The Elephant Woman on the Long Run
Posted on 08. Dec, 2009 by Thomas Chan in Uncategorized
By Thomas Chan
The worst a typical runner might face while training for the New York City Marathon is an injury or a mugging in a seedy part of town.
“Elephant Kate” Evans had to worry about being attacked by a lion.
Evans is an elephant researcher and English native from Upper Slaughter, England. She ran the NYC Marathon in November 2009 with her fiancé to raise funds the charity she founded, Elephants for Africa.
The marathon is the second part of a three-continent triathlon to raise 10,000 pounds – $16,000. Those funds will pay for a four-wheel drive that can handle the rugged terrain of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, Africa where she lives.
Evans did much of her training on the airstrip near her home in southern Africa. Her other option was to run through the brush. But wild animals on the Delta sometimes react poorly to running humans, mistaking them for prey or predators.
Always walk, never run in the brush, Evans said.
As an extra precaution, fiancé Simon Buckingham followed her in a car, watching the brush for dangers. On the day after any of her training sessions, the two switched places and did it all over again so Buckingham could train. They doubled their training time to stay safe.
Their triathlon almost didn’t happen. Late last year, Evans realized that her work had left her with no savings and little flexibility in case she became ill or decided to have children. Evans, 30, said she spent most of the money she earned over the previous decade on equipment for her research. And she had a grueling workload. Evans had to run the charity, conduct research, train graduate students and begin planning for her future.
“Kate was approaching the point where one person could no longer do everything,” said Buckingham in an interview Friday.
“I haven’t had a wage for my whole zoological life,” Evans said. “I have no regrets, but it’s not easy.”
And then after series of conversations with Buckingham, then her boyfriend of 10 years, he decided to leave his career as an engineer to help Evans run the charity. He proposed to Evans on New Year’s Day. In February, he quit his decade-long engineering career to move to Botswana and become operations manager of Elephants for Africa.
“I thought about my priorities: my partner, family and friends,” he added.
To train for the marathon, the two took time in between their work on the Okavango, running laps or driving the getaway car on the kilometer-long airstrip. The two got three weeks to train in the U.S. but their schedules were still packed with fundraising visits to American zoos.
“We’ve done as much as we possibly could, but we’d like to have done more,” said Buckingham.
The two set a goal of finishing the race in less than five hours. But on the day before the race, nervousness set in. Sunday’s run would be their first marathon.
“It all came to reality that we were going to have to run the marathon,” Evans said in a phone interview after the race.
The two slept poorly that night, anxious that their alarm clock might malfunction.
They woke up before dawn to catch their bus to the marathon’s staging area, elephant-shaped hats in hand. During the race, the eye-catching hats elicited cheering from the crowds, motivating the two onward.
“Go elephant guys!” some spectators shouted.
By the end of it Evans and Buckingham finished in about 4 hours 54 minutes.
“Finishing was just brilliant,” said Evans. “I was almost crying.”
In the future, the two hope to expand the charity’s work to train students from abroad about fieldwork and to encourage Botswanians to become future conservationists.
Donations to Elephants for Africa can be made through the charity’s website at www.elephantresearch.co.uk.
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