I’m Attempting to Break a World Record to Help Fight Cancer

As a new company with limited cash resources, Oneiric needed a creative way to help with our fundraising efforts. So we came up with a crazy idea; I am going to attempt to break the world record for the most consecutive days of running a half marathon distance (21.1km) for females in order to raise money for and donate on behalf of Oneiric to Cancer research.

The current record is 60 and our goal is 70 as our company core values are about pushing your limits, challenging yourself in unimaginable ways, and developing your inner champion.

Our goal is to raise $10,000 for The Canadian Cancer Society over the duration of the 70 days.

So Where Did This Crazy Idea Come From?

After being inspired by Chris Guillibeau’s book, The Happiness Pursuit on creating and pursuing quests, I completed a 10km per day running challenge in the month of January and wrote about my experience on Medium. After completing the challenge, I wanted a new one, something extreme, that I couldn’t even fathom completing. A world record perhaps?

I searched the Guinness Book of World Records for some other running records and stumbled upon one that caught my attention right away. Following similar suit to my 10k challenge — the most consecutive days to run a half marathon distance (female). The world record is 60 days and I wanted to beat this! So I decided to apply for the record.

This was the response from Guinness World Records:

Since I needed to wait 12 weeks to receive a response with no guaranteed acceptance, I decided I would begin anyways and go for the unofficial record.

Welcome to the #RUN70 Challenge.

Here’s how it’s going to go. I’m starting the challenge on May 15 and will finish July 23rd.

• I’m raising money with my company ONEIRIC for cancer research with a fundraising goal of $10k for a charity that means a lot to me. You can donate on our Canadian Cancer Society Donation Page.
• I’ll be using my Nike Run Club app to track my runs and a Garmin running watch for mileage accuracy. You also aren’t able to edit the mileage on Garmin watches as you can with the Nike App, so it will legitimize my distances and routes.
• Post my time, distance, and route for each day on my personal blog.
• Post on social media using the hashtag #RUN70.
• We’ll be challenging public figures in Toronto and the community at large to join us in #RUN70 — from hockey teams, to politicians, to start-up founders.

I’ll be running the streets of Toronto so if you happen to see me join in! 1km, 2km, the whole thing! 🙂

70 Days, 70 Half Marathons, 1,476.8km, 917mi

You can follow my journey on:

Instagram: @emilyrudow

Twitter: @emilyrudow

Website: https://emilyrudow.wordpress.com