On the run with Dr. Bob Kennedy
Maria Mitchell scientist readies for 20th marathon - with more to come
BY STEVE SHEPPARD INDEPENDENT SPORTS EDITOR
We all talk about our weekly trips to the dump, but when Dr. Bob Kennedy makes a dump run he literally does just that.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent file

"It's 6.6 miles from my house to the dump and back," he said last week. "That's my dump run."

Dr. Kennedy, the director of Natural Sciences for the Maria Mitchell Association, has been running quite a bit since he ran in his first marathon in 2001. "I was living in Cincinnati in May of 2000 and they had just run the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon. The longest I'd ever run was 10 miles and I wondered if I could run a marathon."

So he trained, ran in the next year's Flying Pig Marathon, finished the course and, "I said, 'That's it.' But a few days later, I was ready for more."

Seven years later, he has just completed his nineteenth marathon. In a little more than two weeks, he'll celebrate his sixtieth birthday by running in his twentieth - the Boston Marathon.

It will be his third marathon this year.

The most recent one, on March 16, was special because he ran it with his wife, Anne Broussard, a professor at the University of New Hampshire. She had run some half-marathons since 2006 at the urging of her husband, but Rome represented her first full marathon.

That's right, Rome.

"It was this little romantic adventure we had," Bob Kennedy said. Not only was it his wife's 55th birthday March 17, the weekend marked their 30th wedding anniversary as well. "It was just great," Kennedy said. "The whole thing was special because we were running through ancient Rome; it was just a magical place to be."

They arrived in Rome on Friday morning and ran the marathon that Sunday. Kennedy said the course, which passed by the Colisseum and along the Tiber River and back by the Spanish Steps, was nice and flat, with the exception being that "most of the course was cobblestones."

For many, one marathon a year would be enough, but Kennedy's just getting warmed up. He ran 20 miles last weekend, for example, starting in Kittery, Maine, with the course following the New Hampshire coastline before ending in Salisbury, Mass. And there's a half-marathon in New Hampshire two weeks before Boston.

His wife won't be running Boston this year ("she'll be there, cheering me on"), but, in a way, Kennedy will be running the race for her. He is part of the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team and is raising money for cancer research. While the Marathon Challenge requires that runners raise $3,000 through pledges, Kennedy has set his sights higher, hoping to raise over $10,000.

The mission is a personal one for Kennedy - his wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2001 and received treatment at Dana Farber. She has been cancer free for over five years now and, like so many others with similar experiences at Dana- Farber, Kennedy is grateful. "This is kind of a payback," he said.

He'll also be running for others affected by cancer. "I've gotten about 75 or 80 people so far," he said last week. "I'll either write their names on my jersey or pin the names to my shirt."

The cause clearly motivates him, but the races are often encouragement enough. "If I didn't do the races, I probably wouldn't run," he admits. "It sounds crazy, but it's great fun."

And, no, he doesn't run every day, but four days a week. He is a regular participant with Brant Point Runners, a group that runs a 5K course every Tuesday, year-round, no matter what the weather. "I've run in every conceivable type of weather on Nantucket," he says. "I've run the Milestone Road on the bike path in six inches of snow."

The preparations will serve him well, for this is also Dr. Kennedy's personal "Year of the Triathlons." These include Nantucket's Iron Teams Relay, which he'll run himself; the EagleMan Half Iron Triathlon in Cambridge, Maryland; the Nautica New York City Olympic Distance Triathlon; the

LobsterMan Olympic Distance Triathlon in Freeport, Maine; the IronMan World Championship in Kona Hawaii, and the Arizona Full IronMan in Tempe, Arizona.

His work schedule with the Maria Mitchell Association, moreover, is just as packed. Next Monday, he, along with fellow researchers Dr. Peter Boyce, Jeff Mercer, Valerie Hall and his son, Forrest Kennedy, will deliver a paper on the "Status of the Bay Scallop…on Nantucket Island - Past, Present and Future" at the hundredth anniversary celebrations of the National Shellfisheries Association in Providence. "That we were selected reflects what our peers think of what we're doing on Nantucket," he said.

And if he's back by Tuesday, he'll most likely be down at Brant Point, running.

To make a donation in Bob Kennedy's name to the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge, go to: www.

RunDFMC.org. I