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7 marathons, 7 days, 7 continents and one

man with Parkinson’s. Can he make it?

Bret Parker reacts as family members and friends greet him before one of the
events in the 2018 World Marathon Challenge. (Melina Mara/The Washington
Post)
By Amy Gardner February 11 at 8:00 AM

During the first marathon, Bret Parker felt great — for the first 15 miles of ice and
snow.
“I was chugging along, and I had no symptoms,” he recalled the next day. “I was
running a good pace. I said, ‘You got this.’ ”
He paused. “And that was the kiss of death. I started slowing down. It got colder.
It got windier.”

It was Jan. 30, and Bret was running a marathon on Antarctica. It wasn’t actually
that cold for most of the race — about 20 degrees. But it was windy. And Bret has
Parkinson’s disease. Like the 50 or so others on this adventure, he wore ski
goggles and trail shoes and lots of layers. Unlike them, he carried a tiny plastic bag
of pills that he was regularly popping to keep the stiffness, cramping and tremors
of Parkinson’s at bay.
Parker’s multi-marathon adventure began in Antarctica. (Judy Sanchez)

The symptoms came anyway. The route


on Antarctica, six laps around a four-mile loop at a Russian research station called
Novolazarevskaya, featured endless vistas of blue ice all around — like Caribbean
waters, only frozen. He walked a lot over the final 10 miles. But with a quarter-
mile to go, he started running again. He could feel a symptom coming on that he
had experienced only rarely since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s 11 years
ago, at age 38: an uncontrollable, head-to-toe shivering. He knew he had to get
inside.

When he crossed the finish line in just under 6 hours, 23 minutes, Bret’s hands
had curled up, his calves were cramping and he struggled to speak. He stopped to
record a video to post online for the friends and family members following his
progress. But he was in such bad shape that the event organizers put him on a
snowmobile for the ride back to shelter.

“It took me a while to finally settle down,” he recalled. “Then we got back on the
plane.”
Less than eight hours later, Bret lined up at another starting line along the
southern tip of Africa, ready to do it all over again.
A crazy challenge
Bret was competing in the World Marathon Challenge, in which athletes run
seven marathons on seven continents in seven days, doing little other than
sleeping and eating on a chartered airplane between races.

Since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, Bret has been on the hunt for personal
challenges. There was his hometown New York City Marathon. There was a
triathlon along Long Island Sound. There was a jump out of an airplane. Now,
there was this.

Bret Parker in Central Park in New York. Since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s
disease, he has been on the hunt for personal challenges. There was his
hometown New York City Marathon. There was a triathlon along Long Island
Sound. There was a jump out of an airplane. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Parker left, rests in his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., after training with friend David
Samson in December. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

In Manhattan, Parker waits for his physical therapist a few weeks before
beginning the 2018 World Marathon Challenge. (Melina Mara/The Washington
Post)
“Parkinson’s has given me the freedom, the liberty to take on these things, even
though they seem ridiculous,” Bret, executive director of the New York City Bar
Association, said in an interview in November. “It helps me get over a fear of
water, it helps me raise money, it gives me a goal. It’s a lot better story when I’m
trying to tell people to donate to be able to say I’m doing my part.
“Also,” he added, “I don’t want it to be in charge of me.”

“That’s the real issue,” his wife, Katharine, chimed in.

Bret’s Parkinson’s is often hard to notice. His right hand trembles occasionally,
and he often exhibits a roly-poly movement in his arms and shoulders that he said
is a side effect of his medication. He knew his symptoms would worsen over the
course of the World Marathon Challenge, and they did.
Day 2 brought Bret to a beachfront promenade in Cape Town, South Africa. He’d
gotten two hours of sleep on the flight from Antarctica. His feet hurt from the first
run, and he had decided to walk this race’s four six-mile loops along the Atlantic
Ocean.

Yet he sounded optimistic as he prepared to start.

