WESTPORT–When you’re running seven marathons in seven days, why start with an easy one when you can kick off your adventure in Antarctica?

That’s where Westporter David Vynerib and 71 others from around the world will begin the Great World Race, taking on one marathon in each of the seven continents from Nov. 15 to 21. They meet in Capetown, South Africa and fly to Wolf’s Fang runway in Antarctica for the first leg of the challenge.

Talk about a cold start.

From there, they are ready for a whirlwind of exertion.

“Physically, I’m fine; it’s the mental part that’s going to be tough,” said Vynerib, 56, the founder and principal of a luxury home builder, CCO Habitats, in Westport. 

The schedule is persistent. After Antarctica, they’ll hop back to Cape Town for the Africa leg of the trip. Then it’s on to Perth (Australia), Singapore (Asia), Algarve, Portugal (Europe),  Cartagena, Colombia (South America) and finally, South Beach, Miami for the North American run on Nov. 21.

Rest? That’s something they’ll get on the flights, some of which will be 12 hours long. In most cases, when they arrive in a new continent, they will almost literally hit the ground running.

“You get on a plane, you land, you run,” Vynerib said.

Singapore and Miami are the exceptions; they’ll get six hours to rest in each of those cities, after reaching them on shorter flights that allow less time to sleep.

They’ll run in a wide range of conditions. Organizers told Vynerib that Antarctica could have springlike weather, or could be 30 degrees below zero. In Singapore, the runners will face humid, tropical heat. In Portugal, they run on the cobbled streets of Faro’s Old Town,

“I would probably prefer the cold,” Vynerib said. “Do I prefer negative 30 degrees? Probably not.”

Runners receive eight medals, one for each race and an overall medal, plus merchandise and membership in the Global Marathon Club the Great World Race website says. The man and woman with the fastest average time across all seven races are declared the Great World Race Champions. Last year, the winner in the men’s category was Paul Box of the United States, with an average time of 3:26:29 for the seven races. The lead woman was Roma Puisiene of Lithuania, who averaged 3:53:14.

Vynrib isn’t in it for the championship title. His best time for a marathon so far is four hours. For the string of seven, however, his only goal is to finish it. He’s been training for months, taking weekly instructions from a trainer in Ireland, who sends his trainees a schedule of trials each week via What’s App.

Vynerib first ran a marathon when he was 36, living in New York City. He got the idea while watching the New York City Marathon, sipping coffee and eating a bagel and noticing that many of the racers did not match the image of a super fit runner.

“Not everyone is like a star athlete,” he said. “I thought, wow, if they can do it, I can do it.”

He ran the same race again several years later. Then, two years ago, he took on a much greater challenge in a RacingThePlanet ultramarathon in Namibia. In that event, he covered 155 miles, essentially running six back-to-back marathons under a blazing African sun. The Namib Desert reached 130 degrees on two days.

“It was crazy,” he recalls.

Participants in the RacingThePlanet challenge are given water breaks, and tents to sleep in, but otherwise carry everything they’ll need for the entire event, including their freeze-dried food, in a backpack, going to extremes to pare their load to its barest of necessities.

“We cut our toothbrushes in half so we wouldn’t have to carry the weight of the whole toothbrush,” he said.

In the Great World Race, he said, there will be a man running in a tuxedo to raise awareness of men’s mental health issues. A father will push his disabled son through six races, pulling him on a sled in Antarctica.

Vynerib wants to do it for his three children; Colette, 25; Camille, 21; and Ollie, 18. They plan to fly into Miami for his last run.

“I want to show them that you can do anything,” he said. “When you put your mind to it, you can do anything.”