New Palestine cross country and track and field coach Chuck Myers has run every day since the beginning of 2003.
In 2024, he has gone from running for the joy of it to running for a bigger purpose.
Myers has set out this year to run the Six Abbott World Marathons and earn the prestigious Six Star Medal.
He’s doing it to raise money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
He recently lost a dear friend, Matt Griffin, to the cancer. They were track and field and cross country teammates at both Southwestern (Hanover) High School and Ball State University. He is also running in honor of his brother-in-law, Marc Baum, who died of gastric cancer in 2018. Baum was there in attendance when Myers ran his first Boston Marathon.
Myers has completed three of the six Major marathons. He ran in Tokyo on March 3, in Boston on April 15 and London on April 20. The other three, Berlin, Chicago and New York City are in the fall.
Berlin is next up on his list on Sept. 29. Chicago follows on Oct. 13 and New York City will be the final stop on Nov. 3.
“(I was) going to do it over the course of time. It’s how most people do it, spreading it out over multiple years,” Myers said. “I thought, if I’m going to do it, let’s try to do it in a year and try to raise money and help out in some way. That’s why I decided to do it in a year.”
Myers is halfway through the races, but just a quarter of the way toward his goal of raising $168,000. Currently, he has raised over $40,000. He came up with the goal number based on the 26.2-mile distance for a marathon. There is $1,000 for each mile (156 miles) and he took care of the tenths by putting $12,000 in.
To prepare for the grueling schedule of doing all six in a year, Myers, who has coached track and cross country at NPHS for the last 20 years, stepped away this past season as head coach.
“I wasn’t going to be able to give the time to coaching with the training and being gone for events,” he said. “I didn’t think it’d be fair to the programs to be gone that much so I stepped away for that reason.”
Myers has always had a passion for running, but it changed in 2003.
On Jan. 1, 2003, he decided he was going to run every day that year. “I went from there and I haven’t stopped,” he said. “I began to do it to get in shape. In the past, every time I’d stop for a couple three weeks, and it was hard to get back into it. I decided I wasn’t going to do that anymore. I decided at that point forward I was going to run every day for a year. After two or three years, I didn’t want to stop. It keeps building on itself.”
To prepare for the marathons the runs are now a little longer and more structured, but he has plenty of motivation.
The longtime coach said Griffin’s recent passing hit him hard. His former running mate had kept his cancer battle quiet. Myers was unaware of Griffin’s sickness until about two weeks prior to his death. He left behind a wife and three children.
At his first Boston Marathon, his brother-in-law appeared to be on the road to recovery, but passed away two months later.
Myers said the Tokyo race went well, but called Boston “a disaster” due to a back issue. He said he bounced back well in London.
The Six Star Medal was introduced by the Abbott World Marathon Majors in 2016 to honor the runners who complete all six Major marathons. Following the 2023 Tokyo Marathon, there have been more than 11,000 runners to have completed this challenge, with 96 of them navigating the Six Star journey more than once. Myers said only around 130 have achieved it in a calendar year.
Those interested in donating to the cause can by going to Myers’ Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Team in Training page at: https://pages.lls.org/tnt/in/london24/cmyers.
“It’s a good cause,” Myers added. “LLS has been very helpful with everything.”
