NFL Players Run Miami Half Marathon for Charity – runnersworld.com

Sundays are typically reserved for football, but this past Sunday, five NFL players took on a different sport at the Miami Marathon.

Led by Buster Skrine, a cornerback for the New York Jets, the players ran the half marathon distance to raise money for the ’s New York and Atlanta chapters, .

The group Skrine brought was almost entirely made up of fellow Jets, including defensive backs Marcus Maye and Terrence Brooks, and defensive ends Leonard Williams and Henry Anderson. The only non-Jets participant, defensive back Marcus Williams, plays for the Bears.

Two of the five players weigh in at over 300 pounds, and while they are all used to short bursts of activity on the field, the half marathon distance required much longer use of their athleticism and endurance.

“I’m like, ‘Man, who would want to just run 26 miles?’” . “But I guess it’s like on a lot of people’s to-do list in their life. And you look it up, and people cry and stuff, just dealing with the accomplishment…I said, ‘I’m not going to go to that extreme and run 26, but we can do 13 miles.’”

[Smash your goals with a Runner’s World Training Plan, designed for any speed and any distance.]

On Sunday, the players—some who had trained, others who did not—took off and completed the race. Skrine, who prepared for the half, led the group, finishing with a time of 1:59:58.

The others were just happy to finish, especially Leonard Williams.

“Clearly, we thought it was crazy,” after the race. “We’re 300 pounds. We never ran this much before. We do all short burst stuff and we’ve never trained for this before, but it was a fun challenge. We all wanted to do it as a team.”

Leonard Williams finished with Anderson, both clocking a 2:31:41, though Leonard did not run for an official time, as did Brooks. Marcus Williams rounded out the group with a 2:45:36. Leonard Williams said he learned a lot from the race.

“What I learned is lose weight,” , “and do this again when I retire.”