Marathon Man

Running the Orange County Marathon is tough. How about doing it twice? Sports saved Brian McKenzie’s life. When the Costa Mesa resident began working with Robert Waltos Jr., he was given a perfect opportunity to give back.

McKenzie and Charles Bauknecht of Huntington Beach will run in today’s Orange County Marathon. Not once, but twice.

The two personal trainers -- both relatively new to the world of endurance racing -- will strap on their running shoes and run 52 miles in the name of cystic fibrosis. Or as the children with the disease who can’t pronounce it, “65 roses.”

McKenzie and Bauknecht were scheduled to start their day at 3 a.m. this morning at the marathon’s finish line at the Irvine Spectrum. Assuming everything went well, they would run the 26-mile course back to the starting line at the Newport Center in Newport Beach, arriving in time to run with the other marathoners at 7:30 a.m.

“I did the triathlons and the ironmans, but I just got bored with it,” said McKenzie, who works with Bauknecht at Newport Workout. “I’m kind of extreme in everything I do. I love this stuff. I guess I just have a drive to push myself as much as I can.”

McKenzie is a recovering alcoholic who’s been clean for seven years. He said that if it wasn’t for sports, he’d still be using drugs and alcohol.

“I’ve been a taker my whole life,” McKenzie said. “So this is how I’m giving back what I took away, by helping those who need it. There’s no cure yet, and for the most part, people don’t know a lot about it.”

He was introduced to cystic fibrosis -- a genetic disease that causes the body to produce abnormally sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to infections -- through training Waltos, a volunteer chairman for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Bauknecht, a native of Michigan who moved to Huntington Beach a year ago, already knew something about the disease and about doing good deeds.

Bauknecht volunteered to walk for cystic fibrosis in his home state. Also, in a 35-mile trail run in Santa Barbara, Bauknecht stopped racing to aid a runner who had fallen 40 feet off a hill in front of him.

“I guess it’s my Midwestern Catholic upbringing,” he said. “Coming from where I’m from to Orange County, I realized not everyone is as fortunate monetarily, physically or emotionally.”

Together, they came up with the idea to raise more than $4,000 to “create an awareness of the disease, and to give a purpose to the run,” said McKenzie.

“Me and Brian talked about it,” said Bauknecht. “We wanted to try running for a cause. I did some research on the disease, and we take it for granted that we can run five miles on a Saturday morning if we wanted to. We wanted to do whatever we could to bring more light to the disease. Maybe it could help these people live a little longer.”

When the two planned the run, they decided to double the miles because it’s “more special” and it would draw more attention to what they were running for.

“In the letters, we wrote some facts that most people don’t know,” said Bauknecht. “A lot of people asked if we were crazy, or they said ‘how sweet’ or ‘how amazing.’ We got a pretty good response.”

The Cystic Fybrosis Foundation, with the help of those who responded to letters and e-mails sent out by McKenzie and Bauknecht, has raised 94% of its goal of raising $50,000 in donations through the marathon for research into the disease.

IF YOU GO:

* What: The Orange County Marathon

* When: 7:30 a.m. today

* Where: The race begins at Newport Center, 300 Newport Center Drive, in Newport Beach. The course will run along San Miguel Drive to Bonita Canyon Drive and onto Culver Drive, along the eastern edge of the UC Irvine campus. Runners will then move through Irvine and Tustin before finishing at the Irvine Spectrum.