Brutal week of marathons 'fun', Aucklander says

Runners feeling exhausted after finishing the gruelling 60km Kepler Challenge at Te Anau on Saturday might spare a thought for Malcolm Law, who has just completed not one but seven such challenges in the past seven days.

The Auckland market researcher on Saturday finished the Mizone 7 in 7 Challenge, running 360km, the equivalent of nine off-road marathons and climbing Mt Cook twice.

With his support crew, he set off from Lake Waikaremoana in the North Island, running the Tongariro northern circuit on November 29 before heading south to the Abel Tasman National Park and Heaphy, Routeburn and Milford, tracks.

He finished by competing in the annual 60km Kepler challenge on Saturday.

"It was a bit of an effort," he said from Queenstown last night.

While the "seven horrendous days" had been hard on both body and mind, he was surprised at "how much fun I had doing it".

The motivation for the run was the death of his brother from leukaemia, aged 13, in 1969 and he took a year off work to prepare.

Law (49) had planned to raise $50,000 for the Leukaemia & Blood Foundation of New Zealand, but money from sponsors, mostly individuals, had topped $70,000 and he hoped the total would surpass $100,000 by the time all the money was collected.

The hardest part of the challenge was the Heaphy track, he said, as time constraints meant he had to start at 3.45am, run for two hours in the dark, and finish by 5pm to get a helicopter flight to his next destination.

"We were pretty exhausted."

Training for the challenge had involved 3000km of trail-running, gym work and Pilates, and Mr Law has worn out four pairs of running shoes in the last week.

david.loughrey@odt.co.nz

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