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Do you have any tips? Send us your running stories to sports@recorder.com, and they may be included in this space.
Without further adieu, here’s Volume 12 where we dive into one of the more memorable stories in recent Franklin County running history.
Nine years later, Glenn Caffery can still see the sights. He can still hear the sounds.
When he goes for hours-long jaunts through the trails and woods of Franklin County these days, his memory harkens back to his trip across the country. For nearly three months, he was alone. Just he, a jogging stroller’s worth of supplies and his running shoes, pounding the pavement, scraping the gravel as he moved from one coast to the other.
Nine years. Closing in on a full decade, yet still so vivid.
“In some ways, it doesn’t feel like part of my current experience,” he began. “It feels like a past life. Certainly I’m a different person now as a result of that experience. In some ways, it’s present in me at all times. In some ways, I’ll stumble about a memory that still feels so real.
“Nine years has given me a more accurate understanding of what it was.”
In May of 2011, Caffery set out on a journey of a lifetime. Then a 49-year-old University of Massachusetts economics lecturer, the Leyden resident ran 3,312 miles cross country to raise money for Alzheimer’s research.
“It was an extraordinarily busy time in my life, and I didn’t have an awful lot of time to prepare for it,” he offered. “I didn’t know if I could do it logistically, to be honest. I’m not an ultra runner. This was new to me. I had to figure a lot of things out.”
To get to the point of running across the country, Caffery found himself dedicated to the cause. Alzheimer’s had taken his father, Dick, in 2002. He wound up connected with the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund of Greater Boston, and decided to combine his love of running with his desire to do more to help combat a terrible disease.
“I was so impressed with their work and model so the motivation of trying to raise money suddenly seemed pretty important,” he said. “They did such amazing things with small amounts of money. I felt like I was a part of something that mattered, through the run, with others donating money and engaging. I was so moved by so many people who received me so warmly and supported the cause.”
Caffery admitted that while he may not have been totally prepared at the time, he threw caution to the wind.
“My mom was a big worrier and she was 100 percent on board which really shocked me,” he admitted. “Her support of doing something like that was really all that I needed.”
So Caffery flew west, deciding to begin his run in Oregon and end on the East Coast. His final destination was Misquamicut, R.I.
“The notion of running home was so powerful to me,” he said of the decision to run west to east. “I had never experienced that before. I felt like it was something I could do.”
When he arrived in Oregon in late May of 2011, Caffery didn’t know what to expect. His plan was to run about 50 miles per day, staying on a slow, steady pace while pushing a jogging stroller that weighed between 60 and 80 pounds, depending on the amount of supplies on hand.
His progress was slowed almost immediately, when he suffered a tissue injury to his lower leg running downhill off Mount Hood in Oregon. While he was forced to stay off his feet for a few days, he managed to push through the pain and find a rhythm.
“The recovery period made it really easy for me to become fully invested in making this happen if my body allowed it,” he recalled. “I felt like, ‘If I can do this physically now, I’m going to do it.’”
Days began at 5 a.m., and Caffery would travel until late at night with minimal stoppages. He’d camp wherever he found a spot, avoiding major highways and often wandering through small towns where he’d stop into convenience stores and bars in pursuit of food.
He quickly grew tired of the candy rack most bars offered — “Candy is so fun when you don’t have it but it got really old fast” — and admitted his appetite wasn’t great. The bulk of his supplies came in the form of camping gear, though even that was pretty minimalist. He said he would accumulate items and add weight to his stroller, just as his body weight was going down. Still, he was surprised by his energy levels along the way.
“I was most surprised that getting up in the morning, I was replenished somehow,” he said. “Your body adapts to these things pretty well.”
Caffery’s wife was mailing him new pairs of running shoes along the way. As he wasn’t following a set plan however, she began shipping to locations such as gas stations and convenience stores — places open 24 hours a day.
“Out west it didn’t seem that strange to people,” he said. “I’d run into a gas station or store and pick up a new pair of shoes, throw my old ones in the trash and walk back out the door.”
Along the way, Caffery said he interacted with people from all over the country. He’d have short conversations on the side of the road with strangers, meet up with friends of friends.
His progress again slowed with stops in Michigan and Ohio, when he took a detour to Pennsylvania to visit his father-in-law who was struggling with cancer. Caffery ultimately wound up attending the memorial service when he passed away, borrowing a car and a suit from an acquaintance in Ohio to drive there.
August came quickly, and Caffery found himself down to the final few miles of his run. When he arrived in Rhode Island, he was welcomed with some finish line festivities organized by friend Mike McCusker. His mother was also there, as were folks from the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund.
Very quickly, he had to reacclimate to real life. School was starting shortly for the fall semester, and he had lots of work to do in preparation.
“It was an incredible privilege,” he began of the run. “It was a very busy time in my life, so to take a 10-week break and focus on one thing… I had one job to do and it really felt like that job mattered.”
Caffery, who raised around $25,000, said the lasting impact from his run came not from the thousands of miles he logged, but the healing power and mental space it provided.
“I think this would probably surprise most people but the running part is really not that special,” he began. “That’s a thing, a nice goal, but that doesn’t feel special to me.
“What feels special to me is I did something to work through my grief. Having experienced my dad struggle with Alzheimer’s, it was unfathomably horrific. The symptoms were as bad as could be imagined. When he died, there was comfort in that he wasn’t suffering any more but there was no real way to work through that grief. So the run, now, feels most like I did something that I could do, and in the process, raised more money than I thought I could. A lot of people came on board, so being part of this thing, doing something at a difficult time, that’s what I’m most proud of.”
These days, Caffery saves his running shoes for area trails. He said he enjoys long runs, typically all day ones, where he can explore the nature and beauty that Franklin County has to offer.
As for another ultra run across the country?
“I don’t really want to do it again,” he said with a laugh. “It was a lot of running. But the engagement with something that really matters to me, to a community of people, I’m hoping to do something again that captures that aspect of it.”
Until then, Caffery still has those memories to reflect on, from the time he did something — because he could, and because he wanted to. The simple joys involved remain very much a part of his life nearly a decade later.