Trending
Sydney Burke gleefully showed off her race bib Saturday morning, as she was about to embark on her first Ogden Newspapers Half Marathon Classic. It was a big weekend overall for Burke, the daughter of Steven and Dr. Raina Burke of Wheeling. Saturday was the half marathon. Sunday was her graduation from The Linsly School.
If there were any graduation jitters, she was about to run them out of her system and then some.
“I’ve been watching it most of my life,” Burke said. “My friend and I just finished our track season, and we decided, why not finish our track season with a half marathon?”
Burke’s Linsly classmate and friend Bridget Zimmerman would join her on this challenge, one that lives up to the definition of that word, with the steep hills that are found throughout the course. The two would take on an abbreviated but aggressive 17-day training plan to get ready for the race. High school track had them in shape — Burke focused on the 1,600-meter run on Linsly’s team — and they turned up the volume for Saturday’s 13.1-mile run.
“We ran 10 miles last Saturday and we were OK,” Burke said. “I mean, we were pretty slow, but we were OK.”
With the challenge ahead, Burke said her and Zimmerman’s goal was simple.
“We just want to finish,” she said.