I would like to share this opportunity to tell you about a challenge I am undertaking this year. It is my intention to run through the Amazonia area in Brasil, Starting from the Atlantic Ocean in the state Maranhão all the way through to R. E. Chico Mendes in the state of Acre.
I plan to run the equivalent of a marathon a day. This is approximately a total 0f 3,200 km about 1,990 miles. I expect the journey to take between 12 and 13 weeks. I plan to run 6 days a week.
People have been amazed how someone of my age (I am 50) can possibly consider such a challenge and whilst I totally agree it is the challenge of a lifetime, I remember people saying the same thing about a single marathon and I trained and completed 8 of those 25 years ago.
I first got the idea to try to undertake this challenge when doing research on the Amazon rainforest for a tourism project I am undertaking, whilst learning more and more about the struggle and joining support and pressure groups I came across the story of a German cyclist Micha, who had cycled across the region in 1999 and an idea was born, later when trying to find the story again I came across the story of Martin Strel, a Slovakian swimmer who had just completed swimming the main river, Martin Strel 52 years of age swam 5,265 kilometers (3,272 miles) in 66 days and of course that finalized it for me as it seemed somebody needed to run it to complete the old triathlon scenario.
Whilst continuing my research into the area and in particular de-forestation and planning the run and the events in Copenhagen another idea struck me, one of my favourite films of all time is ‘Forest Gump’ starring Tom Hanks as you will probably remember if you have seen the film, one of the many things ‘Forest’ does is one day just sets off running for no apparent reason and ends up running across the USA and of course the media catch on to the idea and many people just join in.
Utilizing this idea I have decided to invite people to join me on parts of the run, I am sure it will be hard for people for many reasons to join me for the whole trip but hopefully people may want to join me even for just one ‘Marathon’ or possible for a week or more.
I aim to promote this for the next 3 months and see the response and then we shall see what decision to make depending on interest, logistics and administration. If this idea is successful I hope people will be able to raise sponsorship for the ‘Sky save a billion trees project’.
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