When Santosh Karmacharya set out to complete The Great World Race this fall, he hoped he could separate his day job from his personal life. That, however, proved more difficult than he thought.
“I couldn’t help [helping] somebody,” said Karmacharya, who has owned the holistic wellness center Om Namo in Belmont since 2007.
In November, Karmacharya completed the challenge of running seven marathons in seven days on seven continents, averaging 3 ½ hours per marathon. With a time of 25:35:57, he was the seventh male finisher.
“It was bizarre,” he said, recalling the moment he crossed the final finish line. “It felt like the weight I was carrying for eight or nine days, I was able to let go.”
For Karmacharya, it wasn’t his first endurance event. The Cushing Square business owner is a marathoner and triathlete who competed in the Ironman world championships in Australia this summer.
“My result wasn’t as good as I would like it to be,” he said. “When I came back, I was like, ‘I gotta finish this year on a high note.’”
It was that line of thinking that brought him back to a conversation he’d had with David Kelly, race director for The Great World Race, at the 2022 Chicago Marathon. According to Karmacharya, Kelly said he’d make a great candidate for the seven-marathon challenge and encouraged him to consider it. While the idea tempted Karmacharya — he’d heard of another Belmont resident, Becca Pizzi, completing another seven-marathon event by a different name, The World Marathon Challenge — the burden of raising the necessary money for a race with a registration fee of €49,500 (about $52,000) seemed too much.
Two years later, however, he decided it was worth the try.
“I’m physically pretty good; I don’t have any injuries,” he said. “If there’s any year, this might be the year I should be able to do it.”
That decision was made in late September. Less than two months later, he was in Wolf’s Fang, Antarctica, at the starting line with 60 other athletes. Among the runners were 2016 Olympic bronze medalist Jenny Simpson and professional triathlete Ashley Paulson.
From there, Karmacharya traveled to Cape Town, South Africa; Perth, Australia; Istanbul, Turkey (Asia, Europe); Cartagena, Colombia (South America); and Miami, Florida (North America.)
“The contrast of running from Antarctica to Cartagena, there was 95% humidity — it was hard for the mind to adapt to that,” he said. “That was something I didn’t know about; those [differences] are really hard to overcome: the cold to really hot.”
The constant travel and changing of time zones also took a toll on him, he said.
“That was the hardest part,” Karmacharya said. “You don’t know what time zone you’re in; one day, you’re in Africa; another day, you’re in Europe.”
To prepare for each race, he looked at the schedule of the races, the terrain of each one and the expected weather.
“I had my idea in my head of how it was going to be,” he said.
But what Karmacharya didn’t see coming was the role he’d play in the race for other runners. Prior to the race, he told the race director he didn’t want it to be known that he had a background in physical therapy, chiropractic techniques, acupuncture, and massage. He wanted to experience the race as all runners were experiencing it. He didn’t want “fans;” he wanted to make friends.
But he couldn’t help himself. When the Cushing Square business owner saw a fellow competitor struggling after the Australia marathon, he asked if there was anything he could do to help her.
“Then word spread quite fast,” he said.
He offered aid to other runners, even helping to reset the pelvis of one of his competitors.
“I ended up helping a few people that I enjoyed working with and loved talking to,” he said. “The second half of my race, I ended up being a team member rather than a runner.”
The favor perhaps was returned when in the final race, another runner turned to Karmacharya and offered him some Tylenol.
“My pain level was pretty high,” he said, describing pain in his left knee. “He said it will take half an hour to kick in. … Right after I finished, I was kicking myself: why didn’t I take this earlier?”
But the pain didn’t eclipse the sense of accomplishment he felt or that he’d done what others had told him would be impossible.
“I came to do this seven-marathon challenge, and here I am, I’m done with it,” he said. “ It definitely made it surreal.”
Would he do it again? Maybe.
“No, because if I have to have that much money to race, then there are many things you can do that could be equally … memorable if not more memorable than that,” he said.
But he isn’t ready to turn the possibility down altogether.
“Yes,” he said. “I would do it if somebody challenged me.”
