Running News Daily

This group that became 80 runners accepted my 500 mile June 6 Challenge

Yesterday, June 6, was Global Running Day.  A day celebrating running.  It is exciting to have our own day, celebrating what many of us do daily or at least regularly. 

Among other things the day is about inspiring people.  At noon the day before I had just finished doing my daily run-to-lunch few miles. 

I was enjoying an avocado toast and the best ice tea in town before heading back to the office.  Knowing that Global Running Day was the next day, I was thinking that My Best Runs needed to do something.  

I knew there were already a lot of well thought out programs taking place June 6.  I decided, on the spot, that we would do something just for the fun of running.  We would run our challenge like a road race back in the 1970's.  

Since we needed to get the word out quickly, we would use my Facebook account to reach people.  I would record everything by hand.  Making things more interesting,  I was flying down to our MBR/Ujena office in Mexico in the middle of the day Wednesday.  (I would be out of touch for nearly five hours.) 

There would be no entry fee and no prizes.  There would be no official results.  It was all about running.  We would not be raising money for a cause.  Each of us would run on June 6 and log in miles on my FB account. 

Just to see if we could do it, my goal was for our group to run at least 500 miles June 6 and hopefully have 100 participants   Everyone had to post their miles by midnight. 

In the end, 80 people posted 560.12 miles for our My Best Runs Global Running Day 500 Mile Challenge.  We did it.  We showed the world that a group of people can come together (with no notice) from all over the world and run the equivalent distance from San Francisco to San Diego. 

All types of runners from slow to fast joined our challenge.  I am very proud of each and every participant but I would like to mention some of our gang here. 

We had two time Boston Marathon winner (Geoff Smith) post 10.5 miles, Co-owner of Worlds Marathons Malin Andersson from Sweden posted 6.2 miles, Bertrand Newson who heads up a popular bay area running group (2L2Q) posted 8.45 miles and Willie Korir from Kenya posted the most miles with 22.5.  Verity Breen posted the most miles for a female hitting 19 miles and Boston Marathon historian Tom Derderian ran 5 miles.  The youngest female to win Bay To Breakers (age 11) who ran her first marathon at age 5 Mary Etta Britano now 55  posted 10 miles.

Julie who we met at the front desk of our hotel in Paris ran 5 miles, Ram VenKatraman who heads up a major running group in Mumbai, India ran 4.69 miles and super ultra-marathon star Michael Wardian ran 12.5 miles.  Phil Camp who among other things won the 4th annual Marine marathon (1979) posted 8.3 miles.

Roger Wright used to weigh 278 pounds a few years back before he started running marathons logged 13.5 miles and ultra runner since the early 1970's superstar Frank Bozanich ran 9 miles. Joshua Holmes Ultra runner and Run It Fast founder posted 2 miles.

Brent Weigner who has run more marathons in more countries than anyone posted 1.5 miles, and the list goes on and on. 

One common thing about our group of 80 runners is that everyone loves running.  Until our next challenge! Run on...  I ran 6.6 miles which I thought was only fitting.  This was our first Run The World Challenge.