For many of the 37,”000 runners of the New York Marathon, crossing the finish line means they’ve accomplished their goal. For West Windsor’s Karl Dentino, that was just the beginning.##M:[more]##
This summer Dentino will complete a mission he started in 1979 when he first ran the New York Marathon at the age of 23. Now 50, he plans on running two more marathons to complete his quest to run one in each of the 50 states (not to mention one more in Washington, D.C.) On April 16, his final mainland marathon will be the Boston Marathon. This June he plans to finish the feat by running one final 26.2-mile race in Hawaii.
There is more to this mission than accomplishing something that only 271 other people have done. Dentino, who has his own direct marketing company in Jersey City, is running to raise money to fight cancer. For the Boston Marathon, he’ll be running to benefit the Dana Farber Cancer Institute as part of the center’s Marathon Challenge to benefit cancer research.
“Ironically, it was my mother’s diagnosis with cervical cancer back in 1979 that got me started running. My father had suffered a heart attack a few years earlier, and these events were a sobering wake-up call,” says Dentino, whose parents both died a few years later. “You might say that all my life I have been running from cancer and now I am running to beat it.”
An organization has formed around the growing number of people trying to accomplish running a marathon in each of the 50 states. The 50statesmarathon.com website documents 1,”200 people on a quest to do just that. Dentino says the allure of the feat is in part in the unique way the participant gets to experience the best parts of America. “I’ve run past Mt. Rushmore, the California Redwoods, the Colorado Rockies, the Mississippi River, and countless other American landmarks on my journey.”
He has completed each one of the races in under four hours. Dentino describes himself as a middle-of-the-pack runner. “I believe the vast majority of Americans could run a marathon. I have no running talent. Marathons don’t require talent. They require good knees, a strong will and a great spouse.”
Dentino’s wife, Verna, has been with him long before he started running marathons. The two met in high school at Camden Catholic in Cherry Hill. They now live on Elkins Court, and have two children, Luke, 19, a freshman at St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia, and Hannah, 13, a student at St. Paul’s School in Princeton. The entire family will be watching on June 24 when he crosses his final finish line in Kona, Hawaii.
His goal is to raise $10,”000 for the Farber Institute before the Boston Marathon in April. Anyone wishing to make a tax-deductible donation in his name can visit www.dfmarathon.kintera.org.
