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26 miles of worship--Dan Garcia
style
By Daniel Russell
Although
most ORU students would agree that the 26-mile Cow Town Marathon
in Fort Worth, Texas, is a great opportunity obtain aerobics points,
few will ever place it on their "to-do" lists. That is
why 20-year-old junior International Community Development major
Dan Garcia is exceptional.
"The only way you're gonna beat anybody is if you hurt more
than they do," said Garcia, who finished with a time of 3 hours,
22 minutes at the Feb. 23 Cow Town Marathon, just before being hauled
away in an ambulance due to dehydration.
"Mentally you just have to put up with pain and put it behind
you. It's constantly a war in your head," Garcia said.
Garcia first became interested in endurance racing during his high
school years as a cross country runner for North Shore High School
in Houston, Texas, but never actually ran in a marathon until this
year.
"I wanted to run a marathon but my coach wouldn't let me do
it because he was afraid it would ruin the rest of my season,"
Garcia said, who has since learned that it can take up to two weeks
to fully recover from a 26-mile marathon.
Junior Steve Elliott, friend of Garcia, admires the mental toughness
required to run a marathon but has chosen to admire this from a
distance.
"I'll go running but I would never do that to my body,"
Elliott said.
But how does a person train for this type of an endurance race?
"As far as training goes, you just have to put in a lot of
miles. A lot of biking miles, a lot of running miles," Garcia
said.
And for Garcia, every mile is special. "Whenever I run it's
totally by the grace of God that I'm able to do all this stuff because
I've had a lot of injuries."
As a child, Garcia was diagnosed with a degenerative bone disease
that doctors believed would limit his ability to walk and take away
his ability to run. He has also experienced a painful ankle injury
and had surgery to remove cartilage from his left knee.
Having overcome all of these setbacks, Garcia does not consider
running to be a burden. "Whenever I run I feel like I could
run forever because I feel like God's smiling. The whole reason
I'm out there is the grace of God."
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