The tune “Everytime We Contact” by Cascada has about 142 beats per minute, which places it barely under the 150 to 170 steps per minute of your common leisure runner.
For Navy Lt. Paul Johnson, the tune makes him really feel like he can run via a brick wall and shall be a featured monitor on one in every of his many playlists as he steps off Friday on his tried record-breaking run throughout the continental U.S.
The active-duty floor warfare officer will start his 3,000-mile run from Los Angeles to New York Metropolis on Friday, a feat he hopes to perform in 40 days — two days sooner than the present time acknowledged by Guinness World Information. Operating at a mean mile tempo of 10 to 12 minutes, Johnson goals to run 75 miles per day, placing in about 13 to fifteen hours of operating.
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“I actually need to do it for a way a lot operating has completed for me by way of coping with psychological well being points and having simply actually dived into operating the previous 18 months,” Johnson stated. “It is a fairly ridiculous problem, however we predict that we would have the ability to give it a shot.”
The present report is held by ultrarunner Pete Kostelnick, whom Johnson watched run via the Pennsylvania State College campus whereas he was a scholar there.
“I knew I wished to run throughout the U.S. sooner or later, after I had seen Pete Kostelnick run in 2016 previous State Faculty there on his solution to set the world report,” Johnson stated. Kostelnick’s run took 42 days, 6 hours, and half-hour. Fewer than 400 folks have ever formally tried the run.
Johnson, at the moment stationed out of Newport, Rhode Island, commissioned in 2018 and spent the primary three years of his profession on a ship out of Rota, Spain. His service overseas took a toll on his psychological well being, and by the point he’d rotated again to the U.S., Johnson started to take inventory of his unhealthy relationship with alcohol, constant sleep points, and bouts of hysteria and melancholy.
A pal and Marine Corps officer requested whether or not he wished to run the Marine Corps Marathon with him, and Johnson has been operating religiously ever since.
In preparation, he has run greater than 6,500 miles within the final yr. He is accomplished 100-mile races and a 39-hour run, and spends about 40 hours per week operating.
“It is a full-time job,” he stated, including that he is grateful for his command’s help and the sheer quantity of depart he had out there to burn. As for gasoline, Johnson stated he lives off of near-nightly pints of ice cream and pizza, for the tacky goodness that offers it an amazing “price-to-calorie ratio.”
“In coaching, I am doing about 7,000 to eight,000 energy a day. And as soon as this run begins, I am going to want most likely 13,000 to fifteen,000 a day,” he stated. “We’re in a realm of, ‘I solely simply must get power into my physique with the intention to maintain the efforts I am doing.’ And so it is simply [about] consuming every thing I can.”
All through the run, Johnson shall be fundraising for Staff Crimson, White & Blue, a nonprofit group targeted on veteran psychological well being and health. He is raised round $19,000, as of Feb. 29, and needs to boost $1 million whereas on the highway.
“He is simply been a completely wonderful advocate,” stated Margaret Britten, Staff RWB’s director of promoting. “He is simply been supportive each step of the best way, so we’re so proud to type of help him on this.”
The objective of Staff RWB is to maintain veterans from falling prey to the “loneliness epidemic” via train and camaraderie by giving them a workforce to lean on and develop more healthy with, providing digital and in-person exercises and challenges. On the highway, Johnson’s personal workforce will embody his mother, a small media crew, an Air Power reservist and bodily therapist, a Marine veteran crew chief, and some different associates.
Veterans and different runners are inspired to affix him alongside the best way, Johnson stated. Folks can comply with his path via his web site, Instagram and Staff RWB’s app.
Regardless of the daunting feat in entrance of him, Johnson stated the outcomes of his coaching preserve him from being too fearful about failure.
“I am not an elite athlete,” he stated. “However I understand how to run far, I understand how to run lengthy, I understand how my physique responds to it. … It actually comes right down to that I haven’t got to run as quick, I simply should be very constant and deliberate with it.”
— Rachel Nostrant is a Marine Corps veteran and freelance journalist, with work revealed in Reuters, New York Journal, Navy Occasions and extra.
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