by A. South

Created on: April 14, 2008

Don't tell Christopher Calfee what he can't do.

He'll go the distance to prove you wrong.

Last September Calfee quieted skeptics by running almost 319 miles without sleeping. The feat took him just over 90 hours. That's like going from Richmond to Roanoke, and back. On foot. Without sleeping.

"The more people said that I couldn't do it or they didn't think I could do it or whatever, the more I decided I was going to try," he said.

After running 318.25 miles Calfee was talked out of going any farther.

"I was prepared to do the other 50K (31 miles) to get to 350 miles," he said. "My wife and friends were kind of concerned for me because I was hallucinating. Things were moving that weren't supposed to be moving."

Calfee keeps a low profile as the assistant manager at Runner Bill's Sports running store. He smiles when customers make comments about the "crazy guy" in the articles and pictures posted by the register. "I'll be standing right in front of them and they don't realize it's me," Calfee said.

Aside from the yellow bulletin board near the door, the classroom at Providence Middle School where he teaches 8th grade math looks like most classrooms. The distinctive board is decorated with newspaper clippings and race numbers from races with names like "Mt. Masochist 50K." It asks in bubble letters, "What's your number?"

Few people, even serious runners, have numbers like Calfee.

In his 19 years as a runner, Calfee has completed 65 marathons and more than 20 ultra marathons (any marathon longer than 26 miles). In 1992 he missed the Olympic Trials by just two minutes. Next month he's planning on running the Bull Run 50-miler in Manassas. After that he's doing a 24-hour endurance run in Prince William. "We'll run a seven-mile loop over and over and over and see how far you can go in 24 hours," he explained.

When Calfee was 19 he didn't understand runners.

"I was talked into being on the cross country team and I hated it," Calfee said. "I thought, 'what's the point of running to the top of that mountain? Don't you realize you're just going to have to run back down?'"

Nineteen years and thousands of miles later, he's come a long way.

Calfee started running to keep in shape when he was on the tennis team at Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee and later joined the cross-country team. He was serious about tennis, but never took running seriously until his coach asked him to train consistently for one summer and see what happened. The training worked and his already fast times

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