Most of us will never run a marathon. Even serious runners might run 10 or 20 in their lifetime. So how about running one Monday to Friday for an entire year? That's what one Cochrane man is planning.
On a crisp Alberta morning, Martin Parnell and his friend Andrew Searle run a marathon - 42.2 kilometres. For most of us, that's just a dream, but Parnell's dream is to run a marathon every single day for a year.
"I then talked to my wife and told her I wanted to run 365 marathons so she sent me to the doctor."
Parnell's doctor said running a marathon every day was too much.
"He said, let's go to say 250 where you run five days a week and have two recovery days."
Starting January 1st, Parnell will run a marathon loop five times a week, every week in 2010. That's a total of 10,550 kilometres.
Parnell is raising money for the charity Right to Play
"We are looking at raising, in total, $250-thousand."
Right to Play uses sport to promote health, education and peace in the developing world.
To raise awareness of the charity, Parnell is taking his marathon of marathons to 40 local schools, but his school visits are not fundraisers.
"It's awareness. It's too tough on the schools, they already have a lot of fundraising going on, it's too tough, so this is strictly awareness for the kids."
Most of Parnell's 250 marathons will be on a picturesque route through the Alberta foothills; Parnell says he'll be running it rain shine or snow.
"If there's a foot and a half of snow, I'll have snowshoes on my back and I'll put them on and I'm going to use snow shoes to get through."
Parnell's website, www.marathonquest250.com/blog, will also supply real time monitoring of his location and speed as well as his heart rate and breathing.
