For his first marathon, Ben Sutton is jumping into the deep end of the pool. The 36-year-old Stamford man will make the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7 his initial attempt at the 26.2-mile distance. "If you're going to run,'' Ben says, "you might as well do it in the right place."
Sutton is a member of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training. Sutton's brother, David, developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2004. Ben, a native of Australia, felt frustrated in not being there for his brother. "We're a close family,'' Ben says. "I always wanted to do something to support him. I was living on the other side of the world, and I felt helpless that I couldn't do a thing. It was very tough time."
Sutton approached Team in Training and said he believed he could meet its fundraising criteria. The organization wrote to him in July and said it had a spot for him. His early goal was $3,500, and he achieved that in days. Ben has a fundraising page online. He has adjusted his goal several times and accrued more than $12,000 in pledges. "I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of people,'' says Ben, who works as a natural gas trader for Stamford-based Noble Americas Gas and Power. "It's a broad spectrum of people. People I've worked with, people I know in Australia. (The money from his fundraising) will not directly help my brother, but it affects a lot of people."
Sutton has been running for 10 years. The marathon, however, is a new experience. "I ran the Stratton Faxon Fairfield Half Marathon in June, and after running that I thought just going out there without training wasn't the way to go about it,'' Ben says. He fared better in the Sam Elpern Half Marathon in Norwalk in September, running 1:42:50.
Ben lived in San Diego and Houston before moving to Stamford, and figures it's a good time to give the NYC Marathon a try. "If you're going to run one, New York is the one to run,'' Ben says.
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