Run For Their Lives

He nearly died of malarial fever in Togo, smashed up his elbow in India, and was bitten by a snake in Madagascar. She survived a two-week coma in Africa and was plagued by tooth problems for much of the trip. But more than five years after they set off from Switzerland with the ambition of running around the world to raise money for kids, Serge and Nicole Roetheli returned home this summer, safe but sore after 40,912 km of adventure and hardship.

On the trip, they raised about $220,000 for projects ranging from an orphanage in Colombia to...