AN AUDIO SNAPSHOT REVIEW
They said Terry Hitchcock was crazy, and they might’ve been right. He was, after all, 57 years old in the unrated documentary My Run. He was on medication for high blood pressure. He had never run a significant distance in his life. He looked, as his daughter said, “like Santa Claus.” It’s hard to figure out what possessed the guy to run from St. Paul, Minn., to Atlanta in 75 days—the equivalent of a full marathon every day.
It’s hard to figure, that is, until you watch My Run, which chronicles Hitchcock’s 1996 trek that covered eight states, 2,000 miles and 5 million steps. After losing his wife to breast cancer, Hitchcock raised his three children on his own, subjecting them to some horrible food and loving them as best he could. He wanted to shine a light on the hardships of single parenthood—and decided to raise awareness through his mega-marathon. It wasn’t easy: “There wasn’t a day I didn’t want to quit,” Hitchcock admits in the film. But he persevered through chest pain, stress fractures and unimaginable mental fatigue to eventually break the tape.
Completely free of foul language, violence and sex, My Run is an inspirational jog through Hitchcock’s oversized dream marked by family and faith. It might not make you want to run across the country, but it will encourage you to get off the couch, dream big and make a difference in the world.
