Danny Santanello plays hockey for fun and runs to raise money for charity

Danny Santanello had no designs on being a runner. Santanello, who lives in Swampscott, Mass., was more accustomed to lacing up the skates and getting his workouts on ice. The 49-yearold has played hockey all his life, from Swampscott High Schoolto a four-year stint at Brown University, where he eventually was tri-captain. He stayed with the game after he got his degree in 1981, after his professional career as an investment expert took flight, and after he started a family.

But 10 years ago, when his young daughter Kristin was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of 5, everything changed. If he couldn't cure his child, he was going to find ways to help raise money so others could. That meant he would start running. Not just any race, either, but the legendary Boston Marathon.

"I first ran the marathon for the Team in Training, which benefits the Leukemia Society of America," he says. "But after talking with my daughter's doctors at Mass General, we started running a team for the pediatric oncology clinic. From there, we've raised more than $3 million. I've run for the past 10 years. We started out with 10 runners, and now we're up to 100."

Today, Santanello is a vice president of investments with Raymond James and Associates. He still skates between two and three times a week, mixing it up with an Over-50 league in Saugus, Mass., ("I weaseled my way in, even though I'm only 49," he says with a laugh) and a fast-paced, ultra-competitive lunchtime crew featuring a number of former Division 1 players organized by John Tudor, a former pitcher with the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox.

"I just love the game," he says. "My college coach told me I was a fourth-line center that always managed to crack the top three lines. I always had the desire -- I had to keep up if I wanted to play the game. And, I tell you, just trying to keep up with some of those guys on Thursday, like (former Merrimack College star) Paul Albano, they're great hockey players."

Plus, Santanello's not ignoring the promise he made 10 years ago. Kristin is a strong, thriving teenager, having fully recovered from her bout with leukemia. A sophomore at Swampscott High School, she recently made the Northeastern Conference All-Star team in field hockey.

Her father is still running. The charity is still one of the reasons he keeps running, year-round. At 5-foot-7 and 190 pounds, Santanello freely admits he's not sporting the classic runner's build ("My daughter tells me it's all muscle," he cracks. "No one can believe I weigh that much."), and he doesn't stretch as often as he should or would like to. "I had a personal trainer this summer, and he just laughed at me when he saw how inflexible I was," he quips. "He worked on me quite a bit, but it was like trying to bend a 2-by-4."

Santanello also acknowledges that running and hockey aren't always mutually compatible sports. His marathon training develops his aerobic capacity and long, slow-twitch muscles, while hockey, with its quick, hard bursts of energy over short shifts on the ice, focuses more on shorter, fast-twitch muscles and anaerobic efforts. "You'd think all that running would help you in hockey, but it really doesn't," says Santanello. "When I do my long runs on the weekend, my legs are heavier. You're more fatigued than skating.

Plus, you're using different muscles." But he has no plans to stop doing either any time soon. After all, they're both associated with two great loves of his life. Here's how he keeps going:

MONDAY:
Santanello meets with a small group of hearty souls -- men and women -- on the beach near his home at about 5:30 a.m., when "it can be cold, and lonely." "We'll run three-and-a-half to five miles, depending on how far we want to go," he says. "If it's windy out, we don't want to venture out too far on the causeway. We're not fast … we run about nine-minute miles. It's just about getting distance and staying loose."

TUESDAY:
It's time for the Tuesday Night Over-50 League (where, as of mid-February, he was the leading scorer with 38 goals and 17 assists for 55 points in 21 games for the sixth-place Eagles). Games are an hour long, and often spirited affairs, with libations afterwards. "Sometime I run during the day, but if I do, I find my legs are tired at night."

WEDNESDAY:
"We're back at it, running on the beach, another three to five miles," says Santanello. "Sometimes it's hard when I have the 10 o'clock game (on Tuesday), and I get home at 11:30 or 12, and I'm wired and can't get to sleep. It can be tough to answer the bell in the morning."

THURSDAY:
Noontime hockey. "That's a great skate, with John Tudor and the boys," says Santanello. "Sometimes you only have eight guys per side, and it's up and down, up and down. That's the best workout of the week, because of the fact that there are only two or three spares on each team. So you only sit for a minute or two before you're back on the ice for eight. That's when you really build up some endurance."

FRIDAY:
Another morning, another running session, mirroring the efforts of Monday and Wednesday.

SATURDAY:
"We meet at 7:30 a.m., which means we get to sleep in late," says Santanello. "Then we go on a long run -- eight, nine, 10 miles. But as I get closer to the marathon, I have to increase my mileage, to 12, 13, 15 miles. A month before the marathon, I build it up to 20. I'll usually do the first 20 miles of the marathon route, from Hopkinton to Newton Center."

SUNDAY:
"Sunday is family day," he says, "I make the meatballs and pasta for everyone." Which, in the Santanello house, is just a euphemism for carbo-loading.