Bay Area Man Runs 8 Marathons in 8 Days for Charity

A Bay Area man said this week that raising money for charity gave him the strength and energy to run eight marathons in eight days on seven continents plus New Zealand recently.

Brendan Watkins, 44, of Redwood Shores started Jan. 20 in
New Zealand and traveled mostly east to west, raising more than $6,000 for the Lucile
Packard Children’s Fund.

The fund is a charity that provides care for children and expectant
moms. Watkins works at Stanford Children’s Health, where he’s been for three
years.

“The entire trip was pretty amazing,” he said
Tuesday.

Watkins said, mentally, he knew it was going to be
challenging, but it wasn’t as physically tough as he imagined. The best race
he’s ever run was during this trip in Antarctica, he said. He won the race with
a time of 3 hours, 36 minutes.

That doesn’t sound like a great time for a normal marathon,
but runners who typically finish a marathon in three hours finished in
Antarctica in four and a half hours, Watkins said.

His body adapted to the climate of Antarctica, which he
thought was incredible.

“It was cold obviously,” he said.

Even at the height of summer in Antarctica, the wind went
through the runners. “The wind was tough,” he said.

The ground on the southernmost continent was rocky and muddy
and runners had to run to an elevation of 2,500 feet above sea level. There wasn’t
a lot of snow on the ground, but there were penguins and glaciers in the
background and some seals and penguins nearby.

In Auckland, New Zealand, he ran the first marathon of the
trip in a time of about 3 hours and 45 minutes, followed by a race in Perth, Australia,
and then another contest in Singapore, where he finished in about 4 hours.

He then traveled to North Africa.

“My best overall experience was in Cairo,” Watkins
said.

It was his fourth marathon of the trip and he ran at least
part of the race along the Nile River on two hours of sleep. After the race, he
and others went to see the pyramids.

While his quest wasn’t as physically challenging as he
expected, “I was worried how my body would react,” he said.

He had some physical challenges such as swelling in his
ankles during race No. 6 in New York, so in that race he had to favor one leg
over the other.

The fifth race was in Amsterdam and the seventh was in
Chile, which was the last race before the finale in Antarctica.

Each marathon was 26.2 miles in length, so Watkins completed
209.6 miles during his quest. He said he burned a total of 26,631 calories.

Source: NBC Bay Area