Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Relay to Honor Kevin Dare, Seek World Record

A relay team honoring Kevin Dare, the Penn State pole vaulter who died at the Big Ten Indoor Championships in Minneapolis ten years ago, will run from the U of M Fieldhouse to State College, Pennsylvania to raise money for the Kevin Dare Foundation and attempt to set a 1000-mile relay world record.

A ten-man team of runners -- including Stillwater High School alumnus Luke Watson -- plan to make the journey from August 26th and end August 30th. The Life Back on Track Relay will raise money for the Kevin Dare Foundation’s scholarship program that helps severely injured and ill high school student athletes to attend college.

“It’s been ten years since Kevin Dare passed away, so we wanted to do something special to mark that and honor Kevin and the type of guy that he was,” event organizer and run participant Ryan Foster said in a recent media release.

Dare died during the pole vault competition at the Big Ten Championships at The University of Minnesota after he suffered a fatal head injury on a vault gone horribly wrong.

The runners will depart from the exact spot of Kevin’s accident, and attempt to run to the track facility at Penn State University faster than the current world record of 99 hours, 3 minutes, and 27 seconds. In order to break the current World Record, the runners will have to maintain a pace of five minutes and 57 seconds for each mile.

“We’re planning on each runner covering five miles in turn, which will allow us a bit over four hours to recover before we have to run again,” said Foster, a 2009 Penn state grad.

Find more information on the effort HERE.

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