You could write a book about Raglan man Campbell Forlong’s distance-running exploits, if only he hadn’t got there first.
Campbell may be relatively new to town but Whaingaroa nevertheless features strongly in ‘FIFTY-TWO – Birth Of A Soul Runner’, his recently completed account of how back in 2017 he completed 52 marathons in 52 weeks in his 52nd year “and with it, the story of Lorraine (his partner) and coming to Raglan”.
“Every week I headed out on a 42km adventure,” he recalls. “Many of these were around my then home town of Hamilton, on State Highway 23 and close to Raglan.”
Included in the book, he says, are “a few yarns about my many runs from Rotokauri to Raglan over the years”.
His quest also took in mountains and trails throughout New Zealand “and a few global adventures” – the equator in the Congo, along the Seine in Paris, among castles in the Pyrenees, in the Canadian Rockies and in the Central Coast of Australia.
Campbell says he started writing the book in 2019, finally finishing the draft earlier this year. With the edit complete, it is about to go to Castle Publishing to be formatted for both print and E-book versions.
That cost of around $10,000 has been met through PledgeMe crowd-funding, and he hopes a further $5000 can be raised to record “52” as an audio book at Audiobooks NZ.
He hopes to have the paperback and E-book versions in people’s hands by next March.
Lorraine and Campbell, who was formerly a pastor in Hamilton, now have a home in Rangitahi from which Lorraine operates her floristry business ‘Wild About Eve’.
*Go to pledgeme.co.nz for ‘FIFTY-TWO – Birth of a Soul Runner’.