“One marathon down, 6 to go!” Bret posted on Facebook that day. “Antarctica
was wonderful and awful! A little banged up (combination of Parkinson’s and
running 26.2), but next one is in Cape Town, less than 12 hours after Antarctica
and I’ll be on the starting line.”
Embracing a new identity
Bret and I met in 1986, when we lived on the same dormitory hallway during our
freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania. We worked on the student
newspaper together, but after graduation, he went off to law school and I to my
first newspaper job, and we fell out of touch, reconnecting only when Facebook
came along.

I remember when Bret revealed his diagnosis on Facebook, in 2012. He’d been
living with a secret that he had shared only with Katharine, his parents and a close
friend.
Bret and Katharine had hidden his diagnosis — even from their two sons, Ben,
now 17, and Matt, 20 — out of uncertainty over how it would change their lives,
his career, his ability to be a husband and father, how his friends and peers would
perceive him. Katharine recalled wondering whether he would be able to drive,
work or even walk.

Parker is greeted by his son Ben near the end of the last marathon in his week-
long journey. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
During his marathons, Parker carried a tiny plastic bag of pills that he popped to
keep the stiffness, cramping and tremors of Parkinson’s disease at bay. (Melina
Mara/The Washington Post)

Before beginning the marathon in Miami, Parker is greeted by Sarah Reinertsen,


who runs with a prosthetic leg. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
When he finally went public about his disease, he embraced his new identity. He
began raising money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation, whose famous founder,
like Bret, had been stricken with Parkinson’s at a young age.

Parkinson’s patients don’t see themselves as terminally ill, but their life spans are
typically reduced and there is not yet a cure for the neurological disease, which
causes reduced dopamine levels in the brain and a variety of symptoms, including
slowed movement, stiffness, cramping and tremors, which typically worsen with
age. The average age at diagnosis is about 60, but young-onset Parkinson’s occurs
in as many as 10 percent of cases.

Much of Bret’s advocacy has come on social media, where he has built a support
network that spans continents and includes people he’s never met. There,
questions about the wisdom of taking on bigger and bigger challenges intermingle
with straight-up cheers. Both attract attention and donations. Both seem to have
the same, motivating effect on Bret.

Running seven marathons in seven days can be damaging to a perfectly healthy


adult. But having Parkinson’s doesn’t necessarily make it more so, said Melissa J.
Nirenberg, a neurologist and researcher who treated Bret for the first 10 years
after his diagnosis.

Nirenberg, who is now the chief medical officer of the New York Stem Cell
Research Foundation, said she had the same reaction as many of Bret’s friends
when he told her of his plans — “What in the world are you thinking?” I had that
reaction too, when Bret posted news of his next challenge on Facebook early in
2017. But Nirenberg noted that exercise is known to slow the progression of the
disease’s symptoms.

“There was a time when this would have been an end to a road,” Bret said to me
during a call from the Cape Town race route, as he walked swiftly past
playgrounds and mini-golf courses in the shadow of Table Mountain. “Right now I
feel perfectly fine. I’m very aware of the ultimate goal of running all seven. I just
want to get on the plane to Perth tonight and get a good night’s sleep.”
He crossed the finish line in Cape Town at 6 hours, 47 minutes and 50 seconds.

Bret Parker is taking on the grueling World Marathon Challenge: 7 marathons on


7 continents in 7 days. And he has Parkinson's disease. (Jenny Starrs/The
Washington Post)

The challenge of Perth

Bret’s condition took a turn for the worse in Perth, Australia. He had managed
about six Ambien-induced hours of sleep on the challenge’s chartered plane,
which came equipped with lie-flat seats and couches. Among this year’s 50
competitors, Bret was part of a smaller group of 16 who collectively raised about
$1 million for multiple charities and whose entry fees, about $45,000 apiece, had
been paid by a single, anonymous benefactor.

When Bret woke up as the plane approached Perth, the top of his right foot and
his left shin hurt badly. He also had developed blisters, including one on the ball
of his left foot that was the size of a large cookie.

