South Florida’s Van Zyl Puts Icing on the Cake with Third Straight Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathon Win

Filed in: Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon Weekend, runDisney

Latest victory gives Anton Van Zyl sweep of all three Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathons; Carrie Majeranowski wins back-to-back women’s division crowns; Van Zyl and Majeranowski among 14,000 registered runners competing in nighttime race at Walt Disney World Resort

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (Nov. 10, 2012) – Anton Van Zyl of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. won the Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathon again on Saturday night and he has the pictures to prove it.

Van Zyl, who finished in 1:14:19, stopped momentarily at various times during the 13.1 race to take more than a dozen snapshots of Disney’s beloved characters along the route and still managed to finish ahead of the field. It was another impressive performance to go with the two others the past two years, giving him three straight now. If not for his frequent stops to capture his photo keepsakes, his margin of victory would have been far greater than the eight-second gap between him and second-place finisher Rolando Cruz Castro of Puerto Rico (1:14:27). Michael Creason of Charlotte, NC, was third with a time of 1:15:48.

“You know you feel a little pressure after you’ve won twice and a lot of people were expecting me to do well,” admitted Van Zyl, who ran an Ironman triathlon in Hawaii just before the Disney event. “So I wasn’t so sure (if he’d win), but I pulled it out somehow.”

It was a night for repeats as Carrie Majeranowski of Satellite Beach, FL., won the women’s division for the second straight year. She finished in 1:27:16, just ahead of Meaghan Munroe of Brookline, Mass (1:28:43) and Samantha Helgesen of Bristol, Wis. (1:29:46).

The 13.1-mile race took runners from ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney through Animal Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios before finishing at Epcot, where runners and their guests celebrated with a post-race party at the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival that lasted into the wee hours of Sunday morning.

All finishers received a commemorative Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathon medal and had the opportunity to experience the Health and Fitness Expo at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. The expo featured the latest running and fitness merchandise, equipment and apparel as well as seminars on training techniques from experts such runDisney training consultant Jeff Galloway and runDisney nutritionist Tara Gidus.