A Winnipeg man wants to change Boxing Day into ‘Running Day’, and he’s doing it for a good cause.
For the fourth consecutive year, ultra-marathon runner Junel Malapad is spending his Boxing Day running to raise money for Siloam Mission.
The run began, he said, for a simple reason.
“I love running and I don’t like shopping,” said Malapad.
This year, Malapad is running a 3.3-km loop through The Forks and around Provencher Boulevard and Marion Street. A few other runners and supporters joined him along the way.
Malapad will run the route 30 times before finishing it off with a final run to Siloam Mission to drop off donations.
He started running at 4 a.m. and is expected to finish at Siloam by about 7 p.m. — an extreme run, even for an ultra-marathoner like Malapad.
“At the end you’re pretty happy and there isn’t very much pain, but everything just creeps in and soon you’ll find you felt like you’ve been hit by a truck,” said Malapad.
“But after that is recovery and you start thinking about the next thing.”
In the past three years, he’s raised about $21,000 for the charity. This year he hopes to raise an additional $10,000.