On a bus to the hotel where runners would have about 30 minutes to get ready
for the race, he sat next to a window and wept.

“I had read all the Facebook comments — ‘You got this,’ ‘You’re awesome,’
‘You’re a hero,’ ” Bret told me by phone after that day’s race, his voice low and
subdued. “And now I’m going to have to tell them, ‘I can’t do this.’ ”
His voice cracked as he continued, describing the Facebook post he had sent out
about a half-hour before the start. “It’s possible I won’t make it through this one,”
he had written. “I know I shouldn’t even admit that before I start and it’s all very
emotional for me, but after the joy I felt (and posted about) I thought I should
share the lows as well to keep it real.”

The post generated nearly 300 likes and more than 100 comments. “Bret, you’ve
already won,” one friend wrote.

After a few miles in Perth, Bret realized that he could make it if he was careful and
persistent and kept to a consistent walking pace. He even began running toward
the end of the course, out of fear that he might miss what he thought was an
eight-hour cutoff. Running, oddly, was less painful for his feet. He crossed the
finish line with eight minutes to spare.
Pushing on

Bret mostly walked the next three marathons — in Dubai, Lisbon and Cartagena,
Colombia — but he also broke into some unexpected bursts of running. In the
early morning in Dubai, he saw late-night clubgoers on their way home — and
heard Muslim prayers coming from the loudspeakers of mosques. In Lisbon, a
cobblestone marathon route and cold, rainy weather created problems for all the
runners, and Bret walked his slowest race so far, finishing just under 9 hours and
17 minutes. The eight-hour cutoff, it turns out, was not enforced so long as the
group could remain on the air charter’s schedule.

It was dark in Miami when Parker started the final lap of the seventh marathon in
the challenge. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

But Bret’s physical condition continued to worsen. Toward the end of each flight,
he made his way to the couches at the back of the plane, where a race staffer
wrapped and taped his left foot, which was covered in blisters and peeled skin. As
they flew to the final marathon, the staffer came to him.

When he arrived in Miami on Feb. 5, he could barely walk off the plane. Tumbling
out of the bus at the starting line along Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, he found
dozens of friends, family and even a few strangers who had learned of his effort
through the Fox Foundation and gathered to watch the final race. Katharine had
bought orange T-shirts for everyone, emblazoned with her husband’s name.
Bret’s father, James, stood along the route the entire day.

Bret was feeling euphoric that the end was in sight. Around 2:20 p.m., he began
running. After the first 5.2-mile loop, up and back along the South Beach
boardwalk, though, he slowed to a walk. It had been a long seven days.

His son Ben walked three five-mile loops with his dad, at one point carrying a box
with a slice of pizza for him. Others joined the procession. When Bret asked for
something with caffeine, a lawyer friend who had flown down from New Jersey
dashed off to a beachside bar and ran back with a sloshing cup of Diet Coke.

As the day turned to night and footlights came on along the boardwalk, the crowd
surrounding Bret grew to nearly a dozen. Along one stretch, he stopped cold and
the group froze. A foot was cramping. He resumed walking, his right hand hanging
clenched at his side.

It was dark when Bret started the final lap. Katharine joined him for a few
minutes, but then he set off on his own.

The crowd at the finish line grew quiet as Bret disappeared from view. Katharine
prepared a bottle of champagne. Organizers stretched victory tape across the
path.

Right around 10 p.m., Bret’s bobbing white running hat popped into view, with
Ben, who had joined him for the final quarter-mile, at his side. Everyone else had
finished the race long ago. A deafening chorus of cheers erupted as Bret crossed
the finish line. It had been 7 hours, 41 minutes, 22 seconds.
He flashed seven fingers as he broke through the tape. He spun around, smiling,
his hands on his waist. He laughed as Katharine popped the champagne, gave her
a hug and took the beer she held out in her hand.
Parker’s wife, Katharine, greets him with a bottle of champagne as he finishes the
race in Miami. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
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