Salute to an everyday hero

By Chris Gaskell, Founder of Spot On Publications
(posted 2 March 2010)





Phil Cunninghame (second from right) ploughs through the 50km mark in the early hours of the morning. Those of us privileged to support him at this stage were (from left): personal trainer Thomas Henderson, myself and my daughter Kate.








Last weekend I got to rub shoulders with a hero. He wasn’t an All Black or a Shortland Street star. Rather, he’s an everyday hero who spent last weekend doing something extraordinary. This hero is Phil Cunninghame – 40-something husband to Alex, father to Georgia and Abi, businessman and North Shore resident – who realised a few years ago that at 125 kgs-plus he wasn’t looking after himself, never mind being much of a role model for his family.
So he joined the Millennium Institute gym, lost some 35kgs and then set himself a series of challenging physical goals.
And I mean challenging, like the Speights Coast to Coast, the 160km Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge and the Auckland Marathon. That’s pretty cool, but it’s not the heroic bit.
That came about when Phil decided to enter the Relay for Life, an annual fundraising event for the Cancer Society which involves teams running or walking around the Millennium Institute track non-stop for 18 hours.
Over the 18 hours, most team members put in a couple of hours of track time. But Phil set himself a much tougher target. He committed to run non-stop for 9 hours – setting off around the track at 1am and running through until the end of the event at 10am in an effort to raise as much money as possible for the Cancer Society.
In conjunction with his personal trainer, Thomas Henderson, Phil mapped out a punishing training schedule to get in shape for the event – including churning out 54kms on the Millennium Institute track one hot summer afternoon.
In the early hours of Sunday morning though it was time to put all that training to the test as – supported by his family and friends – he set out on his run. Alex, Abi and Georgia stayed up all night to keep him fed and watered, while other friends turned up to encourage or run with him.
Hour after hour he circled lane 6 at the Millennium track, to complete an incredible 81 kms (that’s almost two marathons back-to-back) in the nine hours.
I was privileged to run with him for a period around dawn as he completed the first of those ‘marathons’ and I could see how much the effort was taking out of him then. So, for Phil to dig deep and keep running for another 40-plus kms was truly outstanding.
In a practical sense, his efforts raised more than $4,500 for the Cancer Society. But what was driving him on though all the pain became clear in Phil’s message of thanks to his supporters after his run.
He wrote: “By the end it was starting to hurt, my quads were screaming at me to stop. But this was not a time for weakness – what I was going through was nothing compared to the pain my father had gone through almost 10 years ago when we lost him to this terrible disease.
“I was determined to keep smiling, for all the people we have lost to cancer, and for the ones that remain so positive and bright despite the worst of verdicts having been laid upon their shoulders. This run was for all those real people.”
Well done Phil – you’re a real Kiwi hero.