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Posted Jan 3, 2024, 4:51 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Aylmer, QC
Posts: 6,743
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I'm the Boston Walker!
Hi everyone, I just wanted to share this article the Boston Globe did on me for Boston.com yesterday!
Cheers!
https://www.boston.com/news/local-ne...eating-cancer/
Canadian visitor walks 28.6 miles around Boston in a single day to celebrate beating cancer
After always wanting to visit Boston, he impulsively drove down for one long day of walking around Beantown — his very own 60,000-step “Boston Marathon."
Harley Davis
By Molly Farrar
January 2, 2024
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After six rounds of chemotherapy, 43-year-old Harley Davis attributes much of his recovery to his best friend Chris Rogers — and a friendly walking competition that started during a trip to Hawaii.
Davis, of Gatineau, Quebec, has been to 30 countries, and his Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis in 2018 didn’t keep him from traveling whenever he could. After waiting years for symptoms to appear, Davis began to feel sick in January 2023. Davis and Rogers traveled to Maui, then Davis returned home to start chemo.
Davis and Rogers in Hawaii after Davis’s chemotherapy treatment. Harley Davis – Harley Davis
“It was tough,” he said. His 8-year-old daughter Chloe and other friends and family helped him through months of treatment and recovery. By November, he was well enough to travel, so Davis and Rogers headed back to Hawaii.
“Chris and I had the idea to go back to Hawaii to bookend the whole chemo experience, and I wasn’t feeling particularly great, but I thought it would be the best kind of place for healing,” Davis told Boston.com. While there, the two walked, and walked, and walked.
“I just started to feel a little bit better, and (Rogers) was pushing me,” Davis said. “He said, ‘Man, we should just keep walking. You look so much better when you’re walking.’ And by the end of the trip, I felt fantastic.”
Walking toward a full recovery
After Davis learned he was in full remission, the friends did keep it up. From Dec. 4 through the end of the month, they competed to see who could log the most steps.
“We tracked each other and competed every day, and it was really intense at points,” Davis said. “I didn’t know if I could keep up, but I felt so strong every day and then we were neck and neck right at the end.”
Davis was averaging more than 17,000 steps a day but needed one last push to keep up with his friend. After always wanting to visit Boston, he impulsively drove down for one long day of walking around Beantown — his very own 60,000-step “Boston Marathon.”
Davis started at 12 a.m. Saturday morning with a walk around his accommodations in downtown Boston. After a few hours of sleep, he got the Fancy from Mike and Patty’s to fuel his marathon.
He walked the entire Freedom Trail, explored Back Bay and the Esplanade, met locals in Boston Common, and took in the sites around Acorn Street. His favorite parts were all in the city’s north: the North End, the Bunker Hill Monument (which he climbed), and the U.S.S. Constitution.
Davis’s route around Boston last Saturday. Harley Davis
“Boston was just incredible. It’s like every block was just another layer of an onion that was peeling back, another layer of history,” he said. “It was just so cool to see, and I just absolutely fell in love with it and can’t wait to come back with my daughter some day.”
His sandwich from Mike and Patty’s kept him going for a while, but he also had some much needed pizza and sausages from street food carts while walking. Davis said he had to keep moving, so he couldn’t stop to read about the historic sites around the city.
After a bit of speed walking, Davis surpassed his goal with 60,672 steps in 28.6 miles. Davis’s final count of 519,209 steps beat Rogers’s 461,768 after his very own Boston Marathon.
Davis celebrated with some real food — and beer — from Cheers and Biddy Early’s.
“We don’t have $3 pints of beer in Canada, so that was quite the experience for me,” he said.
After all, “All roads lead to Biddy’s,” the dive bar proclaims – even a Canadian’s 28-mile journey around the city of Boston.
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