Miami marathoners keep streak going and going for 20 years
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20th anniversary of the Miami Marathon
After a year of going virtual because of the pandemic, the Life Time Miami Marathon and Half Marathon will be back for a 6 a.m. start on Sunday, Feb. 6, outside the FTX Arena.
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They did not plan to run the Miami marathon or half marathon for 20 years in a row. The streak just kept growing and growing, and then, given the nature of people drawn to endurance tests, it became an obsession.
At 6 a.m. Sunday, 73 people will start the 26.2- or 13.1-mile trek again, as they have since the event’s inception in 2003. They always finish, come hell or high humidity, rain, wicked headwinds, broken bones, a broken alarm clock or cancer. Not even COVID-19 could force these runners to abandon their feat. Last year, when the race went virtual, co-founder Frankie Ruiz invited the group he calls “the streakers” to run a 1.4-mile loop around Bayfront Park so they could keep the streak alive.
“I get worried at every milestone — 10, 15, 20th anniversary — that they’re going to stop, but they have that runner’s resilience, that mindset of ‘I’ll make it to the next corner,’ so I’m hopeful they’ll be back for 21,” said Ruiz, who is also director of the event, which started as the Toyota Prius Miami Tropical Marathon and has been the Life Time Miami Marathon and Half Marathon since 2014.
The streakers who travel the farthest are from Costa Rica, California, Missouri, Maryland and Chicago, he said, also recalling the loyalty of Alexis Garcia, 60, of Miami Lakes, who showed up at the starting line one year in a wheelchair. He was recovering from leg surgery.
“He wheeled himself through the whole thing,” Ruiz said of Garcia, who plans to complete his 20th full Miami marathon. “He is part of a special group. They made a commitment not just to the race but to themselves.”
Here are a few of their stories:
▪ Tony Jones: Jones, 65, of Cutler Bay, ran 18 full marathons until he ran the half last year, and he plans to run the half on Sunday with his family. Jones has been undergoing treatment for prostate cancer for three years and the side effects have made running more painful and exhausting. He hopes to resume running the marathon in 2023.
“The toughest thing is not the marathon itself but training for 20 years straight,” he said. “It’s a huge commitment in the months leading up to the race, especially through the hot months and the holidays. You have to do your homework if you want to run 26.2 miles.”
Jones has a personal best of 3:38 in the marathon. In recent years, he’s been finishing just under 6 hours. He has some words of wisdom for senior runners.
“If you let getting slower bother you then you will quit running,” he said. “My times are nothing to be proud of anymore and I used to beat myself up over that but then realized you have to embrace the aging process and changes to your body. Acceptance and a positive attitude are essential to growing older as a runner.”
Jones was an air conditioning mechanic at Miami’s federal prison in Kendall who couldn’t stand retirement so he now has a similar job at Zoo Miami. Running is his escape.
“Running gives me such a feeling of freedom,” he said. “You’re out on the road in your own little world. The phone is not ringing, nobody is bothering you. You go through stretches of pain and elation, just like in life.”
▪ Maria Cesca: Cesca, 57, of Deerfield Beach did her first Miami half marathon with a stress fracture in her foot. Three years later, she broke her shoulder when she fell into the bathtub she was cleaning. She ran anyway, wearing a sling, with one of her sons running alongside her to protect her from jostling.
Last year, she came close to missing the race because she was recovering from knee surgery.
“I didn’t think I would be able to do it, but the opportunity to run with my fellow streakers -- I couldn’t miss it,” said Cesca, whose husband and sons have either participated or volunteered every year. “I’m still passionate about it. I could run that beautiful course with my eyes closed.”
Cesca, an avid cyclist and marathoner who is an ambassador for Pearl Izumi athletic attire, has cut back on her mileage since she turned 50. She’s less competitive and more Zen in her approach.
“I’ve matured so much over this 20-year journey,” she said. “I used to have the to-do list in my head in my 30s when I went running, worrying about everything. I’ve learned how to control my mind, how to use running as a form of meditation. I’m not focusing on the watch. If I’m slow, I get to see more things and talk to more people. It’s the human race, and with all the division in the world, it’s a chance to be unified in purpose and joy.”
Cesca, a native of Brazil, has another streak going: She has cycled for 177 days straight. She’s concerned that may end when she visits her son in snowy upstate New York later this month. She’s looking for an indoor venue.
As for the Miami race, “I’ve already got Jan. 29, 2023, blocked off on my calendar,” she said. “If I can, I’ll go until I’m 90.”
▪ Rolando Colmenares: Colmenares has run 15 full Miami marathons and four half marathons. He will do the full on Sunday. Last year, he won the streaker race around the park in 3:33.
Colmenares, 51, of Doral, was so determined not to let his streak end in 2014 that he ran while still recovering from a bad trampoline landing that necessitated meniscus surgery. The closest call was in 2018 when he postponed hernia surgery and invented a home-made device out of a halved tennis ball and a water-bottle belt to keep himself intact for 26.2 miles.
“The ball was like a soft convex lid that kept everything pushed inside,” he said. “I should patent it.”
Colmenares has done triathlons and ultra marathons and ran a personal best of 3:06 at the New York City Marathon. He hopes to break 4 hours on Sunday.
“Miami is my hometown marathon and my best challenge,” he said. “My favorite part is on Tigertail Avenue in Coconut Grove. But the weather can be brutal. I remember one year it was so hot I hit the wall at Miami City Hall. I lay down on the sidewalk and told myself, ‘You are going to finish, no matter what.’ I started walking. I ate a banana. After Mercy Hospital I was able to jog. I got across the line and made it my intention to run this race forever.”
▪ Steven Tonkinson: Tonkinson ran one full Miami marathon in 2016 wearing a 25-pound ShelterBox strapped to his back. He serves on the board of directors of the disaster-relief charity, and has been deployed around the world to help survivors of hurricanes, earthquakes and floods by distributing the boxes, which contain such essential items as tents, blankets, toolkits, solar lamps and water storage and purification equipment.
“That was the toughest one,” Tonkinson said from a lift line in Utah, where he was snowboarding in 4-degree weather on Thursday. He plans to run his 18th Miami half marathon on Sunday in temperatures forecast to range from 69 to 79 degrees. “One year I ran after tearing my pectoral tendon while doing a bench press. I had to hold my arm tight against my chest. That was awkward.
“Then there was the year my alarm didn’t go off, I woke up super late, had to sprint to the starting line 30 minutes after the gun and luckily was able to join the people in the last corral.”
Tonkinson, 42, a financial advisor who lives in Coconut Grove, said his first Miami half marathon in 2003 set him on a path that has led to Ironman triathlons, ultra marathons, even an upcoming climbing challenge during which participants have 36 hours to summit the Snowbasin peak in Utah 13 times in order to equal the elevation of Mount Everest.
“The Miami half sparked my desire to push the envelope in endurance events,” he said.
Tonkinson keeps coming back because he loves the Miami course, especially sunrise on Ocean Drive and dolphin sightings along the Venetian Causeway.
“Mile 17 goes right by my house so after I finish, I take Metrorail home and cheer the full marathoners,” he said. “Miami gives me a goal to start the new year and get my training on track.
“It’s amazing it’s been 20 years already. I started this at age 22 so I could be a 40- or 50-year streaker. “
This story was originally published February 4, 2022 at 12:23 AM.
