Dan's Papers July 31, 2009 by Dan's Papers

DAN'S PAPERS, July 31, 2009 Page 28 www.danshamptons.com

Seven Marathons

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allotted. Blistered and bleeding feet, sore knees, running on volcanic rock in Antarctica, being chased down by angry penguins and seals — it was a rough run. The team ran two ultra marathons (over 62 miles) within the first 19 hours. In Los Angeles, a huge crowd came out to support and encourage the team, and some even ran alongside the men. On the plane ride to Australia, Mark Kenna an Olympic physical therapist, found the runners and began stretching them out on the plane — he even took them into his home when they lost their contact in Australia. They stayed with Kenna. His family did their laundry and his daughter joined in their ultra marathon that day. “Everywhere we went, people just embraced us,” Cuddihy said. In Hong Kong, Kershaw fell ill with a parasite

The power team

Cuddihy in Chile

and was taken to the hospital after collapsing. That was the end of the race for him. Jones had trouble with his leg, and Dudley grew dehydrated while running in South Africa and had to stay back a day to finish. The team had barely slept, aside from catnaps in airports, and ate whenever they had time — mostly pizza and fast food, whatever was most convenient. Luckily, Jones was able to finish in Hong Kong. Cuddihy and Jones accomplished their goal just 29 minutes short of the 7-day time limit. Dudley was able to finish running the distance just a day behind his teammates. With two teammates down, the wonderful, inspired fans that came out to support the runners kept them going. In South Africa, they were greeted by 25 girls from a local Catholic school, singing to welcome them. The weather was wet and awful, a downpour nearly the whole time they ran, but still they were met with bagpipe players at the end of the day. In London, the men couldn’t even walk through the airport without help. Jones had to push Cuddihy in a wheelchair while using the chair to lean on, but they continued their adventure. In their second lap around Hyde Park, Ricky Garcia, a banker from Pacific Palisades in California, ran out from behind the

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bushes. He had been trying to catch up with the 7in7on7 team since they had run in Los Angeles 3 days earlier, but kept missing them. After chasing them around the world, he finally found them, and joined the runners for that final ultra marathon. Flying around the world in seven days does a fair amount of damage to the environment, with 39 pounds of carbon emitted with each mile of these kinds of flights. Each member of the team flew an estimated 50,000 miles —that’s 300,000 miles for the whole crew — four runners, plus two people who traveled with the runners to deal with logistics and offer support. To offset the enormous quantities of emissions and damage to the environment caused by all of these flights, the 7in7on7 crew arranged for carbon offsets. With the help of Kershaw’s friend, Welshman Euros Jones Evans, and Windpower Wales, a Welsh company that works to protect the environment through the development of wind farm projects, agreed to plant as many trees as it takes to offset the extensive flight of the 7in7on7 team. This series of ultra marathons has not only set a world record, not only raised money for and attention to some great charities, but it has done so in an environmentally friendly way. What made this record-breaking run even more impressive is that the men were only novice runners. Chris Cuddihy, the eldest of the runners, had never run a marathon before this endeavor. Jack Jones had the most running expe(continued on page 36)

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