TUCKER, Ga. — For his 82nd birthday a DeKalb County man will run 26. 2 miles, the distance of a marathon.
But he’s not stopping there. He’ll run that distance every day for 40 days as part of his home run for Georgia.
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Stan Cottrell’s love of running began at a young age.
“It all started when I was five years old. Daddy would wake me up, ‘You need to go run after the cows,’” he said.
“I could just run and run and run ... and where were the limits? There weren’t any,” he added.
Cotrell has come a long way since herding cows on his family farm in Kentucky.
This month, he will turn 82 and to celebrate, he plans to do a marathon a day for 40 consecutive days.
The former Marine has already run more than 296,000 miles across 45 countries.
He has met more than a dozen presidents, including two from the United States.
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The first time he ran across the US, the movie “Forest Gump” was on the big screen.
He says he started getting called a “Real Life Forest Gump.”
But running has always been Cotrell’s happy place and it’s his motivation to share joy with others.
“It’s like dreaming ... It’s like movement, poetry ... it’s even flow of energy distribution,” he said.
Cotrell is calling this year’s birthday run a “home run” for Georgia to raise awareness of veterans issues and to promote movement at any age.
Cotrell says his faith is what carries him on every run.
“And I talk with him and sometimes I say, ‘Lord, I just need the strength to get up that hill. Can you get me to the next telephone poll?’
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