From July 1 to Dec. 16, Christian McEvoy ran the equivalent of a marathon nearly every day.

On the road for anywhere from 3 to 8 hours a day, the 24-year-old high school English teacher ran across the United States, starting at Baker Beach in San Francisco and finishing at Narragansett Town Beach.

His plunge into the Atlantic Ocean marked the completion of approximately 3,500 miles over the course of 5 1/2 months.

How on earth was McEvoy able to cover so much ground? How was his body able to handle the rigors of that much continuous running without suffering any significant injuries?

"There's no magic pill," insists McEvoy, who identifies a few factors that contributed to his successful cross-country run, the first of which is that he feels he is simply "genetically inclined to be a long-distance runner."

Being able to focus entirely on his training, which included a combination of running, cycling and swimming, without the distraction of work or family certainly helped. And once he was on the road, McEvoy had a support team helping to keep him properly stretched, hydrated and fed -- which included consuming about 10,000 calories a day.

Still, it boggles the mind watching individuals like McEvoy finish an ultra-distance event looking like they just ran a 5K, while there are others who limp, stagger and crawl across the finish line at much shorter races, soon to be carted off to the medical tent.

Indeed, the mind has everything to do with it, says local ultra-runner Martin Tighe.

"I think it's all to do with the eight inches between both your ears," he said. "When you see athletes doing extraordinary distances, I think it's a matter of putting themselves in the proper mindset."

Tighe knows a thing or two about pushing one's body to the limit -- and beyond. The Englishman, who now makes his home in Providence, has always led an adventurous life, scaling some of the world's highest mountain peaks and kayaking the white waters of Europe and North America.

About four years ago, Tighe decided to venture into ultra marathoning. Winner of the inaugural North Pole Marathon in 2003 and the 2005 Nifty 50 Road Race in Middletown, Tighe also set a world record for most miles run on a treadmill in a 12-hour period (85.83 miles) on March 19, 2005. En route to accomplishing that feat, he broke three other records -- for 50K (3:44:48), 50 miles (6:06:19) and 100K (7:39:31).

He says the only way he survived the monotony was by letting himself get lost in pictures of mountain scenes and the ocean that he had affixed to the front of the treadmill.

"I remember I was at about 70 or 80 miles," said Tighe, 48, who is now training for the British 100K (62 miles) Championship next spring in hopes of doing well enough there to earn a spot on the British team and qualify for the World 100K Championships.

"I put these pictures on my treadmill and I could escape to another world. At the same time, you know you still have to focus on your body. You have to maintain your rhythm and your breathing and focus on where you're stepping. But your mind really isn't there because if you just dealt with the agony of putting one step in front of the other, you'd really be in a no-win situation. Sometimes you do it very unconsciously. It's a transcendental thing."

Similarly, McEvoy -- who called his feat "Coast to Coast: A Run for Survivorship" with the mission of raising money and awareness for cancer patients and survivors -- said that he was buoyed by the incredible strength of the people he met along his journey and was surprised at how much easier the running aspect of his challenging endeavor turned out to be because of that.

"I had 10 million great reasons to take every step," he said, referring to the number of Americans currently in remission from some form of cancer. "I knew what we were doing was so important for cancer survivors, so any time I felt bad or any time I was tired, I was like, 'OK, I can do this. Not a big deal.' I realized running is a privilege, just like a lot of things in life, and I was just very grateful every day that I got to run."

Nightmarish marathon experiences often result because the runner simply hasn't trained enough.

In addition to coaching countless high school track and cross-country runners, Hendricken coach Jim Doyle has also served as the running coach for the R.I. Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training Program for the last 13 years. Approximately 1,500 individuals -- many of them novice runners and some who had literally never before owned a pair of running shoes -- have gone through the program, and Doyle is proud to say that his team members have maintained a 100-percent success rate. The key, he says, is proper preparation.

"You can't just get up one day and go out and do something like that," said Doyle. "You need to build up to it. Your aerobic system, your anaerobic system and your muscular system all have to be conditioned to withstand all that. And you eventually get to be so strong that your body can endure that type of training."

cthorn@projo.com / (401) 277-7340