By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
Most people, when they think of an extended vacation abroad, don’t usually include on their itinerary running the equivalent of nearly two marathons every day for a period of two months. But that is exactly the kind of vacation that Olivier Antoine, of Paris, France, is taking in the United States this summer.
Last week Antoine passed through the Moapa Valley on a 2600 mile journey from Los Angeles, California to New York City. And every inch of that journey will be travelled by Antoine running on foot.
“It is the best way to see the country,” Antoine said in an interview on Friday morning where he stopped to rest at the Northshore Inn in Overton. “You actually get to see the land and meet the people.”
That morning, before breakfast, Antoine had just finished running the 23 miles along the Northshore Road from Echo Wash to downtown Overton. That distance is usually nothing for Antoine, who is an experienced long distance runner.
By that time, he had been on the road for about two weeks. Antoine flew into Los Angeles International Airport in mid June and began his run at Huntington Beach, California. He began the journey with a dizzying schedule travelling 50-60 miles a day.
The first day travelling through the L.A. region was no problem, he said. The terrain was all flat.
But things got tough on the second day when he began climbing out of the L.A. basin and up over the mountains toward Big Bear.
“The second day was all climbing” Antoine said. “It was very hard.”
After coming back down out of the mountains, though, Antoine has, thus far, spent the rest of his journey travelling through the desert. He said that he has been quite impressed with the vastness of the desert he has crossed. Despite it’s wide open space, the desert gives a certain sense of claustrophobia, he said.
“The desert is so big,” Antoine said. “You are so small in the middle of it and you can’t get out. There is nowhere to go. You just have to keep on going through it.”
Everything was going as planned for Antoine’s journey until a couple of days ago. As he was running, he experienced a muscle injury to his right leg. He has tried to continue to run through the injury, but it has slowed him down significantly. By 9:00 a.m. on Friday, having run those 23 miles, he decided he had to call it a day and let his leg rest. He sought medical care at the Mesa View Quick Care on Friday afternoon and got a prescription to help. Antoine said that he planned to spend two more nights at the hotel to allow his leg time to heal.
He is assisted in his journey by a small team of three people riding along in a Chevy Suburban. All three have travelled with him from France for the trip. Eliakya Elota is his Osteopath; Simon Reiss is handling the logistics of the journey and Kevin Languetif has been hired to record the trip on video.
Antoine said that he had been planning to take this trip for about three years now. He had recruited about ten businesses from France to sponsor him and help pay the roughly $42,000 that the trip would cost. Most of these are companies that Antoine associates with in his own business. Antoine owns an international shipping business which bring automobiles from Asia to the markets of Europe.
Antoine’s group has been keeping grueling hours on this trip. They are up in the morning at around 4:00 and on the road by 5:00 every day. On his good days, Antoine runs most of the day until mid- to late afternoon. During the final couple of hours each day, one of the team rides alongside Antoine on a bicycle to provide him with any assistance needed during those most difficult miles. Antoine said that he is usually in bed and asleep by 7:00 p.m.
“I tell them they can do whatever they want to do in the evening,” Antoine said pointing to his team. “They can go into Las Vegas and have a good time. But they just have to be back by 4:00 a.m. and ready to put in another day.”
Antoine said that he had avoided the Las Vegas metropolitan area and had tried to stay off of large highways and thoroughfares. He preferred to travel the less travelled roads and stay in small rural towns. He said that this has allowed him to meet and befriend a lot of people along the way.
“I like that people in America will talk to each other and be friendly,” Antoine said. “It is not like that in France.”
If all goes according to plan, Antoine should arrive in New York sometime in late August. He is on a bit of a tight schedule. Just before his arrival, his wife plans to fly from France into New York to meet him. Then the two plan to spend a couple of weeks on a real vacation, he said.
“I really look forward to seeing her,” Antoine said. “But I don’t want to make her wait too long. Getting up at 4:00 a.m. and following me all day along the road; I don’t think that is what she wants to do for her vacation.”
