A race across America

Do you remember the scene in Forrest Gump in which Forrest gets up one day and just starts running? He runs across the entire United States and eventually inspires a number of people to run with him. Frenchman Serge Girard, 58, is doing the same thing in the Los Angeles to New York Foot Race.

The race began on Sunday, 19 June, in Los Angeles. Over two months, Girard and 20 other runners will follow a route through Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey before (hopefully) arriving in New York City on 27 August.

The nearly 5,200 kilometres will be done in stages. The times for each day's stage will be added together to produce a runner's total time. The competitors will be running on asphalt and gravel roads every single day, no matter what the weather is like.

Girard is one of the world's best-known ultramarathoners. He has run across all six continents — from Los Angeles to New York in 1997, from Perth to Sydney in 1999, from Lima to Rio de Janeiro in 2001, from Dakar to Cairo in 2004 and from Paris to Tokyo in 2005-06. In 2009-10, he ran through 25 of the 27 member countries in the European Union, leaving out only Malta and Cyprus. This gave him a world record for the longest distance run in 365 days without a day of rest: 27,011 kilometres.

While running, Girard eats 8,000 calories and drinks 10 litres of mineral water each day.