DUVAL COUNTY, Fla. — It was a packed house at the Beaches Sunday morning, as the 15th annual DONNA Marathon kicked off with an even greater push to further breast cancer research.
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Even the rain didn’t hold people back from supporting their loved ones through the finish line. Runners took off from the Seawalk Pavilion at 7:30 a.m.
The theme this year was “Together,” as the race made an in-person return from being virtual last year.
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As men’s marathon winner Christopher McCaffrey puts it, the race meant so much more than a medal.
“The families that go through the challenges of cancer or disease or those that have lost loved ones, that challenge is way greater than what I got to go through today,” McCaffrey said. “It’s all those families who’ve been affected. This was for you guys, and I couldn’t be happier to have won it.”
He said he ran for his mom and everyone who has been impacted in some way by breast cancer.
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Runners came from all 50 states and even 9 countries, totaling more than 4,000 people. Even more joined in online.
Another big goal of the race was to provide financial relief for families battling the illness.
The Marathon Weekend was organized by Donna Deegan, who has survived breast cancer three times, and is 15 years cancer-free. She’s also running for mayor of Jacksonville.
“I just can’t even tell you how emotional it is out there,” Deegan said. “This was perfect. It was so perfect. The stories of people -- I ran next to a woman the whole way back who is a Stage 4 breast cancer survivor out here doing it.”
Jasmine Soto has run the DONNA three times.
“I have a family member that’s beat breast cancer twice,” Soto said. “So this is the third year I’ve been doing it for her. She actually ran the 5K virtually back home yesterday, so I was really proud of her.”
This was Sherry Green’s first DONNA Marathon. She shared who she chose to run for.
“I’m an oncology nurse,” Green said. “I have tons of breast cancer patients, so I’m running for every one of them.”
The DONNA is the only U.S. marathon dedicated solely to raising funds to fight breast cancer.
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Amanda Napolitano is the Executive Director of the DONNA Foundation.
“It’s been two years since we’ve welcomed people across the finish line at the National Marathon to Finish Breast Cancer, and there’s just nothing like it,” Napolitano said. “We’re all about celebrating survivorship with hands raised in the air, survivor after survivor after survivor finishing. A woman just finished who had chemo on Friday. So it’s just about celebrating love and the emotions are high.”
Christopher McCaffrey won the men’s marathon, and Meaghan Murray-Neuberger won the women’s marathon.
“There’s nothing like a finish line baby, nothing like a finish line,” Deegan said.
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