2227 miles…

…is how far Martin Parnell has run since Jan 1st.

I’ll let that sink in.

Or 3587kms if you live near me.

wow. 85 Marathons as of today. I asked him on our run on Sunday “what is the hardest part of running this much each day?” he says “Getting out of bed”. yeah. I run relatively long once a week and I get the same feeling. I can’t imagine what goes through his head when he goes out 5 days a week and runs 42.2 kms each of those 5 days. That is exactly 211kms a week. I’d have to look and see if I put that on my car each week…

Yeah. so. The dink I can be sometimes, I arrange to have everyone meet at Sikome lake at 8:30 to hear Martin speak and get our run started. Caroline even emailed me a few days before and told me the sign said the park entrance doesn’t open until 9am. I’m like ‘ No, no… that is for the lake, not the park… the park opens earlier.

nope. wrong… dink…

I am the first one parked at the locked gate. the second person is Martin (of course).

Dammit. I was freaking out. then out of the woodwork, many more people than I expected start to show up. so here we have a bit of a traffic jam.  Traci and Andrew showed up and I asked them to go around to Bow Bottom to see if that entrance is open. I had actually ran down to the lower parking lot before everyone got there to see what I could see. nothing. no-one. I started to hyperventilate a little, thinking about what a non-planning dink I can be, when we saw a parks truck coming up the hill… oh.thank.god. then he turned right and went to a different part of the park. Well, now, I hopped the fence and started chasing this truck… he (on his own) turned around and let us in.

The dink gets a pass, this time. Welcome to Fish Creek Park Martin, right this way…

So we all caravanned our way down into the park and lo and behold the gates at Bow Bottom open at 8. wtf. anyway…

We had an amazing group of 30 people, which was probably 15 more than I expected, so that was great! Thanks everyone who showed up and ran!

Once we figured everyone was there I introduced Martin and he told us about his Marathon Quest.

Those of you who read this from areas not in Calgary, please take a look and post a post on Marathon Man, it is an amazing story and he is raising money for an amazing cause. Kids, and Play. If you are so inclined, give him some money. He is doing this whole thing by himself, and can use all the help he can get to get to his goal. You can click here, then click on Sponsor me and you can donate through the ‘Cool Kids Run Club’ fundraising team. Much appreciated.

I’ll ask it again. Glaven, Anthony and Shannon (newly married), Zoe, Run Bitch Run, Thomas, Georgia Snail, Brooklyn, Barefoot Josh, Thin Trade, Robert, Adam, Dawn, Sweat Science, Christopher McDougall and the rest of you lurkers, PLEASE do a post for Martin on your blogs. It is an amazing feat he is undertaking and he is an excellent human being who deserves all the attention he can get for his worthy cause. DO IT!

DO IT!!!

He needs a soap sponsor Josh, see what you can do dammit.

We went for our run, we all ran together for a 3k loop, then everyone split up to do their own distances.

My group was running 18 with Martin, so off we went. You’d think a guy like that, running all these marathons, would be an ‘A’ type, over the top GUY, but he was a really down to earth person who believes in what he is doing. We just talked about stuff. normal stuff.

Caroline, Tracy and Liz were running with us as well, and with them, it’s always funny. Tracy turned 30 the night before and had imbibed a bit, but being the ‘superfriend’ she is, she was here with a smile. At 10k, she was thinking it may not have been such a good idea. the beer helmet took hold for a while, but she did really well and kept up. We stopped not to soon after at Swifty’s for a cookie, and that seemed to help everyone.

I don’t know why Caroline is sitting on the ground.

After a long walk up the only hill of the route, we turned onto a path where this guy was just staring at Martin. We stopped for a photo op with the view, and Liz looks at this guy and just blurts out excitedly “IT’s the Marathon Man!!” and keeps on going without another word… LOL.

We made our way down the ridge in Mackenzie Lake and once we were back in the park we merged onto the main path back to the lake. As we approached the other path there were two ladies running and the one does a double take and says (think the dude from Forrest Gump) “ Hey, you’re the guy, yeah! you’re the running guy, running guy!” , it was too funny. Martin was, as always, was very gracious and signed her boob for her asked her name, and thanked her for the support.

We finished our portion of the run, had a stretch and a Cinnamon Bun and said our goodbyes. Martin still had 24k left, but I was done, so that was good! hehe.

Thanks for running with us Martin, we’ll do it again soon! Good luck, stay healthy, and keep getting up in the morning, the year will be soon done and you’ll be missing it!