How the Ice Ate Dallas Marathon

Just in case you didn’t know or somehow missed, we were supposed to run the Dallas Marathon this past Sunday (Beth the full and Teal the half), but Mother Nature had a completely different plan for us and the rest of the Dallas Marathon hopefuls. Thursday afternoon Dallas weather turned from what was a warm, high in the 70’s during the week to what we Dallasites refer to as the #Icepocalypse2013.

Our favorite weatherman, Pete Delkus, basically told us on Thursday night that we were all about to be “entombed” by ice. We of course spent our evenings in denial and really just seemed worried about what the heck we would wear to run in this weather. Beth tweeted our Colorado friend Courtney for advice on what to wear since she is used to this sort of thing. We were not thinking at all that we actually not run this race at all, or at least if the thought was there we were trying to ignore it!

Turns out Pete was right (and he’s apparently now a weather god) and when we woke up Friday Texas looked much like this…

 

Roads were ridiculous and not drivable. We southerners are not prepared for this type of thing, it’s not just that people can’t drive or don’t know how to drive on it, we simply don’t have the road clearing equipment like they do in the north, and the little we have is not enough to clear the metroplex with any type of speed! We are always just stuck when this happens, entombed, if you will! Ugh! We still were pretty much in denial and thought the weather would get above freezing before Sunday and we could run. Surely it would, right?? We thought maybe they would just delay it. Dallas Marathon folks let us know what they could and instead of canceling the expo they delayed the opening until 2pm on Friday. That has to be a good sign right?

Well, then Friday lunch time came around. Nothing was improving, and we were all trapped. Then it came. An email from Dallas Marathon at 12:50ish Friday afternoon, cancelling not only the expo but cancelling the race altogether. 🙁

The worst email we’ve gotten in awhile! 🙁

There it was. Months of training seemingly wasted, especially for those who battled months of marathon training. Devastating really, without trying to be hugely dramatic, we get there are worse things in life, but for this, at this time, it is devastating. It was hard not to have a pity party. We did and started to Google. There has to be another marathon close that is open? We can drive (wait, can we??) Either way. We looked. The BCS marathon in College Station was the best bet but just still wasn’t feasible for us. :-/ We were out from running.

Commence eating all the carbs…

 

 

We ate, slept, did puzzles, and talked with Catherine (we are positive all of our husband’s rolled their eyes on this one) all weekend, and continued to live in denial that this had actually happened.

 

Come Sunday, we really hadn’t heard much about the details about the cancellation. We knew, having run a ton of races that we were not going to get a refund and we knew that and were not mad. We didn’t know about anything else.  Dallas Marathon again sent us another email…

They are giving us our participant shirts!!

We think this was an awesome response and we took to Facebook to thank them for handling it so well.  We were pretty shocked to see some of the responses given to the race. Like “where is our refund”, or “ how could you do this”, or whatever other idiotic response you can think of. We knew, everyone knew, you had to click an agreement before you could complete your registration that there would be no refunds for the race. This is pretty much a standard in racing and SUPER rare that you would actually get money back due to weather or cancellation. We get it. Apparently many others do not.

This race is put on by RUNNERS for RUNNERS. It is not one of those races that travels all over the country making tons of money putting on races. We can point you in the direction of some of those if you would like. This is different and this should be a learning experience for all. We do not claim to know what all goes in to race directing but we do know that this race gives a medal, a participant shirt, a finisher’s shirt, fancy bibs, food for runners, water stations, Gatorade, safety, police, port-o-potties, and anything else you can think of that we left off! We know money comes from different places and there are donations, but we also know that Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children benefits directly from money raised by Dallas Marathon. Hopefully others know this now because to call them thieves we think is a little ridiculous!

Needless to say we vented and then thanked Dallas Marathon for making the decision. They did what was best for the safety of runners and also for the city already strapped for resources. They knew it is not a good idea to take resources from the city to clear a race course when thousands didn’t have power, the roads needed to be scraped and sand poured, and officers needed to help those in need. Thank you for that!

Also, if you haven’t met our friend Erik. You are about to. He, and his friends, have been a part of an unofficial, which should be official (wink, wink Dallas Marathon) cheering section at the Dolly Parton hills (more frequently referred to as “The Dollies”), one of the most challenging areas of the course. Erik dresses as a Dolly, and helps runners up and down those hills in style. He sent us these pictures to cheer us, and everyone else up.

 

 

Pretty Sexy isn’t he? (sorry, he’s taken!) Who would want to miss this cheer section? Not us, and we didn’t have to this year either! He made our day and made the blow of the cancellation a little more bearable! Thank you for that, Erik!

Thanks again Dallas Marathon!! Mother Nature we are still pretty irritated at you, but we will be back in 2014!