Mark Welch has been a member of the Pickering team for the past 12 years. In that time Mark not only has succeeded at his career as a Civil Engineer and Senior Project Manager, but he has also been able to make personal advancements as well. For the last 3 years Mark has run and completed the News & Sentinel Half Marathon in Parkersburg, WV. Though a fact not known to many people, it has been a journey for Mark. One that started out like a lot of others, “I was never a runner growing up in school or college. My sister has always been a competitive runner and asked me to run with her for many years…I always said no. Three years ago I was running a lot for health reasons and my son started wanting to run 
outside with me. He was always excited for our “races” and would try to run further each time.” Featured in the photo to the left is Mark and his sister during the race. When asked what drives him to keep doing it year after year Mark responded, “My kids were the main inspiration for me to run and it’s always very rewarding to see my family (son Cooper, daughter Harper, and wife Amber) along the route cheering me on…it’s truly a runner’s high!”
The Marathon was held on August 18th and is a pre-qualifier race for several big-time marathons, such as the Boston City Marathon, and it attracts a great deal of attention for that. “I finished around 200th place out of 700 participants. This year I finished around 2 hours and 5 minutes. The humidity was terrible and that made for difficult running for sure.” commented Mark. This has been a great journey for Mark and he is not stopping there, “I plan on running in the Columbus half marathon to see what it’s like to run a flat course and also what it’s like to run in cool fall weather.” The Columbus Half Marathon is being held in October of this year. We wish Mark the best of luck as he strives to continue his journey and congratulate him again for completing this year’s half marathon. Featured in the photo to the right is Mark with two of the youth students from his church, who also participated in the half marathon this year.