I woke up Friday morning and thought, “Oh, my, the Capital to Coast relay started an hour ago!”
Why did I care about that? Because of the courageous and athletic guys I wrote about here – oh yeah, they also happen to have diabetes.
They did indeed finish the relay, which started at 4 a.m. Friday in Austin and ended 233 miles later in Corpus Christi. It took the team 40 hours and 9 minutes and they were the last team to cross the finish line. To which I say — THEY FINISHED!!!! HOORAY!
I asked Don Muchow, who sent me the original email about their journey, for a recap on the relay, and he was happy to comply:
“I don’t think I have ever slept so little in my life — nine hours in about four days, two of which were the last days leading up to the race. Most of the team’s blood sugars ran high from adrenaline; everyone’s second leg was good. Exhaustion set in after that.
“After the first day, we were only an hour behind schedule; that slipped to three hours on the second day after temps climbed into the mid-90s with 70% humidity. We were the last team to finish, at 40 hours and 9 minutes.
“But we finished!”
He sent this to me on Tuesday morning:
“When we got to Corpus, we were practically hallucinating from lack of sleep; but our sugars were good, and we got there without injury. Not so well with some of the other teams. At least two teams lost a couple of runners to injury, and a third (“Sexy Shorts”) had a team member who was bitten by a snake. The worst to happen to ours was being chased by wild dogs.”
That’s the race part. He goes on to talk about the disease:
“To me, the stigma around Type 2 diabetes is the most damaging, and the myths the most hurtful. At least Type 1s can point out to others that it’s an autoimmune disorder.
“That’s why we decided our mission was to Cure Diabetes Ignorance. Nothing speaks for self-efficacy and against the idea of self-inflicted harm quite like Getting Out There And Doing Difficult Things.
“This is a fantastic bunch of folks whom I am honored to call teammates and friends. We are already talking about next year and about other epic projects. One person wants to do the 100k run at Bandera…another wants to do an Ironman… and they all want to lean on each other for support, help, and encouragement as they push their boundaries.”
So um…what’s our excuse for not getting out there and moving? These guys kind of put everything into perspective, eh.