Alan Murray and Janette Murray-Wakelin from New Zealand have set an unusual world record of running a marathon each day, every day, for a year.
What is even more interesting is the couple’s age and diet; at 68 and 64 years young respectively, Alan and Janette completed a 10,000 mile journey around Australia on a raw food diet.
The couple would rise at 4am to begin their daily marathon, eating 10 bananas, a grapefruit and a smoothie for breakfast, followed by another 10 bananas at 8am, a green smoothie at 9am, a fruit salad after 19 miles, three oranges at the 23-mile mark and an avocado, vegetable juice and salad for dinner.
Janette, who missed the birth of her fifth grandchild in June whilst running in south Queensland, said that she was looking forward to a day off, planning to sleep in, do some gardening and spend time with her grandchildren. She also stated that she planned to run again the following day; Janette told Fairfax Media ‘You don’t stop something that works… I’m not exhausted… I could run forever’.
Mr Murray told ABC Radio ‘The first few weeks we were sore… After that it’s actually become easier everyday. I really don’t think we’ve had any days when we didn’t think we could make it. We had a few longer days through extremes of heat…’ 68-year old Alan was referring here to the 44(C) degree temperatures they had experienced whilst running through Canberra, making their journey all the more physically demanding.
There were more perils along the way, coming in the form of a cyclone, flooding, bushfires and a hail storm near Perth. The couple were forced to take a break during the storm, where they stopped for half an hour and drank a vegetable smoothie, before continuing through the difficult weather conditions.
The run beat the previous world record held by Belgian runner Stefaan Engels, also known as ‘Marathon Man’, who completed 365 marathons in 2011 at the slightly younger age of 50.
Alan and Janette were helped out along the way by volunteers, who assisted by handing out supplies and driving a support van. The successful world record raised money for the couple’s chosen charity.
