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Show iiLb c MARATHON - IIKRK VK CO.MK. "We're Ready! !" SUSC students begin their third March of Dimes Marathon Run Jan. 28. Students instrumental in this year's event are, left to right, front: Mark Lewicki and Jeff Boatman; Boat-man; Bak, Pat Hayden, Lori Lambros, Bob Weidmann, Sherrie Bowden, Kevin Griffiths, Valerie Rainey and Mark Rainey. I Plans finalized for March of Dimes Run Every evening Kevin Giffiths and some 50 other Southern Utah State College students rush home from class, don several layers of warm clothing, and go into training for their third annual March of Dimes Marathon Run, Cedar City residents are accustomed to seeing runners zipping west by the airport, air-port, east up Cedar Canyon, north towards the municipal golf course and south towards Hamilton Fort. "The girls are running three miles a day, the fellows are hitting the five-mile mark," Griffiths, a red-headed senior chemistry major from Beaver, says. He is one of three co-chairman and one of the many, many committee members who have worked since October to pull the fund-raising venture together. Proceeds from the 310-plus mile jaunt will go to the New Baby Intensive Care Unit at the University of Utah Medical Center. Griffiths was one of six SUSC students invited to visit the center last October. "It was the most incredible place, not a large room at all, yet there were a third of the nurses in the hospital working there," he said. "After visiting the center-which serves the entire intermountain area via air ambulance-we knew where we wanted proceeds from this year's marathon to go." "Parowan High School runners will meet us Friday at noon on the corner of 10 North Main. From there we will run up over Cedar Mountain to Highway 89, then north to Salt Lake City via Manti and Thistle Junction, arriving at the March of Dimes Telerama at the Salt Palace around 3 p.m. Sunday," Dave Furuta, coordinator of runner participation, explains. ex-plains. A different twist has been added to the Marathon this year. Girls will run five miles, boys ten, SUSC teachers and administrators ad-ministrators one--and all must dribble a basketball the entire distance. "This is difficult to do and will be especially so if we run into any snow," Furuta said, "but it has been an interest-generating interest-generating idea, and we certainly aren't lacking runners." SUSC began the marathon run in 1974 that first year part of the trip had to be completed on skis and snowshoes. "Emery and Kanab high schools ran to join us enroute that year," the Brighton, Colorado, industrial education major remembers. The second year, SUSC expanded the operation, inviting runners from Dixie College and the University of Utah to run alternate routes and several high schools to participate as runners and to help canvass communities along the way. "This year Dixie College, Dixie, Beaver, Milford, Delta and Fillmore high schools will run the alternate route up through Milford and Delta to join us at the Camp Williams Junction," Bob Weidmann, financial coordinator and co-chairman said. Runners from the College of Eastern Utah will meet the SUSC-Cedar High School group at Thistle Junction. Students from Richfield, South Sevier and Panguitch high schools will help canvass the area. "We are very pleased with the support generated for the run. We've found that Utah residents are willing to support our cause and we certainly appreciate it," Weidmann, a senior zoology major from Garden Grove, CA, said. "We figure that over a hundred people at SUSC alone will participate either as runners, back-up personnel, or as volunteers to take care of the hundred-plus hundred-plus minute details that must be worked out to make the. Marathon a success," he said. "Our ulitmate goal is to reach $20,000 for the New Baby Intensive Care Unit. It's a lot of money but there are a lot of schools and a lot of people working to make the project a success. We can do it," the co-chairmen co-chairmen agree. |