Modern day Forrest Gump runs across the country in 100 days

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/modern-day-forrest-gump-...

Modern day Forrest Gump runs across the country

in 100 days
New York Daily News
NICOLE LYN PESCE
2 hrs ago

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4/9/15, 1:53 AM

Modern day Forrest Gump runs across the country in 100 days

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/modern-day-forrest-gump-...

Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Newscom/ZUMA Press Support crew member Bob MacGuire watches as Mike
Stohler and Daren Wendell stretch while taking a break from running on Old Route 66 near Atrisco Vista

This runner has got Forrest Gump-tion.

A Michigan man running 100 ultramarathons in 100 days will finish his amazing feat
in Times Square on Friday - that is, if his battered feet can get him there.
Ive lost three toenails, and I probably have two more on the way out, laughs Daren
Wendell, 33, speaking from eastern Pennsylvania, where he was just recovering
Tuesday after his 97th consecutive 29-mile run a 5K farther than a marathons
requisite 26.2 miles.
But Im feeling surprisingly better than most people think, he adds. My body has
conditioned itself to run 30 miles a day and be OK.
He set out from the Santa Monica Pier in California on New Years Day, and has been
hoofing it across the country ever since, much like the titular character in the 1994
Tom Hanks movie.
Wendell will have run through 10 pairs of sneakers and bounded across 14 states
before completing the punishing 2,900-mile trek through the scorching Mojave
Desert, the frozen Missouri countryside, past Illinois fields shrouded in fog and herds
of shaggy Pennsylvania buffalo, and everything in between.
Hed previously walked 3,400 miles across the country in 374 days, which he says
was actually much worse.
The biggest difference is mental, he says. That took a long, long time. I didnt have
a crew. I just took a backpack.
Wendell, a professional fundraiser, spent two and a half years preparing for this
cross-country running challenge to raise $140,000 for ActiveWater, which provides
safe drinking water to Ethiopian communities.
He ran an additional 3,800 miles while training for the actual trip, often pushing

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Modern day Forrest Gump runs across the country in 100 days

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himself to run 20 miles after work. I believe I should use my gifts and my passion to
help others in need, and I do that through long distance and endurance adventures,
he says.
A two-person crew, including his wife and a friend, drives ahead in a Ford Expedition
rigged with a bathroom and meets him every 8 to 10 miles so that he can relieve
himself.
Thats not say there havent been a couple of under the bridge moments along the
way, he admits.
He wakes up at 6 a.m. each day, eats breakfast, and starts pounding the pavement
by 7 a.m.. He runs for about eight hours (walking when hes tired, and eating three
or four times on the run) before finishing up around 3 p.m. Then he posts on social
media, showers, eats dinner, and hits the hay by 7:30 p.m.
I do a little stretch routine after, and I get a lot of sleep, like 10 hours at least, he
says. I do not have a massage therapist or anything like that.
Hes been lucky to avoid any serious injuries so far. I have toenails that fall off. I have
blisters that hurt. I have some hip flexor pain, he says. But these are just overuse
injuries; nothing chronic that can put me down.
Traffic is what scares him the most, as hes been running along major Interstates like
I-40.
Ive been really lucky that I havent been hit by a car, he says.
Theres safety in numbers, and hes been inviting the public join him in burning shoe
leather through his daily social media posts. He says 200 people have hit the road
alongside him over the past three months, and he expects to run the homestretch
into Manhattan from Fairfield, N.J., with a pack of 30 people joining at various points
along the way.
It really is amazing, he says. These are friends, these are family members, and
these are strangers that read about this in the paper, and then went to the website
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Modern day Forrest Gump runs across the country in 100 days

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/modern-day-forrest-gump-...

and signed up to run with me. Ive made a ton of new friends.
Follow his journey or donate to ActiveWater at RunDarenRun.com.
*
BY T H E N U M B E R S
D i s t a n c e : 2,900 miles
Averate daily mileage: 29.9 miles
Ste p s : 45,000-50,000 per day
T i m e : 100 days
St a te s c o ve re d : 14
Pa c e : 10- to 11-minute mile
S n e a ke r s : 10 pairs, changed every 300 miles
C a l o r i e s b u r n e d : About 7,000 a day
To e n a i l s l o s t : 3 (so far)
M o n e y r a i s e d f o r c h a r i t y : $126,000 and counting toward $140,000 goal

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