Inspiring and educating one mile at a time

The one-mile run has a special place in athletic lore.

Historic runners like Roger Bannister, Steve Prefontaine and Glenn Cunningham, among many others, each defied conventional logic with their contributions in the event that indelibly stamped their names in record books for all time.

While the race itself has lost ground in its status to marathons, triathlons and other longer endurance events, one Sarasota runner with local ties to Tarpon Springs continues to pound the pavement in promotion of the legendary distance.

At 46, David O'Meara, a world-renowned coach, motivational speaker and nationally ranked Masters runner, has no aspirations of breaking the single-mile record time, but his intentions are equally inspirational.

Beginning July 1, O'Meara will head to the Northeast for his latest challenge, dubbed the New England Marathon. The event's concept is for O'Meara to run 27 races totaling 26.2 miles - the length of a standard marathon - over the span of just two months in less than a combined two hours and 11 minutes. The target time is based on his attempt to finish each leg in less than five minutes.

"No marathon can go through six states and this is a way to bring something new to the sport with a creative idea," O'Meara said of the race's layout. "We're going to be visiting 27 New England towns."

Just last year, O'Meara completed a North American tour of sorts for the mile run with his 20/20/20<5@45 campaign. The five-month challenge took him to 20 different sites for 20 races in 20 weeks to run each in under five minutes, at the age of 45. The added inherent challenges with this upcoming event are the recovery issue and that all the race times are cumulative. Where O'Meara had about a week's time to rest and recover last year between runs, he will now only have 1-3 days. The inspiration behind such events is multifaceted. Not only is O'Meara trying to encourage other people in his age group to continue setting and striving toward higher goals, it also will be as a sort of testing ground for new athletic products and training and performance techniques.In preparation for this event, O'Meara has been working with an array of training methods and products that can be seen on his blog at www.onemilerunner.com. A specially designed compression sock is a key focus during the runs, and the company that produces it, SmoothToe, is the event's title sponsor. "I think this event for me is like my little personal laboratory to see if these things work," he said. "I'll see if the compression socks work and help me when I race and after I finish. I'll see if these shoes really work as far as the width that I need." "It will let me see what I need to do to my training if I'm going to be racing this much." As far as the socks go, O'Meara will be wearing a knee-high product that is designed to more readily return blood flow from the feet back up the legs, said SmoothToe president Greg Hoscheit "The more fresh, oxygenated blood you can get circulated, the more energy you will have," he said. "This will be a great opportunity for David and for us to showcase our socks. We're very excited." "These are the things that I think are great learning tools because I get to share the results with my audience more and see if they really work," O'Meara said. "The whole event is to really get in there and get to the groundbreaking stuff to see if this really works during an event." "O'Meara added that the everyday functionality of his training regimen is to be spotlighted, as well. His different workout matrixes are designed to target multiple muscles and be multidimensional to aid in injury prevention and speed of recovery. To spread word of his findings, O'Meara will be constantly updating his online blog throughout the New England Marathon as well as utilizing the ever-expanding reach of Twitter. Access to both can be found on the aforementioned Web page cited above. Shortly after O'Meara completes his journey in New England, he hopes to also release a new book in the works titled Creating Amazement. O'Meara wrote the book based on his belief that everybody needs to have a sense of amazement in their lives, no matter what that source may be, and that our current society does not foster its creation. "It's about how we'd all like to have amazement in our lives and how we can support getting it back," he said. Beyond the marathon's completion and pending book release, O'Meara is, as he puts it, day-to-day. There are no current calendar dates circled, but one thing he is sure of is that he's not done yet. For O'Meara, the horizon never seems to be more than a mile away. An overseas challenge comes to mind if New England is a success. "I'm 46 now, so if I don't continue to push the envelope now on the mile, it only gets tougher later on," he said.