206 Marathons in 206 Days

Stefaan Engels wasn't sure his quest to run a full, 42-kilometre marathon every day for 365 days in a row was humanly possible when he started on Jan. 1. His friends were even less optimistic.

"They called it suicidal," the well-tanned and obviously fit 49-year-old from Belgium said yesterday in Montreal, his first stop in North America, a few hours before his weekly massage and daily jaunt.

Twenty-one days and 21 marathons into his journey, it seemed the naysayers were right when a painful inflammation in his foot forced him to stop running. But Engels kept doing marathons, rolling himself along in a wheelchair, and on Feb. 5 got back on his feet and rebooted his quest, starting over at Day 1.

As of last night, he has run 206 marathons in 206 days. The previous record for running consecutive daily marathons was set by Akinori Kusada, who completed 52 in March of 2009. They call Engels Marathon Man now. Or Forrest Gump.

If he's successful, by the time he's done on Feb. 5, 2011, Engels will have run 15,401 kilometres, the equivalentof joggingfromSt. John's, N.L., to Vancouver and back. One gets the sense he'll be happy when it's all over.

"I eat, I run, I sleep," he said. "I have a very small social life. ... I take it day by day, because if I think I have to do another 160 days of this ...' he trails off.

He flew to Montreal on Sunday, running a marathon in his hometown of Ghent before boarding the plane. He'll run six marathons this week around Lafontaine Park every day between 3:30 and 8 p.m., on Saturday from noon till 4, and then take part in the Montreal Oasis Marathon on the weekend. Then it's off to Mexico.

"My goal is to inspire people to be physically active," said Engels, who used to set up tradeshow display booths before running became a full-time profession. He has no children, but is accompanied on his travels by his manager and life partner Petra Sap. 'I don't expect people to run a marathon, of course, but if I can get somebody to run five or 10 kilometres, or get involved in any sport, I will have succeeded. Because I know how good sports make me feel, how important it is to a person's life.'

The physical toll hasn't been so bad, he said. The mental exertion is another matter. He burns 6,000 calories a day, about three times the average expenditure of a sedentary male, so he ingests about two to three times what a normal person would. Engels eats a lot of pasta, and drinks eight litres of water a day, but otherwise 'I eat whatever is on the menu -steak, pasta, whatever.' He'll also drink wine, and is known to quaff a beer right after a race -'I'm too old to live like a Spartan,' he said.

Since his foot inflammation, which he attributes to slipping while running on ice and snow, he has had no injuries. He's a little sore for the first two hours of the day (he tries to sleep nine to 10 hours a night), and for the first 30 minutes of his run, then the pain ebbs. He'll run a marathon in a relatively leisurely four hours (an elite runner will do it in three or less, which Engels can do), often accompanied by between 100 and 200 runners at his hometown outdoor track. He is monitored by one of Belgium's top sports physicians, submitting blood to test for muscular degeneration or other forms of deterioration every week. He has a massage and visits an osteopath once a week to make sure his muscuskeletal system is in good shape. So far, so good.

He attributes his body's ability to take the daily beating to 25 years of marathon running that has strengthened his muscles and bones and keeps his heart rate at around 100 to 110 beats per minute during his runs, equivalent to that of a normal mortal out on a brisk walk. He entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2008 by completing 20 full triathlons, (a 3.8-kilometre swim followed by a180-kilometre bike ride and then a full marathon) in one year.

He took one year planning his quest, assembling a support crew of 10 people and finding sponsorship with companies like international diet and fitness company PronoKal, Japanese technology firm Kyocera and Asics, which supplied him with 25 pairs of running shoes -a pair lasts about two weeks. Most of his runs have been in Belgium, but he also has travelled to Holland, Germany and Spain. He will attend the world's largest marathon in New York City in November. Canada, with its idolatry of Terry Fox, who ran the equivalent of a full marathon every day for 143 days on a prosthetic leg in 1980, with a brief break in Montreal, was a suiting locale in which to start his North American journey.

Once finished, Engels plans to spend a year doing 30 of the world's biggest marathons and giving talks on his exploits and the benefits of sport. A book is planned, as well as a documentary film, and he raises funds for a hospital in his hometown that treats children with heart ailments. He is also creating several endurance sporting events in Ghent, including a full marathon.

Ultimately, he said, the goal was to see if he could, and by so doing, make others realize they can, too.

"The book is going to be called 'Choosing the Difficult Path,' " he said. 'Because if you can do that, then the rest of life will be easy.'