West Seattle man’s coast-to-coast record attempt starts today

In the final few days of last year, we brought you the story of 34-year-old West Seattleite John Wallace III‘s then-latest milestone: Running at least a mile a day, every day, for 20 years. One of his other achievements included running across the USA in 2004, and reporter Keri DeTore noted in the story that Wallace planned to do it again, hoping to set a world record this time, starting October 10, 2010. That day is here – and Wallace’s plan is on, all out. He’s scheduled to leave Los Angeles City Hall this morning, to start a 2,900-mile route to New York City Hall:


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If Wallace keeps the pace of 64.5 miles a day, he can break the old across-the-US record of 46 days, and get to New York in 45 (or fewer), arriving a few days before Thanksgiving (here’s the planned schedule). He’s also hoping to raise money for three charities (all on this page). He is scheduled to start running at, of course, 10 am (10-10-10 @ 10). We’ll check in along his journey, and his website has a variety of links you can use to do the same – he’s also on Facebook, where you can find Run USA 2010 here.

10 Replies to "West Seattle man's coast-to-coast record attempt starts today"

  • JTK October 10, 2010 (1:33 pm)

    Technically, That’s not coast to coast. NYC is a bit shy of the atlantic ocean.

    • WSB October 10, 2010 (1:41 pm)

      And Los Angeles City Hall is inland too. Coast-to-coast in the lexicon generally is not interpreted just to mean “ocean beach to ocean beach.”

  • Eddie October 10, 2010 (3:54 pm)

    Man, that embedded google map just hammers the performance of a usually pretty normal PC.

    Can’t hardly stand to click the WSB link because I know there’s going to be this huge lag – until that story moves off the front page.

    • WSB October 10, 2010 (4:34 pm)

      All Google maps, or this one in particular? It has a particularly long URL and maybe there’s something weird about it.

  • Gibby October 10, 2010 (8:45 pm)

    According to his Runkeeper site he started on time and is about 30 miles into his journey. Good Luck John!

  • roger:that October 11, 2010 (12:35 am)

    Hey man- I drove Seattle-Florida……took a lonnnnnnnnng time.. wouldn’t do it again but hey, It’s a good way to see your own country.

  • John Wallace III October 11, 2010 (1:55 am)

    WSB,

    Thanks for the followup article. Day 1 was hot but overall went well. 5:50am wakeup call to start another long day!

    John

  • aaron October 11, 2010 (2:49 am)

    Hey John! Good luck man.. miss playing poker with you at Legends on Tuesday nights! Go GET THAT RECORD!!

  • RG October 11, 2010 (9:19 am)

    Good luck John! Thank you for supporting *Make-a-Wish*

  • Chris October 11, 2010 (1:06 pm)

    All he has to do is run 2 marathons a day for 45 days in a row? Piece of cake.

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