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By GLENN JORDAN, Staff Writer Wednesday, October 18, 2006

A year ago, Joe Dunton carried 217 pounds on his 5-foot-7-inch frame. He had been a cross country runner in high school, but in the working world fell out of his daily exercise routine.

Once he became a firefighter in Hermon, he returned to running and started lifting weights as well. As the weight dropped off, he began thinking about a marathon, though he had never run farther than 7.5 miles at a time.

Shortly after noon on Tuesday, Dunton trotted into Payson Park holding hands with 10 others who had just run 26.2 miles from Back Cove to Yarmouth and back in four hours, 12 minutes and 37 seconds.

"I've never been this tired in my life," Dunton said after passing through an inflatable red arch. "But mentally, I'm pumped. This won't be the last (marathon), I'm sure."

The inspiration for Dunton's midweek marathon was Dean Karnazes, a 43-year-old runner from San Francisco who finished with the group and is more than halfway toward his goal of running 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days.

Last October, Karnazes ran 350 miles without stopping -- including three sleepless nights -- to raise $10,000 for a girl who needed a heart transplant. He has won the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race through 130-degree heat in Death Valley, mountain-biked for 24 hours straight, swum across San Francisco Bay and run a marathon to the South Pole.

He describes his efforts to push the limits of human endurance in a book called "Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner."

"I view this as a once-in-a-lifetime experience," Dunton said. "This is like getting a chance to play basketball with Michael Jordan or getting to play a round of golf with Tiger Woods."

Karnazes checked Maine off his to-do list Tuesday morning by running alongside 15 men and five women who had signed up to be part of the Endurance 50 Tour. It wasn't clear, however, whether he was inspiring the runners around him, or vice versa.

"What I've learned is that it's a two-way road," Karnazes said. "I was hurting this morning and I started running with these guys and within a couple miles they had lifted my spirits. They carried me through."

Eight of the Endurance 50 marathons are normal races, with thousands of competitors. On those occasions, Karnazes runs at his own pace -- his fastest race was 3:20:04 in St. George, Utah, finishing 21st. Otherwise, he throttles down and invites runners of all abilities to join him on established marathon routes. On Sunday he ran Boston. Monday was Rhode Island. Today is Bristol, N.H., and Thursday is Stowe, Vt.

"I don't want it to be about me," Karnazes said of his quest, which tries to shed light on the national obesity problem and encourages active lifestyles. "I want it to be about inclusion."

As Karnazes and company jogged a lap around Back Cove, then headed north on Route 1 and Route 88 through Falmouth and Cumberland, barely a ripple wrinkled the protected waters of Casco Bay. As the pack thinned, Karnazes sidled up to each runner to chat. They asked about his previous marathons, about the 94-degree heat in Mississippi two days before the driving rains in Kansas, about what he eats and how he trains. And he learned about them.

About Bruce Perry, 39, of Cumberland, who on Tuesday completed his goal of running Three Marathons (Maine and Boston were the others) in Three Weeks for Three Kids. "I'm hoping to raise between $10,000 and $20,000," Perry said, for the children left motherless from the Newry murders over Labor Day weekend.

About Kim White, 44, of Falmouth, whose job it was to lead the field around the course at a roughly 10-minute pace and make it to Cape Elizabeth by 2 p.m. to teach a gymnastics class.

About Cory Elowe, 17, of Nobleboro, who missed a day of classes at Lincoln Academy to run with the author who taught him about "breaking down the mental box and enduring beyond what you think you can," said Elowe. He ran the full 26.2 miles Tuesday after assuring his cross country coach he would "probably only do about half of it."

About Kyla Harrison, 31, of Old Town, who quit her accounting job Monday -- she's moving to Brunswick next month anyway -- because she wasn't given permission to miss work Tuesday to run.

About Adam Towers, 35, a police officer from Topsham who told Harrison after they started dating, "You'll never get me to run a marathon. That's crazy."

Tuesday marked the second marathon in three weeks for Towers, who ran his first with Harrison Sept. 30 in New Hampshire.

Inspiration or inspired? On a clear and crisp Tuesday along the Maine Marathon route, it was a two-way road.

"I'm a little sore," admitted Elowe, the high school senior, as he stretched on the grass of Payson Park after the race. "But it's nothing compared to how I feel. I'm ecstatic."