You CAN Do It; She Proved It

You CAN Do It; She Proved It

Jurga Stankeviciute Evans is a finisher.

Evans signed up for last Saturday’s Men’s Health Urbanathlon with the intention of completing it with friends. Then all her friends dropped out.

“They were like, ‘You’re not going to do it without us, are you?’ and I told them I would,” she said. “I wanted to do it.”

Evans, from Brooklyn, was among the 3,533 competitors who completed the 10-mile course, which featured Marine Corps training obstacles, trips to the tops of both the Arthur Ashe Tennis Stadium and CitiField,  and a final sprint that included scrambling over a field of taxis, a city bus, and scaling an 8-foot wall. The fastest time was posted by Javier Palacios Luna: a mind-blowing 1 hour, 4 minutes, 27 seconds.

It took Evans 3 1/2 hours. She was the final person to cross the fish line, and she got a little help at the end from Men’s Health contributor David Jack. But make no mistake: Evans DID it—at her own pace (with husband Edward by her side) and to prove a point.

“I’m big, almost 300 pounds,” she said. “But I wanted to do this to prove that though I’m heavy, I’m not out of shape. I’m healthy.”

And funny. Asked afterward if she ran any of the course, she shrugged and said, “I don’t run. If I’m running, you better run too, because something bad is going down.”

Jack, who helped Evans to navigate the cargo net over and off the city bus, as well as the wall, was impressed—and jazzed. (He gets like that a lot.)

“When I go home from something like this, it’s people [like Jurga] who I remember most,” said Jack, who served as the lead trainer in Men’s Health’s super-popular Spartacus DVD series. “I’m inspired by the folks who finish fastest. But the people who take the challenge to change their lives, even though every step on that course is difficult, those are the people that make a day like this special.”

So special, in fact, that Dave made a promise to Jurga: Come back and do this next year, and I’ll walk the whole course with you. They’re aiming to finish in 3 hours. And if you’re reading this and you need a push to challenge yourself, you’re invited as well. We’ll post a sign-up sheet soon if you want to commit to being in New York for Urbanathlon 2014.

Editor’s note: If you live in San Francisco, or just want an excuse to visit the Bay Area, come on out for the final leg in the Urbanathlon 2013 series, on Nov. 24. You can learn more about the event, or register, here.

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