The Marathon of Health route – The Chicoine family ran from Vancouver British Columbia to St. John’s, Newfoundland, and, then, returned back to the west coast via the United States. repeated this all day long until the total distance, for that day, had been covered. This was easy to implement in Canada, with the Trans Canada Highway, but we got lost many times in the United States, with its many roads and heavy traffic. In some sections, where we had to cover longer distances in a shorter period of time, each person had to run twice or even three times during the day. The ultimate challenge came when we set a goal to run from Dallas to Los Angeles in 10 days. We actually did it in 10 and a half days because the vehicles needed repair in El Paso, Texas. On average, we ran about a half marathon each day. We slept and cooked in the motor home. We parked overnight in campgrounds, along the side of the road, in people’s driveways and in Wal-Mart parking lots – in other words, wherever it was most convenient. GO! As I said above, we began our Marathon of Health on May 9. We left from Stanley Park in Vancouver, B.C. Our daily routine included preparing the route we would take for that day, assigning a section to each member of the family and making sure everybody was ready, and able, to do their part. At first, we would follow each runner with the van, but soon found out that this took a long time, waiting for each person to get his or her individual run in. We soon adopted the method of dropping off a runner, driving ahead his or her pre-determined distance and getting the next runner started. We A TEST OF ENDURANCE Despite the fact that the majority of the kids were not long distance runners before the start of the Marathon of Health, nobody had any serious injuries and we were all able to run ex-tensively. We prepared all our own food and made sure to eat a well-balanced, high-quality diet and to take into consideration the large caloric intake we needed. As I mentioned earlier, I brought my portable adjusting table on the journey and I regularly adjusted all the family members along the way. This helped to keep us all in top form through our long runs. The whole family is convinced that another important factor www.canadianchiropractor.ca CANADIAN CHIROPRACTOR | FEBRUARY 2012 • 43
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor February 2012: Page 43
