Aztec Media Creative Marketing Solutions

6 Men, 2 months, and 3530 miles across America – The Gumpathon Challenge

Yeovil based Graphic and Website design company AztecMedia are one of the main sponsors for the coming Gumpathon challenge taking place in New York this weekend and have designed and built the website to monitor the team as they run across America for 2 months. Mike King Managing Director said “One of our customers approached us about 2 years ago to see if we could help with a charity project not realising the scale of the job that was to follow, and this Friday we will see the start of the man-mouth task as they run 3530 mile across the state”.

On September 10th 2010, six very special men from three of the world’s finest fighting forces will attempt to run coast to coast across America to raise funds for injured service men and women on both sides of the Atlantic. The team will run across 16 States, 4 time zones and complete approximately 20 miles a day each, for 8 weeks. One of the team is a triple amputee.

The Gumpathon will raise money for three service charities, In the UK – The Royal Marine Charitable Trust Fund and Help for Heroes and The Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund in The States. The team aim to raise a £1m for each of the charities in a challenge which will become the first time in which U.S and British forces have united to raise funds for such a cause.

This epic challenge is the brain-child of Colour Sergeant Damian Todd, Royal Marines who, after watching the film Forrest Gump in 1994 thought that running across America seemed like an interesting idea. After ten years of thinking about it, in 2007 Damian found a reason to put his plan into action when a close friend Mark Ormrod was left with serious permanent disability following his tour in Afghanistan. Mark became the first triple amputee of the war in Afghanistan and has recently published a book about his experiences, “Man Down”. Mark will be running alongside the team and completing what mileage he can, despite his injuries.