On May 17th, the Colfax Marathon will be featuring some familiar faces from the TJ community, as a number of Spartan faculty members take to the streets for the race.
The Colfax Marathon (26.2 miles) has four possible events in which the athletes can take part. The wheel chair half-marathon, half-marathon, the actual marathon, and a relay marathon. The TJ faculty will be entering three teams into the relay event next Sunday, on the 17th of May.
The gold team consists of Carole Fulkerson, Elizabeth Repenseck, Jon Poole, Aimee Witulski and Kara Rainey. The white team is built on the legs of Kristen Atwood, Gabrielle Gerlits, Edwina Hebert, Brett Butera. The brown team has Scott Lessard, Barbara Martinez, Prabin Risal, Lispin Kuruvulla and Wendy Doyle.
The marathon (which requires stamina, mental toughness, strong legs and being an early riser) gets kicked off at 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning. On May 17th the teams will be given six and a half hours to complete the marathon as a team, in the great commotion of the five thousand expected competitors. The race, starting at City Park and continuing in a large loop finishing about a mile from the Museum of Nature and science, will conclude at noon.
The relay is broken into five legs (portions) of varying length. Leg one starts off uphill and is a distance of 10-kilometers, beginning at the starting line of City Park. Leg two will be from Speer to Colfax for the first of two 5-Kilometer distances. The third leg will be at Depew and Colfax for the second and final 10-kilometer stretch, and will continue on to the Wadsworth and Colfax intersection. From there the runners will proceed to the North Side of Sloan’s Lake where the longest stretch – 12 kilometers – will begin.
Witulski, a math teacher at TJ, entered into the race under the strenuous pressure of her peers. “I was kind of conned into it. (Jon)Poole and (Scott) Lessard were in the same room as me when they were asked to do it. When they agreed they then worked together to talk me into it. I also thought it sounded like a fun activity to be in outside of the school. However, I have always been a swimmer – not really much of a runner – so I have had to do some training. I have been running a couple times a week to get prepared for my 5K stretch. My team (the gold team) and I definitely have the most talent, even though I am not really sure who is on it. We will definitely win,” laughed Witulski.
Doyle, the organizer of the TJ faculty participants was somewhat surprised at the reaction to the idea of the marathon. “I actually did the relay marathon last year with a friend who teaches at Lakewood High School. I thought it was a good idea, so I sent out an e-mail asking if any of the faculty members were interested. I got 13 responses that same day. I was really happy people took to the idea as well as they did. This might be something we want to try to do every year now!” said Doyle.
