Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/542735
Health and Wellness Magazine • 39 There were no spectators, or porta-potties, so she had to duck into an all-night Fat Burger for a pit stop. In Chile, she brought no water, assuming there would be some along the course. She was wrong. She couldn't drink from the local tap, so she went hours without fluids. "It was tough, but you just find ways to get through the dark places," she says. One thing that helped: Reading a card from a Girls on the Run participant prior to each race. Some girls came from broken homes or poverty. Many participants had struggled with low self-esteem until Girls on the Run offered them a glimpse of their potential. All were following Cortese's progress online. "Casey showed these girls that all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and you can reach your goal – that it is not about how fast you do it but that you just do it," says Lisa Johnson, Girls on the Run of the Rockies executive director. "That's an important message." The lowest and highest points of Cortese's trip came at the end. As their plane prepared to touch down in Antarctica for her seventh and final half-marathon, the pilot announced the fog was too thick, and he couldn't land. "My heart just dropped into my stomach. It was such a let-down," she says. They flew the 2.5 hours back to Chile to wait it out for a few days. After they were told it was the worst flying conditions in 30 years, and the Antarctica course looked unlikely, she and a friend decided to run the Chile course again to get their seventh run in. She ran it harder and faster than all the others (2:25:00) but just as she approached the finish line, she heard a friend calling from the window of the hotel. The Antarctica trip was back on, and they were leaving in two hours. Cortese spent that night camped in a tent in a rocky, wind- swept field on King George Island and awoke to 20-degree temperatures and snow. As she climbed out of her tent at 5:30 a.m., she changed her plans. She decided to run the full marathon. Eight hours later, after a frigid but spectacular run past blue glaciers and penguin colonies, she crossed the finish line, greeted by applauding fellow runners (including 65-year- old Girls on the Run fundraiser Ila Brandli, who had just finished her 100th marathon) and one sea lion. She had run eight races on seven continents in 11 days and raised $12,000-plus for Girls on the Run. "I just kept thinking I had this group of girls back home that I was running for, and I would get a big smile on my face," she says. "That last mile was amazing." "Casey showed these girls that all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and you can reach your goal – that it is not about how fast you do it but that you just do it." Girls on the Run of the Rockies provides after-school programming for 20,000 girls along the Front Range. Girls meet twice a week in small teams for 12 weeks, learning about teamwork, relationships, and self-understanding via non-competitive running games. At the end, they run a 5K. Details: www.girlsontherun.org.