In late 2019, friends Claude Bacon and Chris Stallings began talking about the desire to try something new in their endurance sports lifestyles. Though their plans to run an official 50-mile race were dashed, they designed their own “OBKY50” — and they are running with Josh Murphy to raise money for a local nonprofit in the process.
Bacon, a two-time Ironman Triathlon finisher, and Stallings, a marathoner, originally settled on the Tunnel Hill 50 Mile run in Sienna, Illinois.
The endurance run was set to be a first for both men. They selected a 16-week training program from Runner’s World that suited their work- and family-centered lifestyles, and they began training in July of this year.
“Training went on as normal for 10 weeks until information was delivered from the Tunnel Hill race director stating that due to the current pandemic, the State of Illinois was only allowing 50 runners each in the 50-mile and 100-mile races, and that runners would be selected by random drawing of registered runners,” Bacon said.
A week went by before both men found out that neither were selected to run.
“I was disappointed of course, but it didn’t take Chris and I long before we hatched our own plan to design our own OBKY50 mile run here in Owensboro,” said Bacon.
Their Tunnel Hill race was originally scheduled for Saturday. It turns out they wouldn’t have been able to run anyway.
Both men have daughters competing in the Kentucky middle school school state cross country meet, which was rescheduled to Saturday due to the pandemic.
“The state meet date change certainly made the Tunnel Hill race cancelation easier to accept because there’s no way we’d miss supporting our daughters and this team at their race, so we just moved our OBKY50 date to the next day,” said Stallings.
Bacon and Stallings are both volunteer parent coaches on the Daviess County Middle School cross country team, which is led by full-time head coach Josh Murphy.
“Coach Murphy often inquired about our training progress, what our long runs had been like, what we had coming up,” Bacon said.
In week 11 of the men’s training, Murphy called and said he wanted to do something really hard to honor the life of his daughter Liv — the baby girl he and his wife Laura lost on April 2. He wanted to join Bacon and Stallings and complete this run.
“Seeing our little daughter so perfect and so tiny made me really start to grasp the sanctity of life. I wanted to do something in her honor. I knew I needed to do this,” Murphy said.
Murphy presented the idea to run the 50-miler and see if collectively they could raise money and awareness for a local nonprofit. The men readily agreed and set the goal to raise $1,000 for Care Net, a local nonprofit that offers ultrasounds, education courses and STD tests free of charge to the community.
“I feel like this is just one way I can honor my daughter’s life,” Murphy said.
As far as training, the men say they are as ready as they will ever be. All three are excited to run for a cause that gives back to their community. Their run is set to start at 6 a.m. Sunday and will start and finish downtown on the riverfront.
