Team LIVESTRONG Braves the Cold
by Colleen Wilson (LIVESTRONG Staff)
This past weekend was our first event to kick off the Team LIVESTRONG schedule for 2010. And it was a COLD start to the season. The Disney Half and Full Marathon took place in “The Sunshine State” where the high for the day peaked at a balmy 37 degrees. This was by far, the toughest run I have seen our LIVESTRONG runners take on in the last 5 years of working with endurance sports. The Half and Full marathon take place on separate days. On Saturday I woke up to go meet the team at 4 AM and it was sleeting outside. Disney makes runners get to the start by 430 AM and the race begins at 6:00 AM. For 90 minutes they stood in that weather before beginning the 13.1 miles in the sleet.
On Sunday I went to go meet the Full marathoners before they took off, and the skies looked as though they would be clear but it was 17 degrees outside and overnight had been a hard freeze. So runners had to be careful of those patches of ice they couldn?t see. The runners took off at 6 AM and the sun didn?t fully come up until about 7:30 so those first 90 minutes of running were very difficult. During the marathon it also never warmed up to be higher than 40 degrees but each of the LIVESTRONG runners finished with style.
The runners were certainly exhausted from the weekend but all were happy and glad they fought through the cold. It was a great weekend here and we will raise upwards of $25,000 with this event. Thanks for all the good thoughts (and tweets) on this team?2010 will be a great one for Team LIVESTRONG.
