Man runs 100 marathons in 100 days for charity

“I have a cousin who’s big Kevin, and as a little kid I didn’t want to be called little Kevin anymore,” Kelly said. “I’m 6-7, but big Kevin is still bigger, so I’m still little Kevin at every family gathering.”

Like Forrest Gump, he's running across America, from coast to coast. He started in Los Angeles on Dec. 10, 2016 and will end up in Daytona Beach, Florida on March 20, 2017.

However, unlike Forrest Gump, Kelly has a reason for running. Kelly ran across his home state of Ohio twice in the past two years, so to him, the next logical step was to run the length of the country. He created what he called the #100Run challenge, where he'll run 100 marathons in 100 days for 100 charities.

He passed through Atlanta on Feb. 7 for his 60th marathon in support of Camp Dream, a summer camp for young adults and children with physical, mental and developmental disabilities.

Preparing to run across the country

Taking 100 days to run across the country is impossible for most people attempting to hold down a job. Luckily for Kelly, he’s a social media marketer, so his location isn’t an issue—even if he’s 13 miles into a run.

“My workday is a little bit shorter, but a lot of what I do is monitoring social media accounts for clients, and I’m able to do that even while I’m running,” Kelly said. “On very busy days, I’ll occasionally have my tablet out with me while I’m running—getting some work in.”

Because he’s able to work on the go, he decided not to renew his lease in Columbus, Ohio.

Practicing for the seemingly impossible, Kelly ran 20 miles for 30 straight days.

“Marathoners know this, but there’s this wall you hit around mile 20 or 22 that’s really physiologically where your body starts to break down more at that point,” Kelly said. “So I stopped at 20 so I’d be much more fresh the next day.”

However, a marathon doesn’t stop at 20 miles—it’s 26.2 miles. As a result, he began incorporating 30 to 50 mile runs. While it may seem like overcompensation, he claims it made running the distance of a marathon a non-factor.

Even with all this stamina preparation, he still said, “nothing could quite prepare me for what I’m doing now.”

Pushing his body to the limit

According to Dr. Reza Hesam, physical therapist at Georgia Sports Physical Therapy, training regiments are important, but recovery methods are equally important.

“The main factor, especially (for) 100 days (of straight running), is recovery and what he’s doing to recover in between the races—not just stretching but nutrition and different types of training,” Dr. Hesam said.

Recovering from running a marathon every day has consumed most of Kelly’s free time. He typically runs from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. wherever he goes, and he spends the rest of the day recovering. On top of using foam rollers to relax his sore muscles, baths have become his main swelling and inflammation remedy.

“I just grab ice from a gas station, and I throw ice in a tub and take an ice bath. Then I drain it, and take a warm Epsom salt bath,” Kelly said. “I do that every night, and I do that every morning.”

Kelly mentioned when he’s finished, he’ll spend about 30 days in Daytona Beach to relax, recover and get whatever surgeries are necessary. Yes, surgeries.

Apparently, he knows he has a hairline fracture in his right heel, which Dr. Hesam said is not out of the ordinary for long-distance runners.

“A hairline fracture is almost like a stress fracture that happens from overuse,” Hesam said. “It’s like a little crack that is not broken completely through the bone. It’s just from overuse, repetitive trauma.”

He’s also already had multiple smaller surgeries while completing the challenge.

“I just had a (few of my toes) treated the other day just to keep the infections away,” Kelly said.

Running charities’ social media

Because of Kelly’s career, his way of supporting charities isn’t typical at all.

“The way I help charities is I run social media ads for them for a day,” Kelly said. “Most of the charities are smaller and the people running their social media are probably volunteers, and they’re never going to have someone who does Facebook marketing for a living be able to run ads for them.”

He said he tried to pick a wide variety of charity types to help by running. He began with charities that personally affected his family’s lives.

He has Tourette Syndrome, his cousin has Cystic Fibrosis and his mom suffers from Alzheimer's Disease, so those were the first charity types he supported. He also said he purposefully looked out military-related charities.

A hundred charities, each based out of the city he’s visiting, is a tall task to research and find, so he recruited help from his friends and social media.

“I sent out requests online and on Twitter asking people to recommend charities, which then opened up the floodgates to a bunch of charities,” Kelly said.

That is how he chose Camp Dream as the charity he would support in Atlanta. Gary Marshall, executive director for Camp Dream, spoke about how Kelly contacted Camp Dream about sponsoring his Atlanta marathon.

“One of our past members somehow became affiliated with and befriended (Kelly), and when he heard about the run, he suggested that KP sponsor Camp Dream on one of his days,” Marshall said.

It costs $500 per attendee, but Marshall said there’s financial assistance for those that need it.

Kelly still has a long way to go before he completes his #100Run challenge, but he successfully ran through Atlanta in 5 hours and 42 minutes. (Kelly said his time would've been faster if it had not rained.) But after running comes relaxtion. Soon enough, he says he'll be enjoying a well-deserved, month-long beach vacation.But not before he's run his last race.