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A nurse in North Carolina competes in an Ironman triathlon to raise money to help cancer patients. After graduating from UNC Greensboro in 2012 and starting a career as a nurse with the cancer center at Wake Forest, Colleen Sands was encouraged by her triathlete father to start training for an Ironman competition.
She competed in her first full Ironman in 2016. That Ironman was to prove to herself that she had what it takes to survive the grueling swimming, biking, and marathon run, but when she decided to do it again six years later, she had a different goal in mind. She wanted to honor her patients on the 10-year anniversary of the beginning of her career in nursing and help raise money to benefit them.
So this summer, Sands competed in the Lake Placid Ironman on the day after the 10-year nursing anniversary with a goal to raise $10-thousand. She didn’t tell her patients about the race, instead hoping the focus would stay on them. Largely on donations from friends, family, and people on social media, Sands blew past her goal, raising more than $12-thousand for the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Cancer Patient Support Program. And she says that the support since the race has been overwhelmingly positive.
Source: My FOX 8