Tony interviews Catskills resident Jamie Kennard about his recent undertaking of 500 5ks in 500 days – across multiple sporting disciplines, and all of them outdoors – as a means of coping with the loss of his wife Tracy to a particularly rare and brutal cancer at the age of 47. Jamie and Tracy had been together since they were 16, and married for the last 20+ of those 30 years.
Compared with her suffering and her fighting spirit, Jamie’s own determination to ski, hike, bike, run, canoe and even surf 5k a day minimum seemed… minimal. On One Step Beyond, he talks of how the undertaking nonetheless grounded him, guided him, led him to a surprising love of running, and about the so-serendipitous-it-is-almost-cosmic circumstances surrounding the conclusion of his 500th and final consecutive 5k-plus.
Jamie may have been new to running, but he’s certainly no stranger to the Great Outdoors. Back in 2014, he and his brother became the first and currently still the only people known to have ski’d all 35 of the Catskill 3500ft peaks, though as part of his foray into film-making and photography, he is following former OSB guest Julie MacGuire on her own quest to become the first woman to see through this incredible feat.
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Theme song "A Word That Doesn't Rhyme" by The Dear Boys. Listen to the whole song here.
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