From Friday, Aug. 2 at 5:45 a.m. to Saturday, Aug. 3 at 11:18 p.m., he just kept running and running, all the way from Wellesley to Provincetown. He didn’t stop once, not even to sleep.
Adam Scully-Power did it all with one mission in mind — to honor the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings the best way he knew how.
So he ran — 163 miles in 41 hours and 33 minutes, to be exact. All the way, his family — wife, brother, father and father-in-law — drove behind him with water, food and a change of clothes. It was all the support he needed.
“It was two sunrises, two sunsets and lots of running and no sleep,” Scully-Power said to USA Today. “Slowly but surely trucked through and covered the distance.”
A year ago, the whole thing seemed unlikely. Then, Scully-Power was 50 pounds heavier than he is now. But then he watched a documentary called “Forks over Knives,” which promotes healthy eating. That was the first step. Then, he started running. Six weeks later, he was running 12-13 miles a day, but that was nothing compared to his next challenge.
One day in December, Scully-Power ran into his friend, David Green, who is an ultramarathoner, at a Starbucks. The two chatted, and Green urged his friend to try an ultramarathon with him. At first, Scully-Power thought he was “insane.”
But eventually, he gave in. In February, Scully-Power ran 110 miles in 24 hours and 38 minutes. It all didn’t seem “insane” anymore, and he wanted to do another, so he signed up to run another in May.
But then the unfathomable happened. On April 15, the day of the Boston Marathon, two bombs exploded near the finish line. Green was there. Scully-Power texted him to make sure his friend was OK, which he was.
In the midst of the chaos, however, Green took a picture of the scene before going off to help victims. He later sent it to the FBI to help its investigation, but little did he know that the photo provided a “crystal clear” image of accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev walking away from the scene.
The photo was ground-breaking for the investigation, but its impact didn’t stop there. For Scully-Power, it was the inspiration to his 163-mile trek across Massachusetts.
“It was a sign it was meant to be,” he said.
Scully-Power was determined. In the days following the marathon, he found out about the Pan-Mass Challenge from a co-worker. The event is designed to be a bike-a-thon, but Scully-Power had other ideas — he wanted to run it. So he emailed the race director.
“I think he thought I was crazy,” Scully-Power said.
The rest is history. Scully-Power, 39, trained and trained, even running to his son’s lacrosse games 20 miles away instead of driving as part of his regimen.
In the end, it was more than worth it. Scully-Power raised over $26,000 — more than his $25,000 goal — through his website whywerun.com.
“It fundamentally changes your perspective of what’s possible in all facets of your life,” Scully-Power said. “So what’s next? I’m not sure, but there will be something.”
And probably a lot more running.
Photo via Twitter/@TeakMedia
