MED PROF TRAINS FOR SPRING CROSS-COUNTRY RUN FOR CHARITY

B.U. BRIDGE

As Boston marathoners prepare for next week's haul from Hopkinton to Copley Square, Hap Farber is girding himself for a slightly longer run. This May, Farber and nine other ultradistance runners will run a combined 3,372 miles from San Francisco to Boston in 24 days to raise money for five local children's charities.

The odyssey, called TREK USA: Transcontinental Relay Embracing Kids, begins May 1 at Pac Bell Park, where the San Francisco Giants will host a pregame fundraiser for the TREK team. Over the next three weeks, the team will run approximately 150 miles a day, crossing through 12 states before finishing at Fenway Park, where the Red Sox will host another fundraiser. The goal is to raise over $500,000 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Jimmy Fund, the Doug Flutie Foundation for Autism, the Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care, the Red Auerbach Youth Foundation, and the Dave McGillivray Foundation, which will designate monies to the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Farber, a MED professor of medicine and director of the pulmonary hypertension center at Boston Medical Center, has covered a lot of distance in his running career. Originally a distance cyclist, he got hooked on triathlons about 20 years ago, completing his first marathon in 1983 at the end of an ironman-length triathlon on Cape Cod. Since then he's ticked off about 45 marathons, a few ultramarathons (50 miles), numerous triathlons, and the Vermont 100-miler.

Farber, 55, says Trek USA will be unlike any challenge he's undertaken before. “This is an opportunity I'll never have again,” he says. “The idea of seeing the country like this is fascinating in and of itself. But I'll be doing this with some people who've been good friends for many years, and others who are new friends. And most importantly, we're doing this for kids who don't have any way to do what we can do. We're trying to raise money so they can have a better life. We're running for them.”

On the road again

The idea of running relay-style across the country emerged about two years ago, when Farber's friend Dave McGillivray asked his running buddies to help him repeat an earlier trek. In 1978, McGillivray ran solo from Medford, Ore., to his hometown of Medford, Mass., averaging 45 miles a day over several months, to raise money for the Jimmy Fund. McGillivray wanted to do it again 25 years later, but was too busy with his duties as race director of the Boston Marathon and as founding president of DMSE, Inc. (Dave McGillivray Sports Enterprises) to set aside the time for a solo crossing. “From that evolved the idea that if we had 10 people working together,” Farber says, “we could probably do it in less than a month. We were originally going to do this as an around-the-clock, 24-hour-a-day relay. But then we decided that we should have at least some semblance of enjoyment.”

The team has experimented with several relay strategies, searching for the most efficient transition cycle to cover over 140 miles a day and also keep all the runners healthy. They've settled on splitting each day's route into two segments, with two five-man teams completing each leg. Each morning, the first team will send out its first runner, who will go about five miles before handing off to the next person, and so forth, so that each person completes three five-mile sections each day. Meanwhile, the second team will have driven 75 miles down the road to the first team's finishing point, continuing in the same relay-style another 75 miles to where they'll spend the night.

If anyone develops injuries en route, the other team members will compensate by increasing their mileage to about 17 to 20 miles a day. The team will be down at least one man in early May, with McGillivray returning to Boston for a few days when his wife gives birth.

Ron Kramer (COM'64, GRS'70), TREK USA relay director, has charted the course for the team (see map at www.trekusa.org), breaking up the journey into 150-mile segments, with motels, showers, and beds waiting for them at the end of each day. “Since none of us are 20 anymore,” Farber says, “we're not sleeping on floors or anything like that.” The runners, who are mostly in their 40s and 50s, also plan to bring their jobs with them on the road. “It's very hard for all of us to be away from work, so we need to stay in places where we can get some work done at night.” Farber even plans to keep up with his patients on the road each day. He'll have a nationwide beeper, a laptop, and a cell phone with him in the van. He's not planning on answering his beeper while he's running, however.

Each person on the team has been training for the cross-country run differently. Two runners have been completing a marathon a month since last April's Boston Marathon, while three included a 100-mile trail race in North Carolina and Virginia in February into their regimens. On March 27, Farber and teammates Mike Barry (SPH'97) and Josh Nemzer ran from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Cunningham Park in Milton, Mass., completing 25 laps (about 31 miles) and raising $1,250 for TREK USA. The goal is for each person to continue building the endurance base he's developed over the years, combining back-to-back days of long-distance runs (three to four hours on day one, followed by two to three hours on day two) with shorter runs and cross training, such as skiing and cycling.

As May approaches, the team is increasing its training mileage, which means fitting two and sometimes three workouts in each day. Farber has done a few doubles and triples in his training so far, sometimes waking up at 4:30 to run, rest for a few hours, then cycle for a while before heading into work. “Sometimes the third run is at 11 p.m.,” he says. “It's crazy. When I'm telling you this, it sounds really stupid.”

This is the first time he's dedicated so much time exclusively to running, Farber says, and one of the greatest challenges is keeping himself from getting bored. “In all honesty, this is probably going to be harder mentally than physically,” he says. “It's not very common that you do three workouts in a day, especially with long spaces in between when you have time to stiffen up. It's a totally different routine from anything I've ever done, or will probably ever do again.”

Tax-deductible contributions to TREK USA can be made online at www.trekusa.org or by check, made payable to TREK USA, sent to TREK USA, c/o Dave McGillivray, 77 Bear Hill Road, North Andover, MA 01845.