Reported by Mark Jenkins
LAKE BUENA VISTA -- Light sleet and snow flurries in Central Florida didn’t stop thousands of runners braving the cold for the Disney Half-Marathon.
The race Saturday morning was the first of two during Walt Disney World’s Marathon Weekend. A full, 26.2-mile marathon is on for Sunday in even colder temperatures.
I bundled up in three layers of pants and socks, and I was still cold out at Epcot. I hadn’t felt my feet in hours.
It was still about 34 degrees at noon, long after the first runners crossed the finish line -- and conditions were not much better Saturday morning, when a combination of cold and sleet greeted 23,000 half-marathon runners.
Waiting for the gun, runners became dancers, hoping to generate some heat.
Daniel Loiseau, a native Floridian donning a Santa Claus hat and a beard to match, let News 13 in on his strategy for going the distance and not letting the cold get to him.
“I start listening to my music and don’t pay attention to anything,” he said.
The runners represented all 50 states, along with more than 50 different countries. Preparing to run in the elements, some said the wait was the worst.
“When it’s cold like this, this is the hardest part,” Loiseau said.
“Once you get out there and a half-mile into it, you’ll warm up. It won’t take long,” said Monte Harvill, who’s used to much harsher winters at his home in Michigan.
Once the trademark Disney fireworks hit the sky, the runners were off -- and so were their clothes! Well, some of their clothes.
After all the runners left the start line area, all that was left was debris of outer layers -- shirts, jackets and scarves. Once they warmed up, they didn’t need their outer layers. So they ditched them.
Disney workers then went up and down the roads to pick up all the discarded clothes, took them all to a dry cleaner, and will then give them all to charity.
The 13.1-mile half-marathon took runners anywhere from 45 minutes to 5 hours to finish -- but no matter how fast their time, they couldn’t outrun the cold.
“It makes you earn it a little more,” said Justin Mikhalevsky, of Boston. “Makes you prouder about finishing, so there’s nothing you could really do.”
As they run in such miserable conditions, some might call these people goofy.
That may be an understatement. About 7,000 of them are set to return Sunday morning for the full marathon -- twice the distance, in even colder temperatures.
Disney said more than 100,000 people came for the weekend-long event, half of them spectators lining the streets and sitting on the bleachers in the freezing sleet -- a true test of endurance for everyone involved.
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