She loved the “sites and crowd support” in London, the “speed and flatness of Berlin,” and the “cultural experience of Tokyo.” Nothing, though, topped New York City with its “crazy” crowd support, the VIP treatment as part of the team of TCS teachers, and the thrill of feeling like “a rock star.” Marathon participants receive a medal for each race and then a special medal for the completed series.
In addition to feeling happy and proud of her accomplishments, Helen is pleased with her fundraising efforts. In the past, through her races she has raised money for Make-a-Wish Foundation, Ronald McDonald House and the Alzheimer Society. She says she feels “honoured and blessed” to have the support of not only family and friends, but her students and their parents, who have tracked her live on their devices during races. She also appreciates hearing students talk about getting into running after she shares her race experiences with them.
While Helen feels she has “finally finished the journey” she’s been on for many years, as a goal-oriented person, she now wants to focus on triathlons and perhaps do a half or full Ironman one day.
In the meantime, she plans to continue running three to five days a week, mostly on her own, enjoying the experience and exploring new areas with some cross-training thrown into the mix. And since the Sydney Marathon just got added as a seventh World Major, she says her marathon days are not over, but her “wallet needs to recover first.”
