Alum aims to run marathons on seven continents over seven days

Starting this weekend, Conor Delaney '07 will travel nearly 28,000 miles in the air over a seven-day period, touching down on each of the world's continents.

Oh, and he'll also travel 183 miles by foot during that same period.

Delaney will participate in the Great World Race, running a marathon on each of the seven continents across seven days: Wolf's Fang in Antarctica, Cape Town in Africa; Perth in Australia; Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates; Algarve in Portugal; Cartagena in South America; and Miami.

To many, it may sound unfathomable to run a marathon, take a cross-continent flight, run another one the next day ... and then do it five more times. Delaney says you have to have heart – literally.

"One of the key things I've learned along the way is it's all really about nutrition and your heart," he said. "The challenge that people get into is they can run distance, but they never add speed to it. So when they run a marathon, the heart is so conditioned to run at that pace, but it doesn't understand speed. So their heart rate winds up around 160 to 180 beats per minute. I don't care about the time as much as I care about keeping my heart rate under 150. You can preserve glycogen, which is what drains you when it leaves the body, and then you're running with lactic acid, and that's why you wake up the next day feeling so bad."

Despite only running his first marathon less than a decade ago, this will be his second marathon series. He and wife Liz Delaney '07, whom he met at Alvernia, ran the Abbott World Marathon Majors - Boston, New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo and Berlin - before COVID.

Overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles has become a habit for Delaney.

"My dad died three days after I graduated high school," he said. "My mom started having strokes right after that. I became my mom's guardian on my 19th birthday, the same day I got licensed to become a financial advisor. All the odds were stacked against the fat, poor kid from New Jersey. And so my life has really been about showing people, if I can do it, then anybody can do it."

Thanks to his strict dietary and fitness regimen, a cardiologist recently told him, "You've reversed your genetics."

"It was a really crazy moment because my theme to my kids is that we are the generation that breaks the curses: the curses of alcoholism, the curses of divorce, the curses of early death," he said.

Delaney's five children, ranging in age from 13 to 1, are following in their father's footsteps. The oldest ones join him in training, running with him on the shorter runs and biking with him on the longer ones. His oldest, Blake, has her sights on a half marathon in January.

When he's not pounding the pavement or trails for pleasure, he's serving as CEO of Good Life Financial Advisors, which he founded in 2012. The company, whose roots reach back to a company Delaney started between his freshman and sophomore years at Alvernia, has about $15 billion in assets, serving about 130,000 families.

Good Life focuses on the working class, helping middle America achieve the good life.

"If you can explain things at a high level in a pragmatic way, then you can help all these people like my dad, who wasn't worthy enough to get a financial advisor," he said.

Delaney says Alvernia's motto "To Learn, To Love, To Serve" is intertwined with his company.
 

"When I look at what we've been able to do, it's rooted in those three things," he said. "So those (Bernardine Franciscan) Sisters knew what they were doing, putting that mission statement together."

Though Good Life is headquartered in Reading, Delaney lives in Celebration, Fla., about 10 minutes away from Walt Disney World, where the family moved in 2017. But he makes it a point to visit offices in the area, and often stops by Alvernia when he does so.

His family will travel three hours down the coast to cheer him on at the finish line in Miami. But there won't be much time to relax afterward: The following weekend, Conor and Liz will run a marathon in Italy, bringing Conor's tally to eight races in 13 days.

"It's a release," he said about running. "And it doesn't really matter how good you think you are as a father, as a husband, as a businessperson, the ground will humble you. And I like that. I like that challenge and that pursuit of just being the better version than you are."