By Adrienne Burch and Camille Corbett
More than 800 people will run in the inaugural Tuscaloosa Half Marathon Saturday, March 2. The event will raise money for ReadBAMARead, an organization started in the wake of the April 27, 2011 tornado to help refurnish elementary school libraries, and to an effort by the Kiwanis Club of Greater Tuscaloosa to rebuild elementary school playgrounds.
University of Alabama assistant gymnastics coach Dana Duckworth is a co-founder of ReadBAMARead. She said this marathon is meant to celebrate the regrowth of the city and raise money for their cause.
“The mayor said, ‘I want the route of the marathon to run through the path of the tornado because so much has been rebuilt,’” Duckworth said. “We want to celebrate so much regrowth and the people who are putting their lives back together.”
The path of the race runs through many of the areas that suffered significant damage from the tornado including Rosedale Court, Forest Lake, Alberta, Cedar Crest and along 15th Street, all areas that have seen significant regrowth.
“We want to use this year’s inaugural half marathon as an opportunity to celebrate how far the city has come in the past 23 months,” Kelsey Colglaizer, marketing chair of the half marathon, said.
Duckworth said she is most excited for the balloon release that will happen after the fun run at 9:30 a.m. She said there will be more than 15,000 balloons.
“We will have a short ceremony that will honor those that lost their lives, honor those that are rebuilding and honor the volunteers who are helping put our city back together,” she said.
ReadBAMARead hosted a 10k last year to begin raising money for the nonprofit, but this year they decided to expand to a half-marathon.
“We decided we wanted to do something bigger that would allow us to raise more money. Something that would be some kind of community event that would get more people involved,” Duckworth said.
The funds raised will be evenly distributed between the Kiwanis Club and ReadBAMARead. Kiwanis is helping to rebuild playgrounds at local elementary schools affected by the tornado, which Duckworth said fit so well with the goals of ReadBAMARead to restock the libraries of elementary schools.
“We’re rebuilding libraries for these kids, and they’re rebuilding playgrounds. So basically we got in bed together and said lets do this,” Duckworth said.
Duckworth said it has been rewarding to give back to the city of Tuscaloosa.
“My mission, my love in life is I don’t think life is how much money you make; it’s what you do with what you have,” Duckworth said. “It’s rewarding being able to give back and keep the money local to my wonderful town of Tuscaloosa that I consider home.”
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