Adventuring together
Mark and Anna Gualano aren’t the kind of people to shy away from a challenge. Mark Gualano completed the Appalachian Trail and Anna Gualano summited Mount Kilimanjaro. Later this month, the Vestavia Hills couple is trying a new challenge: a triathlon to raise money for a cure for osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), or brittle bone disease.
Adventures have mostly taken a backseat as the couple raises their young children, 3-year-old son Luke and 1-year-old daughter Charlie, who Mark Gualano said he hopes to include in outdoor fun when they get older.
But while hiking with their children is still a few years in the future, Mark and Anna Gualano are setting a new goal for themselves by competing in the Sprint Triathlon on June 18 in Georgia’s Callaway Gardens. It is a beginner’s triathlon, and the couple will compete as a relay team, with Anna Gualano completing the quarter-mile swim, Mark Gualano biking 9 miles and both completing the 2-mile run at the end.
More importantly, the Gualanos’ goal is to raise $10,000 for research into the effects of brittle bone disease on adults. Mark Gualano said several friends plan to join them in the triathlon, and Anna Gualano, who was also diagnosed with OI, is also running in honor of friends with OI who have died.
The Gualanos were adventurers long before they met. In 2008, Mark Gualano found himself a 40-year-old lawyer losing focus at work, daydreaming about hiking the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200-mile path from Georgia to Maine. He kept wondering if he could be one of the 25 percent of people who successfully complete the hike.
Without a wife, kids or a mortgage, Mark Gualano had nothing stopping him from giving it a shot. He quit his job, put his belongings in storage and hit the trail on March 8, 2008.
“I got a lot out of my system. I really craved checking out from the paycheck way of life,” he said.
He arrived at Mount Katahdin, Maine — the official end of the trail — five months later on Aug. 30, having successfully traversed mountainous terrain and nearly every kind of weather.
“It was very euphoric that I made it,” Mark Gualano said. “It was refreshing for me. I was craving that.”
Mark Gualano said the experience made him want to be a “trail angel” — one of the people who will visit difficult parts of the trail and give supplies, a hot shower or encouragement to passing hikers — in the future.
After a few more months camping in Colorado and Utah, Mark Gualano returned to Birmingham and set up his own law practice, Vestavia Title, in 2009. His office on Chestnut Street has a map of the trail as well as pictures from along the route. He met Anna, who grew up in Vestavia Hills, as she was preparing for a journey of her own.
About two years before the Gualanos met, Anna Gualano was sitting in a hospital recovering from major surgery. She decided she was going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest point in Africa. But she had to be careful — her OI diagnosis made her more susceptible to injury, and she could get hurt in training before she ever reached the mountain.
“When we met, she said even if she wasn’t successful in making it to the top of the mountain, at least it was getting her striving toward something, and at least it was getting her moving,” Mark Gualano said. “If she took one step on the trail to the top and hurt herself, she would have considered it a success, because she made it there.”
But she didn’t just take one step. Anna Gualano and her father made it to the top of Kilimanjaro in 2009. Along the way, they raised more than $30,000 for OI research. The Sprint Triathlon this month is a chance for the Gualanos to continue supporting a cause that’s near to their hearts.
For more information about the Gualanos’ race or to donate, find Tri for OI on Facebook.