Business Insight Zone

Well, actually, it would be “Film in late June” – because that’s when Hoover’s EVP Russell Secker will finally be done running across Europe, from south to north, in the TransEurope 2009. A summary of the insanity:

• Starting point: Bari, Italy (near the “boot heel”).
• Finish line: the Northern Cape of Norway, well above the Arctic Circle.
• 2,800 total miles.
• 64 days of running.
• Average of about 45 miles (72 kilometers) per day.
• No days off.
• Accommodations in gyms or tents.

Russell, besides recently retiring after three decades with D&B and Hoover’s, has run all of the major marathons in the world, plus many ultramarathons. In 2005 he ran the Transe Gaule, which traverses France in the course of three weeks, and in 2007 he ran the Deutschlandlauf, which does the same thing for Germany.

But that wasn’t enough.

At Russell’s blog, you can read day-by-day updates and view photos documenting his progress across Europe. (Pretty amazing, when you think of it, that he can keep up the pace with his posts after days in which he’s run the equivalent of back-to-back marathons.) One of the most interesting things to me is that Russell now has old friends who ran those same races across France and Germany in past years. There’s a very small band of ultra-ultrarunners in the world, and they seem to stick together.

Keep it up, Russell! All of us here are rooting for you from afar!

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Related:

• Russell’s participant page (in German) at the TransEurope 2009 site.
• My 2005 feature on Russell in the Transe Gaule.
• Russell’s race blog.

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Category: Executives, Hoover's