Mr. Rui Guimaraes, class of 1997, an English teacher and Director of the McQuade Honors Program, is running in The Great New York Running Exposition. This grueling 100 mile course will see the runners slog through Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, culminating in an emotional finish in the Times Square pedestrian plaza between 42nd and 43rd streets.
Rui is running the race in an effort to raise funds and draw attention to Cardinal Hayes High School. We ask you to become a sponsor by filling out this card, indicating how much you’re willing to sponsor our fellow Hayesman in this remarkable endeavor.
For more information, please visit the Hayes Alumni website: alumni.cardinalhayes.org or the race’s website: http://www.tgny100.com/info
THANK YOU!
Rui's letter:
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Mr. Rui Guimaraes ‘97, an English teacher and Director of the McQuade Honors Program, is running in The Great New York Running Exposition. This grueling 100 mile course will see the runners slog through Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, culminating in an emotional finish in the Times Square pedestrian plaza between 42nd and 43rd streets.
Rui is running the race in an effort to raise funds and draw attention to Cardinal Hayes High School. We ask you to become a sponsor by filling out this card, indicating how much you’re willing to sponsor our fellow Hayesman in this remarkable endeavor.
For more information, please visit the Hayes Alumni website: alumni.cardinalhayes.org or the race’s website: http://www.tgny100.com/info
THANK YOU!
On Saturday, June 22nd (and probably still on June 23rd), I will be completing my first 100-mile ultramarathon. This distance will be as audacious an enterprise for me to complete as it might be for you to conceive. Why would anyone run this distance?
My two longest races thus far have been 50 miles (2014) and 100 kilometers (2018) in distance. Last year’s race was a confidence booster, as I finished 2nd overall without engaging in a proper training regimen. Even in times of success, however, these longer races are capped with me telling my wife, “Well, I’m never doing that again!” However, as Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes in Love in the Time of Cholera, “the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.” Only days after the 100K ended, I knew that I would return to the race again in the following year, but that I would do so well-trained and that I would put up an honest fight and attempt to win it all. Up until and through February, this was my goal. Then came March.
I have known for some time that I would eventually attempt a 100-mile ultra and that when I finally did, it would be as an ambassador of the school that I love, the school which I have experienced as student, alum and teacher for 26 of my 39 years of life. Hayes is a place where I have forged some of my greatest memories and friendships, both personal and professional. It is also the place in which I have witnessed the incomparable value of a private Catholic education in the lives of countless young men.
Mr. William D. Lessa and Father Joseph P. Tierney are our school’s indisputable leaders who, along with the Cardinal Hayes Board, have developed an administrative hierarchy that ensures the highest quality of education for our young men. Their decision-making, in my experience, has always been directed toward the best outcome for our students so that they may become lifelong learners and responsible citizens. At a more personal level, my relationships with Frank Lameiro and Doug McEachern are two of the most meaningful in my life. Not only are they brilliant, but they will challenge you when you’re wrong, listen to you when you’re right, and make fun of how small your running shorts are. They are lifelong friends I met at Hayes and whose presence I enjoy each day. Running 100 miles will at times feel like a slog. Teaching at Cardinal Hayes with these individuals by my side has never been that.
Some of our students arrive as early as 6:30 am; some leave after 7 pm. Our students are often the first to arrive and the last to leave. An hour before the school day begins, the cafeteria is filled with the smell of egg sandwiches and the sight of students finishing up homework assignments; the first floor with students setting up tables to sell raffles for a fundraiser; the second floor with the sonorous timbre of drums and acoustic guitar echoes; the third with students listening to music on their Chromebooks as they write poetry, finish up essays, or catch up on sleep; the fourth with the serenity of young men of faith at mass. The afternoons are no different, as the world’s future artists, musicians, athletes, singers, dancers, writers, environmentalists and entrepreneurs explore and develop their personal interests with faculty they love and who will forever define this time in their lives. Each day we attempt to teach our students about life, but it is our students who teach us what life is about. It is a reciprocal relationship that makes life meaningful and sustains us through the most difficult times.
And, so. On June 22nd, I will complete my first attempt at 100 miles, and I will do so with two goals: to draw attention to our school’s extraordinary students, programs and curriculum, and to raise funds so that we can expand our Honors program, which has been graciously supported by Mr. Gene McQuade. Although ultramarathons see many, sometimes half of those who show up to the starting line, not make it to the end, I am secure in the fact that I will not give in to psychological pain or feed the demons of doubt that my experience has taught me are guaranteed to creep in. Knowing that completing the race is a prerequisite to raising funds that will both help secure Hayes’s future and uphold its legacy is all I will need to garner the mental fortitude to engage in what ultrarunners call relentless forward progress.
Our school thrives by consistently graduating 99% of our students and sending 98% of them to a college or university of their choice. Help us keep Hayes a permanent institution of hope and inspiration on the Grand Concourse. Please consider making a donation to Cardinal Hayes High School. Every dollar raised will be used to directly impact the lives of our student body.
#ENDURE100 #HAYESPROUD
