Runner Passes Through Lewis County on 1,700-Mile Journey for Child Cancer Patients

Richard Nares looked out the window of the Boston Children’s Hospital and watched the runners passing by below. It was 2000, and his 5-year-old son Emilio had just a month to live, the end of his three-year battle with leukemia. Amid his grief, Nares resolved to start running, to qualify for the Boston Marathon and to make the race a pilgrimage to thank all those who had been there for his family.

“It took me 10 years, but at 60 I ran my first marathon,” Nares said. 

He’s run Boston twice more since, and that was just the start. Nares is now running 30 miles a day, day after day, as he journeys 1,700 miles from Seattle to San Diego to raise money for kids battling cancer.

After his son died, Nares founded the Emilio Nares Foundation, and he’s thrown his life into the charity. The nonprofit provides transportation for families who have children fighting cancer, and they make thousands of trips each year totaling more than 100,000 miles.

The foundation is also working to distribute its specially designed t-shirts, with snaps on the shoulder and sleeve that open up for easy access for the chest catheter ports used to administer chemotherapy. The stress of pulling a shirt on and off can be arduous for young patients, Nares said.

Nares is hoping to raise enough money on his run — $250,000 — to provide a year’s supply of the shirts to the nine children’s hospitals he will be visiting along his route. He started at the Seattle Children’s Hospital and made his way into Centralia this week.

“I’ve been thinking for quite some time about how I can get that shirt really launched,” he said. “For me, it’s about getting exposure for the shirts.”

So he’s taken to the road, along with a support team that helps him with routes, keeps him fed and hydrated and films the journey. He credited his teammates, Sholom and Lynn Ellenberg and Matt Cappella, for keeping him going.

So far, the 64-year-old said he’s been up to the physical challenge. He runs 15 miles in the morning and 15 in the afternoon, running for about six hours each day. He makes nutrition a priority, and uses a foam roller, muscle massage stick and ice baths to help his body recover after each run. 

“We can endure a lot more than we think,” Nares said. “If [Emilio] could as a 3-year-old keep powering through until he couldn’t, I can run a little bit and accomplish this goal.”

Nares has previously run from San Francisco to San Diego, and he’s enjoying getting back into the daily rhythms of a long trek.

“It’s like you can’t stop,” he said. “After awhile, it just becomes normal. … It becomes addictive, and you just press that button and go.”

Unlike marathon running, Nares said he’s not worried about speed or time — just knocking out those 30 miles.

“I just try to remain steady, because it’s a long time to run,” he said. “You’ve got to make sure you conserve your energy for the next day. … I took a really hard nap this afternoon.”

Nares spoke on his rest day, a break he gives himself once a week to stay refreshed. He’s expecting to arrive in San Diego on Aug. 18, and he’s encouraged by the $82,000 in donations that has already rolled in.

“Every little town we’ve been in, people are great and really supportive,” he said.

Having been through Emilio’s cancer battle, Nares knows just how important it is for families in that situation to have support. 

He promoted gestures like bringing meals, taking a patient’s siblings to the movies or buying a gym membership for a parent who’s at an out-of-town hospital and needs the therapy of exercise. Beyond what his foundation is doing, he wants to inspire people to come around the families who need help.

“To help parents, it’s just an amazing thing,” he said. “They don’t know how much they affect that person by giving.”

The Emilio Nares Foundation is online at enfhope.org, where visitors can donate and track Nares’ “Heart and Sole Run.”