Weary of the corporate rat race, Bill Sycalik, who calls himself “a recovering management consultant,” read about the National Park Service’s centennial and decided to run a marathon at each and every national park.
This weekend, he summited (OK, circled) the Arch, just in time for its rededication as Gateway Arch National Park. Now the only parks left on his list of 60 are the eight in Alaska.
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“I had to run 16 1.7 mile loops around the arch to get a marathon,” he told us, sounding quite happy about it. At every park, he seeks company on his run. One or two folks usually come out to join him. But when he reached out to St. Louis running groups via Facebook, he was “overwhelmed by the response.” Nine people, most from the Arch City Run Club, were with him from the start, and others joined as they ran, “including four members of a local high school cross country team,” he reported. “People here are very proud of their city.”
Sycalik finished his 26.2 miles in four hours and 32 minutes, and he says those loops were “not even remotely boring or repetitive. The park is very beautiful, the Arch amazing, and the people were friendly and fun.” And yes, he adds, he did take the tram ride to the top. “I had to!”
Sycalik’s goal, other than peace of mind, is to underscore the need to “protect our public lands, since nature is a way for us to rejuvenate and renew and break away from our hectic, electronic lives.” The John Muir quote on his website says it all:
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”
