Penhold teacher overcomes injury, travel delay to run in Boston Marathon
Willa Wanke hit her first of many roadblocks before she even started heading down to the prestigious Boston Marathon.
The Grade 1 teacher from Jessie Duncan School in Penhold was still recovering from orthopedic knee surgery and was wavering on whether or not to even travel to Boston. In the end, she decided she would walk half the marathon and run the other with the goal of simply finishing.
Then she forgot her shoes in her car when she arrived at the Calgary airport the day before the event, and had time to only tie them onto her carry-on backpack before boarding the plane for the connector flight in Toronto – a city in the midst of a massive ice storm. She landed at 6:00 a.m. and began a different kind of marathon, as a number of flights were delayed and ultimately canceled throughout the next 12 hours.
Early into the delay, a runner from Vancouver named Lisa Dinh noticed the shoes tied onto Willa’s backpack and struck up a conversation. It was Lisa’s first Boston Marathon and she was frantic to join her husband and family who had already arrived in Boston. Willa watched as Lisa’s hopes were raised and then dashed as each plane was canceled, and became determined to find a way to get the young woman to her first ‘Boston’.