This past Sunday, I volunteered at water stop number 7 at the Woodrow Wilson Bridge half marathon on behalf of the American Heart Association. It was a very early morning; we got up before 5 am and had to be at the event by 6:45 am to start filling up the water and power aide cups for the 5,000 marathon runners!
Miss DC International, Chelsey Rodgers, and I manned the water stop as a team. It started out pretty slowly with a few runners coming through, and of course the fastest, most competitive runners had no time for our water, but by 9:00 am we were in full swing and the runners were coming through fast and furious. We left our water station at 10 am to walk over to the ceremony where the winners were being acknowledged and the charitable donation checks resulting from the proceeds of the race were being presented.
Chelsey and I were presented the $5,000 ceremonial check by the President of Burke and Herbert Bank, who organized the event. The 6 top runners were all from Ethiopia and Kenya. They are all well known runners who travel around the world to compete in races like this one. Winning times were in the one hour and twelve minute range- wow! Running 3.1 miles in a little over an hour is truly an incredible feat!
Next was the presentation to the “American winners”- again, the top 6 Americans, 3 men and 3 women with completion times starting in the one hour and twenty three minute range.
It was a great event and inspired me to continue running, which I discovered my love for this summer while training for the International pageant. I hope that one day I will have the strength and endurance to run a race like this one, but for now, I’ll stick to less competitive runs around my neighborhood.
Juliana McKee
Comments
Post a Comment