“Gary was addicted to running,” Jim Gering said with a laugh recalling his friend Gary “Inky” Engstrom.
Gering got to know Engstrom through the Easy Striders Running Club in Ironwood. Eventually they grew to be family.
“We had known Gary for probably 30 plus years. He was my wife's running partner. Actually, they ran a lot of marathons together,” said Gering. “Gary was over 200 marathons. My wife's got 100, so they ran quite a bit together.”
Along with his passion for running, Engstrom was also passionate about getting other people into running.
“He mentored a lot of people over the years,” said Gering.
At the age of 74, Engstrom died in December of 2020. Gering and others close to Engstrom didn’t wait long to find a way to honor him.
They came up with the Inky Lunta Challenge.
“We were looking at some kind of a fitness thing. We knew not everybody ran, so when we got together, we were just trying to come up with different ways of trying to do something different, because it was during COVID,” said Gering. “It was trying to do something where you could do something on your own, where we didn't have a group thing, like a race.”
The Inky Lunta challenges people to put in a certain number of miles, kilometers, minutes or hours into the activity of their choice over a set number of days.
Each year that number increases with the age Engstrom would have been, meaning this year is the Inky Lunta 78 Challenge.
People sign up online and pay a registration fee as a way to hold themselves accountable.
Proceeds go to the Jonathan A. Erickson Fund which is held by the Gogebic Range Health Foundation.
“It's kind of a wide-open funding opportunity for anybody who can relate their funding to a mental health need in our community,” said GRHF Executive Director Kassi Huotari. “They've given out, I would say, almost 20 grants out of that fund since inception.”
Erickson was a young man from Ironwood who died in 2019. Engstrom had been a mentor to Erickson and worked a lot to help him.
“Gary was a Vietnam Vet, so he had some demons himself that he was working through,” said Gering. “He was pretty good at, you know, if you needed somebody to talk to or whatever, he was one of the guys that would go, come and do it.”
Now in its fifth year, the Inky Lunta Challenge gets participants from as far away as Texas and Hawaii.
The 78-day challenge starts March 1st. People have until March 7th to register online.
There will be a kick-off event March 1st at Cold Iron Brewery. There will also be a closing event May 2nd. More details are to come on those events.
“You don't have to attend any of the in-person events if you don't want to. Even if you're not from the area and you feel strongly about supporting mental health and community health and wellness, we encourage you to register for the event,” said Huotari.
