Profile: Freshman puts marathons to a good cause

And this all started because he didn’t want a slice of pizza.

“It’s going to sound trivial,” Benun said, “but I started running when one day my siblings were going to get some pizza. I didn’t want to go, so instead I just went running with my dad. I was 8 years old, and I went running for six miles.”

Before that, Benun had never run competitively or for the sake of running, citing P.E. class as his only source of running experience.

From there he moved on to competing in half marathons. Benun ran his first 13.1-mile race at age 14 in the Brooklyn Half-Marathon, where he moved during his teenage years after growing up in Deal, New Jersey. With a finishing time of one hour, 28 minutes, Benun ranked second in the under-19 age group (a 19-year-old won the group) and amazingly cracked the top 40 overall.

Still not satisfied, Benun again decided to go for a spur-of-the-moment run.

“One morning, I woke up after doing some strength training the night before,” Benun said. “I went running and just didn’t stop until I hit 30 miles in just 3:45, basically doubling what I’d previously done.”

In search of another challenge, Benun began training for an Ironman triathlon — a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a full 26.2-mile marathon. To legally sign up for the triathlon, runners need to be at least 18 years old. Benun, luckily, turned 18 just a day before the Lake Placid Ironman.

The youngest participant in that competition, Benun called it an “enlightening experience.”

“When you’re running a race, swimming and biking for 12 hours straight,” Benun said, “there’s so many opportunities to make excuses, to stop, to slow down. You just have to push through it.”

All of this training occurred during his senior year of high school. When most of his classmates were worried about college applications, Benun was preoccupied with his workouts and sticking to his training schedule.

“I had to choose each day between working on my applications and going for a run,” Benun stated. “I ended up going mostly for runs, which is probably why I had so many spelling mistakes on my applications.”

Senior year was also the first time he began to train others to run half and full marathons.

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“When I was 17, I was approached by a community member who wanted me to help coach a dozen or so kids in the ING Miami Half Marathon,” Benun said. He noted that those dozen runners have grown to a group of over 150 participants in the past two years. While participating in a gap-year program in Israel last year, Benun flew to Florida to be with his runners and plans to attend the event again next month, when he is scheduled to speak before the suddenly very large group.

During his year in Israel, Benun trained for and completed the Switzerland Ironman, again holding the distinction of the youngest participant. He also organized and coached a group of 26 people to run alongside him in the Jerusalem Marathon. That original group of 26 has grown in his absence, and he has remained in daily contact.

“In Israel, I realized a few things,” Benun said. “Most people think they can’t run a marathon or half marathon, but in reality they can, barring some serious injury constraints. It’s not just marathons, but there’s so many things out there people don’t think they can do. We have that mindset of ‘I can’t’ as a default, but whenever you want to do something in your life, you shouldn’t think about the negatives. You should think you can just do it.”

According to Benun, convincing others to run hasn’t been easy, but the rewards are “amazing.”

In the summer before coming to Princeton, Benun became a certified personal trainer and started Team U, an organization formed “to mobilize college students across the country to make the world a better place.” Initially, the plans were to have seven founding chapters in various colleges along the East Coast, but Benun decided to scale back for the first year and create a strong program at Princeton before branching out.

“There’s no reason why there can’t be a Team U chapter on every campus,” Benun said. “It is a great way to build a relationship between a runner and a charity. It’s a venue to spread awareness, specifically about our cause: the health and environmental issues in Africa.”

Team U’s goal is to raise $250,000 to fund a new wing of the Shoe4Africa Children’s Hospital by running the Unite Half Marathon this April at Rutgers Unversity.

Instead of trying out for the cross country team, Benun decided to focus solely on Team U after seeing its potential, and that decision has paid off. Twenty-five other students have joined the organization in leadership positions, over 50 have signed up to run the half marathon, including outgoing USG president Michael Yaroshefsky ’12, and over 500 students signed up for the group’s listserv to receive updates on their ongoing activities.

When asked of Team U’s plans on expanding next year, Benun explained, “We’re still trying to find a happy medium, and a lot of it is going to have to do with how we review our past year. It could be 50 colleges, 100 colleges or even more.”

With his experience Benun has crafted a variety of training regimens for students of all fitness levels and time constraints, fully believing in his philosophy that anyone can run a half marathon if they put their mind to it.

As Benun says, “World change starts with you. Join the movement.”