Ricardo Abad Martínez is a Spanish ultrarunner. He holds the world record for consecutive marathons run on consecutive days, 607. He is famous for executing the project "500 marathons in 500 days", in which he completed 500 marathons in 500 consecutive days. He started on the 1st of October 2010 and finished on February 12, 2012. He ran at least one marathon in every one of the 50 provinces of Spain. Abad sold each of the 21,000 km he ran at the rate of one euro each and donated the money to ANFAS, a Spanish organization that works in favour of people with intellectual disabilities. Ricardo broke the world record for consecutive marathons on 1 October 2011 in Madrid. Before him, the record was held by the Belgian Stefaan Engels. And before Engels, the record was held by Ricardo Abad with 150 marathons in a row in 2009. After breaking the record he went on to complete 500 marathons in Barcelona on February 12, 2012. The day after that he announced that he wanted to double the number and would continue running for another 500 days to complete 1000 marathons in 500 days. He set May 22, 2012 as the deadline to find the necessary funding for the project, which included running a marathon in every continent in the world. Finally, after failing to find financing, he abandoned the project on 29 May 2012 after 607 marathons, which is the current world record. Ricardo ran all these marathons in a row even though he works in a factory 8 hours per day in shifts: for one week during the mornings, for another week during the evening and for another week during the night. When he worked in the morning or at night, he would run in the afternoon. When he worked in the evenings, he ran during the morning. Because of this, he would sometimes run two marathons in less than 12 hours. In 2012 he has been nominated for the Prince of Asturias Awards, as he already was in 2009.
Challenges
Among the most important challenges Ricardo Abad has completed are:
150 marathons in 150 consecutive days.
Caring peninsula : Ricardo covered the Spanish perimeter in multiple stages in two phases. The first part started in September 2009 and ended in Motril. The second part started the 1st of May 2010. Many runners joined him for some kilometers along the way.
500 marathons in 500 days.
500 marathons in 500 days
The challenge consists of running 500 marathons in 500 consecutive days. He completed 21,097.5 kilometers in a year and almost 5 months.
