Montauk was the destination this past week of long-distance running and beach-walking fund-raising efforts — a 350-mile, five-day run from Lake George in support of mental health counseling, and an 80-mile, four-day beach walk that underlined the need for early colorectal screening that began at Robert Moses State Park and ended in downtown Montauk in time for Sunday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
Christopher LaMagna of Babylon, whose Lake George-to-Montauk agon ended at the entrance to the Lighthouse at 6:25 p.m. on March 26, told a reporter that, given the fact he’d raised $19,000 along the way — more than twice as much as he had in each of his three previous Manhattan-to-Montauk fund-raising runs for the Long Island Crisis Center — “maybe I should run 350 miles more often.”
LaMagna got into long-distance running during the Covid pandemic five years ago. He chose the Long Island Crisis Center, “a small, local, grassroots organization,” as his beneficiary because he had struggled, he said, with depression himself in the past and because he knew the money raised would go directly to people in need.
“I’ve become a lot stronger mentally since I began running. I’m going to use the sport that helped me to help out the world. . . . For the past four years now, this has been my way of giving back to the community.”
Day one of his trek ended somewhat southeast of Albany, day two in Poughkeepsie, the third day — his toughest — in Queens, the fourth in Eastport, and the fifth at Montauk Point in the company of his team, which comprised LaMagna’s girlfriend, Melissa Talay, another friend, Phillip Schifilliti, and Nicholas Moustouka, the crew chief, whose rented R.V. served as everyone’s home during the journey.
As for the third day, LaMagna said he ran through 14 straight hours of rain. Though it didn’t dampen his spirits. “It was cold, but I was moving, so it was warm for me,” he said. “Had I stopped, that would have been it.”
Tawni Engel, the Long Island Crisis Center’s associate executive director, said she couldn’t quite believe it when LaMagna phoned, offering to do annual fund-raising runs for her organization. “I thought he was joking,” she said. They’ve become good friends since, and co-workers when it comes to planning the runs. LaMagna was named the center’s person of the year in 2022.
While LaMagna ran his fund-raiser in stages, Brian Crowe, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer two years ago, at the age of 42, and his girlfriend, Leilani Garcia, largely walked theirs — from Robert Moses State Park on Fire Island to downtown Montauk — only getting off the beach twice, at the Moriches and Shinnecock Inlets.
“It’s environmental,” Crowe said when asked in the Mission to Montauk tent Sunday afternoon what he thought caused his cancerous tumor — which a surgeon friend of his successfully removed in an emergency operation at Montefiore Hospital — “though stress is the trigger.”
He wouldn’t have undertaken the at-times-arduous 80-mile trek to raise colon cancer awareness had not Garcia, a mental health counselor, agreed to go with him, said the affable, bearded Huntington musician, who also was in the company that day of his parents, Patricia and Patrick, and two friends, Jordan Ferguson and Masayuki (Nacho) Hijikata.
Medical insurers at last were finally acknowledging that colonoscopies ought to be covered earlier in life, he said, given the rise in cases among younger people across the country. “The incidence in younger people is much, much bigger than it used to be.”
As for his and Garcia’s four-day beach walk, “it was beautiful and challenging,” she said. “Every day was more beautiful than the other . . . we saw seals, black seahorses, dogs, deer . . . sunsets and sunrises . . . we were up and walking with 50-pound packs at first light.”
“We walked 20 to 30 miles a day,” Crowe said, “nine to 10 hours a day. . . . People should spend more time in nature, it will help them save their lives.”
On the third day, with wind-blown sand pelting their faces as they trudged eastward in Southampton, Crowe asked Garcia to “sing a song.”
The one that she, a native of Puerto Rico, chose was “Pescador de Hombres,” whose third verse says, “Lord take my hands and direct them / Help me spend myself in seeking the lost / Returning love for the love you gave me.”
“It’s saying we must help others out,” Garcia said.
“Hopefully, we’ll do it again next year,” said Crowe, who recommends that donations be made to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. Interestingly, he said in parting, “March was Colon Cancer Awareness Month.”
