For most of us, a single marathon would be the challenge of a lifetime. Not Tim Borland: This amazing athlete ran in 63 straight marathons to help cure a rare children's disease.
We all have friends or family members who’ve run a marathon. Maybe you’ve even done it yourself. And as anyone who’s made their way through a 10K can attest, the competition can be tough on your body: The hot sun blazing on your skin; your feet pounding against the hard asphalt; the calluses, charley horses, and leg cramps that become inevitable when you push your body past its natural limit.
For most of us, a single marathon would be the challenge of a lifetime – but for Tim Borland, it’s just another ordinary day.
Borland, a 31-year-old personal trainer from Los Gatos, California, recently finished an athletic challenge of epic proportions: 63 marathons in 63 days, traveling all the way across America.
But Borland wasn’t driven to this remarkable feat by the spirit of competition. He didn’t care about winning the races – his only concern was to raise money and awareness for ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T), an inherited life-threatening degenerative disease that has symptoms similar to cerebral palsy and several other diseases.
Borland became passionate about helping to find a cure for A-T several years ago, when he met Cathryn Achilles, a 14-year-old girl afflicted with the disease.
“As I got to know Cathryn, my outlook on life was dramatically changed,” says Borland. “She taught me what it looks like to live for more than things of this world, what it’s like to truly ‘press on’ in the midst of adversity, and how to appreciate and be thankful for all that I have. With a daughter of my own, I realized that it could be me with a child with a disability and a terminal illness.”
Inspired by Achilles’ strength, he vowed to help raise awareness for the disease by doing what he did best: Running.
In a bold statement, he decided to run 63 marathons in 63 consecutive days, calling his run the “A-T CureTour.” All money raised by his ultra-marathon would go to a foundation called the A-T Children’s Project.
As a personal trainer, Borland has always been an avid runner and athlete. “In some ways, I have been training for 10 years, the length of my running career,” he says. But a 63-day run would require a little more endurance than even he was used to: To prepare himself, he increased his daily runs from 15 to 30 miles a day five days a week, using Saturdays for cross-training, and taking a well-deserved rest break on Sundays.
All that training came in handy when it came time to begin his A-T CureTour. “The run was very tough for about the first four weeks,” says Borland. “By the end of the fourth week I was feeling great, and the last five weeks were relatively easy, all things considered.”
Borland began his odyssey on Labor Day in Anaheim, California, traveling across the country to finish at the New York City Marathon in November. All in all, he ran more than 1,650 miles in 26 states, along with Washington, D.C., and Montreal. His superhuman efforts have raised approximately $2 million in support of a cure for A-T.
Borland won’t take all the credit for this amazing accomplishment, though – he had a lot of help along the way. His wife and children traveled from city to city with him in an RV, and a friend kept him stocked up on food and water during each marathon. A documentary film crew videotaped his journey, providing regular updates on Borland’s progress to the A-T Children’s Project website. Borland also received thousands of phone calls, emails, and messages of support and praise from families of children with A-T.
The biggest inspiration, though, came from the children themselves. In each marathon Borland ran, he pushed an Axiom Racer, a wheelchair commonly used by children with A-T. In many cities, a child with A-T would ride in the chair while Borland ran; in others, the chair would remain empty, as a symbol for those children who had lost their battle with the disease.
“Each run with kids with A-T riding in the stroller telling me how thankful they were that I was running for them was a life-changing experience,” says Borland. “Each one will stay with me forever.”