What started as an escape from his desk job has turned into Patrick Novecosky preparing for the New York Marathon on Nov. 4.
The Burr native, who now lives in Florida, has 80 days to prepare for the over 42 km historic run.
There are only a few ways of participating in the run. For Novecosky, he was not fast enough to guarantee a spot in the race and he did not want to take his chances with a lottery system that he only had a one in five chance of winning.
Novecosky has joined a team in order to participate in the race and will be running with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation team to honour his son who has type one diabetes.
Those 80 days until race time will also be spent raising $3,500 US in order to run with his team, he says. So far he has raised nearly $1,000, which he is pretty happy with.
Novecosky has been running for the past 20 years as a way to break up the stress of his day job but so far running has taken him to Rome for two full marathons, both with connections to Pope Francis, as well as half marathons around Florida.
Two years ago, he actually got to meet the current Pope and made him laugh out loud when he asked the Pope to pray for him for his marathon.
After the pope understood what Novecosky was saying, it gave him a good laugh, he says.
Since his first one 10 years ago, Novecosky has done about 15 half marathons, in Florida.
Novecosky does get back to Humboldt every other year, he says, so he has also run around Humboldt to practice.
While he has seen the health benefit of running, especially as he gets older, Novecosky still has a love hate relationship with running.
The first mile was always hard, he says, but he has found that his consistent running has paid off in the last year. Two runs a week has turned the first mile into a walk in the park.
Novecosky set a goal to run 365 miles for 2018. Even with it being only August, he says he has already close to reaching that goal.
“I run because I can, and I really enjoy it.”
