My Run - The Terry Hitchcock Story

Last week, I wrote about a movie I watched on Netflix called "Run for your Life - The Fred Lebow Story". Tonight, I watched "My Run - The Terry Hitchcock Story", another running movie which isn't really about running at all.

The documentary movie starts out noting how Terry and his three children lost a wife and mother to cancer. (Cancer sucks!) He was understandably heartbroken. A short time later, Terry also lost his job. The early part of the movie notes many difficulties of being a single parent. A few years after the loss of his wife, Terry ends up arriving at the conclusion that he needs to do a "Mega Marathon" from St. Paul, Minnesota to Atlanta (during the '96 Olympics) to bring attention to and raise awareness and hopefully money to help single parents find help in finding help and resources to support their families.

The rub is, to start, Terry is not a runner at all. He's in his 50's and people say he looks a bit like Santa Claus (I say more like Kenny Rogers, but anyhow...). There is quite a bit of work setting up a 2 1/2 month long run where Terry plans to run "a Marathon a day".to total about 1900 miles. Much like another "ultra long distance" running movie, Running the Sahara, he has a team to help him with various aspects of the journey, from runner support, to supplies, publicity and medical care. Most of his team is made of of his kids and their friends.

There is quite a bit of tension during the trip and the majority of the team, apparently due to mental frustration and a real lack of knowledge about what it would take to pull this run off, bail after about 3 weeks. Terry's older son stays on and they press on toward Atlanta. Along the way they learn about themselves and each other.

I don't want to give away the entire movie, but the journey Terry and his son undertake is memorable and, by most measures, a success. Terry proves that anyone can be a runner and that runners don't need to look a certain way or move a certain speed. I hope that I can work towards showing a fraction of the fortitude Mr. Hitchcock demonstrated during his journey. The movie is an uplifting, real life story which I would recommend. It is available on DVD or, as I viewed it, on Netflix.