Chief runs 45 miles in a day — with a marathon in the middle

Hamburg Police Chief Jan Wright has done some pretty wild adventure racing in the past, and on Saturday, he was up to his old tricks once again. It wasn’t enough to run a 26.2-mile marathon. No, it had to be a marathon with a flair. This one’s allure was that its name is the Muddy Mauler Marathon and it’s run over hill and dale rather on the road. The race was dreamt up by Rick McNulty of Parsippany, with the promise to athletes of providing a chance to run races of varying lengths through some unknown and quite challenging parts of the 69-acre Craigmeur preserve, in Rockaway. On Saturday, about 25 runners participated in the longest race, a 26.2-mile run billed as Morris County’s first marathon. The hilly, muddy, all-terrain, cross country marathon was, in Chief Wright’s words, “very challenging.” He said, “It included swamp crossings with mud to my knees and cliff climbs that involved using both hands and feet to get over. My average marathon time is around four hours. This race took me seven hours and 20 minutes. The 9.4 mile run/walk home took two hours. It was ugly.” Impressed yet? Add that Chief Wright, who is 42, finished fifth in the entire race. “That is the best I ever did in a marathon. I am more proud of how many people did not finish.“ Impressed now? Well, there’s more. Wright ran 9.4 miles to the race from his home, and when it was over, the same 9.4 miles back home to Sussex County. As one might expect, he’ll be taking some time off from racing for a few months, but he has a major canoe trip down the Delaware planned for June and is slated to run The Marine Corps Marathon in October.