Lance Cummings hikes with his dog, Buddy, on Thursday in San Elijo Hills area of San Marcos. Cummings is training for a fundraising trek across Greece in May that will re-create the epic journey of the Spartan army in 480 BC.

This time next month, retired Navy SEAL Lance Cummings of Cardiff will be leading a troupe of real and weekend warriors on an arduous trek across Greece, retracing the epic journey of ancient Sparta’s 300 soldiers to face the invading army of Persia in 480 BC.

This time, the goal won’t be combat but charity. The 21 athletes — a mix of active-duty and retired SEALS and other service members, wounded warriors and ultra athletes — are on track to raise $300,000 for three nonprofit groups: CharityVision, the Navy SEAL Foundation and the Glen Doherty Memorial Foundation.

Doherty, an Encinitas resident and former Navy SEAL, was one of the American CIA workers killed in the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. He and Cummings were good friends.

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Cummings, 57, said he came up with the idea to create the Sparta300 For Charity event after watching the movie “The 300” and reading books and historical accounts of the incredible training, endurance and bravery of Sparta’s King Leonidas and his 300-man army.

Those men, each carrying fighting equipment weighing more than 60 pounds, ran more than 250 miles in six days to meet the much-larger Persian army that was preparing to invade their homeland.

The Spartans were slaughtered but they died fighting in such heroic and strategic fashion that their story has been the subject of countless legends, poems, songs, books and films. Now they’ve also inspired what could be the first cross-country re-creation of their journey.

Cummings knows a little something about the Spartans’ training and dedication. During his long career in Navy special operations, he deployed overseas 16 times to the Middle East, Asia and South America. Since his retirement in 2011, he’s been working part-time training athletes in SEAL-style fitness skills and as a chiropractor for both people and animals.

“Through their bravery, the Spartans changed the course of human history,” Cummings said. “When they went to battle that day, there was no exit strategy. Unless you really love your country, you’re not going to fight for it. That’s what the Spartans and the SEALs have in common. I feel a kinship with that story.”

Born and raised in Macon, Ga., Cummings joined the SEALS at age 22 after a year of Navy fleet service in Connecticut. He served on active duty until 1995, then joined the reserves for five years while he earned his chiropractic degree and started a practice in Georgia.

He was reactivated after 9/11 and sent to Afghanistan for a year. Then he became a private contractor, working first for Blackwater and then, after moving to San Diego in 2004, for the Navy, setting up its human performance initiative program for soon-to-deploy SEAL teams. The program assesses potential health problems and does preventive therapy to reduce the risk of injuries in the field.

Lance Cummings, 57, of Cardiff hikes with his dog, Buddy, on Thursday in San Elijo Hills area of San Marcos. He’s in training for a Spartan-inspired rucking (hiking with a weighted pack) trip across Greece in May that will cover 250 miles in eight days. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Cummings started doing charitable work in 2015 when he and his wife, Michele Grad, signed up for an arthritis charity event where they pedaled 525 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles on a tandem bicycle. Grad said that her husband found the fund-raising experience so addicting, he’s been looking for ways to do more ever since.

The idea for Sparta300 for Charity was conceived in early 2016. A friend told Cummings about a Greek special-events company that was organizing a staged foot race that would follow the Spartans’ journey. The company wasn’t able to recruit enough endurance runners, so it canceled the race but it agreed to serve as the on-the-ground organizer for the Sparta300 in May.

The Sparta300 will cover the same ground as the Spartans, but the requirements are less extreme. Each participant will carry a 25-30 pound pack as well as a PVC pipe to represent a sword. They can wear running shoes rather than sandals, and they will spend their nights in hotels.

They’ll also be walking and climbing, rather than running the whole time. They’ll cover the distance in eight days, rather than six, with a goal of finishing 30 miles every day. The participants will start at 6 a.m. May 5 in what was once Sparta and will finish May 14 in Thermopylae, site of the epic battle.

The entry fee for each participant is 1,300 Euros (about $1,383), which covers all ground expenses except air travel. They’re also encouraged to raise $10,000 for charity. Cummings is also raising donations through corporate sponsorships and an online auction of items that range from a beach cruiser to cases of wine to a personal handgun safety class that he’s teaching.

The unusual nature of the Sparta300 has attracted a wide variety of participants. All are Americans and all but one are men (the lone woman is in the Army Reserves in Idaho). Besides a number of SEALs and other servicemen, there are a few celebrity ultra-athletes.

They include James Lawrence, who’s know as the “Iron Cowboy,” for setting the Guinness World Record in 2015 for competing in 50 Ironman events on 50 consecutive days in all 50 U.S. states.

There’s a wounded warrior with a prosthetic leg and Graham Dessert, a Kansas athlete who’s been posting his training videos for the team on the “Sparta 300 for charity” Facebook page.

Also new to the team is athlete Kyle Maynard, a quadruple amputee who’s competed as a mixed martial artist and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro without the use of prosthetics. Maynard will use prosthetic legs for part of the journey and will also ride in a specially designed backpack worn by one of the other team members the rest of the time.

Cummings said he plans to lead the team through Greece, so he’s been doing his own “rucking” (walking while carrying weight) to prepare for the trip.

He spends at least three hours a day, five days a week walking, hiking and climbing in parks around North County with his 7-year-old German shepherd, Buddy. He anticipates the highlight of the trip will be when the group arrives at their destination at the battlefield of Thermopylae, where he said he has a surprised planned for the team.

He’s hoping to plan a similar charity event like Sparta300 every year, but they won’t be the same course. He would like to find a similar adventure trip to an iconic location that re-creates a famous journey that had history-changing importance. Some of the projects will re-create battles, but others might be something endurance-oriented, like a swim across the English Channel.

Cummings and his wife have twin 9-year-olds who’ve had a little less time with their dad lately because of his training and event preparation. He said he hopes that this project will be an example to them as well as the children of others on the trip.

“The Spartans traveled with a support team who did everything to take care of the men so they could focus on their job,” Cummings said. “Everyone on this trip has their own support team at home and they’ve made their own sacrifices.

“We’re hoping that these children will see how hard their dads are working to give back to someone else and hopefully it will balance out the scales.”

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com