Congratulations Mr. Lee!

Stephen Lee, a math teacher at Centennial High School, recently ran a Disney marathon and placed in the top 14% of all runners! 

When COVID-19 began in April 2020, Lee was unable to go to the gym. Once people were allowed to be out again, he started to run in hopes of getting in shape. On his first run, he ran three miles with a pace of 14 minutes per mile. “The next day I was hurting but I told myself that I had to keep at it,” Lee said, and ran the same route, but with a 16 minute mile pace this time around. He knew he could only improve from there.

When October 2020 came around, Lee was still running and had been adding distance to his routes without getting tired. Lee trains by waking up at 4:00 a.m. and running seven and a half miles before school. When his runs started to reach 10 miles, he thought, “I can run 10 miles, maybe I can start training for a marathon.”  From that point on, he started looking for marathons and ended up picking a Disney marathon, because “it is flat and lots of distractions (Performers, running through the 4 parks, [etc)].”

Disney came around in no time and after continuous training, he was ready. Lee’s experience running through the parks was great.  He stated, “I had a lot of fun looking at the parks from a different perspective.”

Before entering the marathon, Lee had two goals. One was being able to finish the race, and the second was to complete it in under five hours. He was successfully able to achieve both of them with a finishing time of 4:32. He placed in the top 14% of all runners and the top 22% of male runners.

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