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Dan Cartica
[running]
Around the
World in Seven
Days
Alumnus wins 2016 World
Marathon Challenge while
running to honor slain
servicemen.
The pain first came like the thrust of a knife
into his right hamstring, again and again,
with each stride Dan Cartica, BBA ’10, took.
It was around mile 10 of his marathon in
Dubai, but in truth, it was closer to mile 141
for the former GW cross-country runner. Five
days earlier, Mr. Cartica and 14 other runners
began the World Marathon
Challenge, a brutal endurance
race through seven marathons on
all seven continents in just seven
days.
The competitors started the
endeavor in Union Glacier, Antarctica,
a shining expanse of
snow and glaciers that was -12
degrees Fahrenheit, despite the 24 hours of
sunlight, when the race officially got underway
on Jan. 23. After completing their first
26.2 miles of the week, the runners boarded a
Russian cargo jet and took off for their next
marathon location: Punta Arenas,
Chile.
From there it was on to
Miami; then Madrid; Marrakech,
Morocco; Dubai,
United Arab Emirates; and
Sydney, Australia, for a
marathon in each city.
The Moroccan leg of
the race was one of the
toughest: When the
Read more about
Mr. Cartica’s
experiences during
the race at
go.gwu.edu/cartica
marathoners stepped across the start line in
Marrakech, they did so just a few hours after
completing the marathon in Madrid.
“Running the Moroccan leg on such a
quick turnaround meant that I had run two
full marathons in a 15-hour period and over
100 miles in just a few days,” says Mr. Cartica,
a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. “When I
hit mile 10 of the next leg in Dubai, the fatigue
and depleted nutrition started to take their
toll, and that’s when the pain started.”
As he struggled to keep his pace, his
thoughts focused on the reason he was undertaking
this grueling journey: to honor the
Navy sailor and four U.S. Marines who were
killed in Chattanooga, Tenn., on July 16, 2015.
“I knew, without question, that those five
individuals would not have contemplated
giving up or throwing in the towel, and that
was really the mindset I had for the rest of
that day,” Mr. Cartica says. “So I kept fighting
and got through those last 16
miles, but it wasn’t pretty.”
Less than 24 hours later, he
crossed the final finish line in
Sydney as the winner of the 2016
World Marathon Challenge. In
all, Mr. Cartica finished first or
tied for first in all but two of the
race’s seven stages (when he
placed second), setting a new world record for
the fastest average marathon time for seven
marathons on seven continents in seven days.
Mr. Cartica says he hasn’t thought much
about the record, but feels that maybe 15 or
20 years down the line it’ll be an interesting
asterisk next to his name. For now, he’s
hoping people will focus less on how he ran
and more about why.
“Getting out the message of why I decided
to run this race is the most important thing
for me,” he says. “The individual, Daniel
Cartica, is just a normal guy who set out on
this endeavor to honor five servicemen—
they’re the ones we should be honoring.”
—Gray Turner, MPS ’11
183.4
Miles traveled by foot
24,000+
Calories burned
3:12:46 3:42:02 3:32:25
Fastest time Slowest time Average time
Punta Arenas, Chile Dubai, UAE world record
ASSOCIATED PRESS
66 / gw magazine / Spring 2016