THE850race: Doing the Impossible (Summer 09 Issue)

Running two marathons a day - six days in a row?
Raising $1Million for charity doing it?

That’s exactly what Brain Culbert and David Battison plan to do this September.

Between September 13th and 18th, 2009, Brian and Dave will run from Niagara Falls to Tobermory, the 850km length of The Bruce Trail, in an attempt to raise $1 million for children’s health programs globally.

A Dream Team

Brian Culbert is a world class endurance athlete. Sharing his time between his Toronto home and his Wasaga Beach cottage, he has been competing at national and world level events as an endurance mountain biker for 5 years.


Dave Battison competed as a professional triathlete, and represented Canada three times at the World Ironman Championships in Hawaii, widely regarded as the most prestigious triathlon event in the world.


Dave also happens to be one of Canada’s top coaches, and has been given Professional title status from the Coaching Association of Canada, one of only five active coaches in the country with this designation.

If anyone can run the equivalent of a dozen marathons in six days and raise one million dollars doing it, these two can.


The Bucket List

Last fall, while on a 10 km trail run, Brian and Dave decided to create their own “Bucket List” like Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman had done in the film of the same name.

One of the list items was to run The Bruce Trail. The whole trail. All 850 kms of it.

If that wasn’t enough, the pair decided that they ought to do it in only six days - which, when you do the math, is like running two marathons a day, six days in a row. THE850race was born.

Challenging the Perception of Possibility


Running two marathons a day for six days sounds like an impossibility to most people, but so does eliminating global childhood poverty. Brian and Dave are setting out to prove those perceptions wrong and push the limits of possibility.


Brain’s own drive stems from his commitment to the The Hospital for Sick Children and their work for children everywhere. When Brain’s son was born, his family spent almost two weeks at SickKids and was witness to the seemingly insurmountable challenges faced by so many children testing their own physical limits daily. He suddenly understood courage in a way he hadn’t before; “God, give me my son and I’ll go help these children for the rest of my life. This is my covenant to you”.


Working in conjunction with The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, the Global Child Health Program at HealthyKids International is a collective strategy for international outreach activities charged to solve the global paediatric healthcare crisis. By focusing on developing and training key healthcare workers, improving opportunities for health leaders and institutions to share knowledge, and creating healthcare delivery systems that reach out to the most underserved communities, the Global Child Health Program will ultimately improve the care received by the world’s most in-need children.



When Brian and Dave decided that running The Bruce Trail was their next goal, they also decided to turn the run into a fund raiser. They gave themselves an extremely demanding time frame and set their sites on raising $1 million in support of the Global Child Health Program run by the SickKids Foundation.


For more information go to http://www.healthykidsinternational.com/