Dallas, Texas is seeing its share of the winter blast the rest of the nation is enduring – with freezing temps, snow and ice, accidents galore, and on top of it all – the Dallas Marathon had to be canceled. The MetroPCS Dallas Marathon, which was expected to draw 25,000 runners, some of whom had trained for months is not going to happen.
This would have been the 44th running of this event.
Many marathon participants have already checked into hotels, flew into Dallas in anticipation of this well-established run, only to learn the event had to be canceled. “We regret that the race will not go on as planned,” Marathon organizers said in a written statement. “We are confident this decision is in the best interest of our runners, volunteers, spectators and the general public.”
Steve Pomerleau flew from Mississippi to Dallas specifically to run in the marathon. “I understand that it is the security issue,” he said. “I understand it, but I’m disappointed.”
“I was hoping we could have the decision before we could travel to Dallas for the marathon,” said Pomerleau. “I guess we’ll have the weekend in this closed town. We can’t even go out and celebrate. It’s kinda shut down.”
A little bummed the Dallas Marathon got canceled. Trained so hard for tomorrow. But I understand with the weather it's what's best.
— Roberto Daughtry (@Daughtry__) December 7, 2013
Organizers had 80 degree weather on Tuesday – it wasn’t until Thursday that the winter blast hit Dallas, and hard. That didn’t leave a lot of time to notify all of the participants.
The worst part though, is traveling to Dallas and training for months only to learn there will be no refunds made since the race is canceled because of bad weather. That also means, no marathon at all this year. For many runners, this Dallas Marathon left them cold and broke.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
