Starting Saturday, Oct. 16 at 9:00 a.m. in Jim McCann Stadium, Kevin Ford began a 24 hour run and wouldn’t be done running until the following day at 9:00 a.m. Ford is not just running 24 hours for the challenge of it but also to raise awareness and money for Hope Squad. 

   Hope squad is new to Westerville North this year. It is a student-led group that educates and empowers students to look out for fellow students in distress and prevent teen suicide. 

   “I want to pay it forward in some way to my community, and this is my way to do it, to raise funds for Westerville Education Challenge [WEC]. Their mission this fall is Hope Squad,” Ford said. 

   Ford graduated from North in 2011, where he ran both Cross Country and Track. Sadly, in 2010 when Ford was a senior his father, Mark Ford, passed away due to suicide. Mark Ford was in a terrible car accident leaving him with the inability to walk and several mental health problems, all leading to his suicide.

   Kevin Ford continued to run in college and well after where he found his love for long endurance runs. Having run in 18 official endurance races including Burning River 50, Tuscazor 50, and Wood splitter Summer Solstice 15-hour endurance run, Kevin Ford was well immersed in endurance runs but this would be his first attempt at running 24 hours. 

   His training for the 24 hours run began in Jan. of this year, where Kevin Ford first had to recover from a pressure ulcer on the bottom of his left foot which lasted until May. After his recovery, Kevin Ford ran 50 to 60 miles a week with endurance races sprinkled in. 

   “I’m going into the event prepared and confident. I have a plan and I’m going to stick to it.” Ford said before the 24-hour run.

   Kevin planned to run four miles than walk a half-mile, stretching and switching directions every hour to prevent injury to his hip. He planned to eat and rehydrate every 15 to 30 minutes.

   “Hundreds of people over the course of 24 hours came out to the track [for] support,”  Ford said. One of the hundreds who came to support Ford was Zach Rogers, a member of Hope Squad and a Cross Country and Track runner. 

   “Since I’m on the Cross Country team I managed to run a mile or two with him, and I stayed about an hour or two after just to watch him and give him encouraging thoughts. For Hope Squad we tried to get as many people to come as possible to support him,” Rogers said. 

   A lot of people in the community did come, since during the same time that he was running, there was a food truck festival held in North’s parking lot starting at 4 p.m. The food trucks were not organized by WEC but were organized separately by Westerville Parent Council as a fundraiser for them. 

   North librarian and Hope Squad advisor Beth Baryon, was appreciative that the food truck festival happened at the same time as the fundraiser of Hope Squad.

   “The fact that they were happening at the same time was a nice thing though, because it drew people out to support both groups financially,” Baryon said. 

   However, as the food trucks left and it started to turn to night, Ford began to feel the pain of running for 24 hours. Firstly, he hadn’t stuck to the plan as closely as he should have. There were times during his run where he would forget to eat during the 15 to 30-minute intervals, and because he was constantly burning off energy his body was in a caloric deficit. This affected him by seeing lines on the track swerve when they should have been straight. Secondly, he was running in a fresh pair of Altra Torin 5s, which is a pair of shoes that were not meant to be run in for 24 hours nor were fresh after 14 hours of running in. 

   “The pain [in my feet] was so severe it was making me nauseous, so I wasn’t wanting to eat anything,” Ford said. “There were several times where I wanted to quit but I was never going to,” Ford continued.

   Around 12 a.m, Ford was experiencing the most excruciating pain in his feet when teacher Ben Hartnell arrived at North’s stadium waving a North flag and dressed in red and yellow overalls. From 12 to 3 a.m. Hartnell walked with Ford through the toughest part of the event, walking around 9 miles. 

   “He was my freshman teacher and I was in 12th grade at the time [when my dad passed away] and he still went out of his way to make sure me and my family were taken care of,” Ford said.

   At 9 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 17, Kevin Ford finished the last hundred meters of his run. He walked with his mother, Jo Ford as they crossed the finish line together.

  In the 24 hours, Kevin Ford ran 105 miles (or 420 laps around the track), and he raised around $10,000 for teen mental health, which is going to go to WEC and all three Hope Squad groups in the district.

   “Everyone that was dealt a bad hand and endured and still succeeded, still have positivity, still have hope in their life, those people are the people that inspire me to run,” Kevin Ford said.