History

Hope is the only virtue that allows you to soar through life even in your worst period of life.

At the end of the 2010 Mt. Everest climbing season, 3,142 different climbers from twenty different countries had completed a total of over 5,100 climbs. Because of the extreme conditions experienced on Mount Everest, fatalities are commonplace. By the end of 2010, 219 people had died trying to reach the summit.

Who in their right mind would cross the USA on foot?

Since 1928, only 222 people have crossed the country on foot! Fifteen of these runners were female. Only one person has ever run the transcontinental southern route, during the hot, humid conditions of summer – Helene.

Since 1909, 205 men and 17 women have crossed for a total of 240 crossings (some have crossed more than once! SeeJohnRun is the brain child of John Wallace III.

Barbara Moore, age 56, ran across the country in 1950. She is the first woman to do so. Helene is the 15th female to ever run across America!

Frank Giannino is entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest crossing of America on foot, based on his average of 66.9 miles per day, from San Francisco to New York City.

17 women claim success in running across America. Number 13, Katie Visco, finished on December 29, 2009. Katie and her driver even stayed at Helene’s house during her run.

I read somewhere where two guys, unknown to one another, set out from different oceans and ran into each other (not literal), in Nebraska. Wow! It happened again. In December 2009, while Katie Visco was running West when she met Number 14, Jasmine Jordan, a 16 year old running from LA to NYC. Ashley Kumlien began her run March, 2010 and finished in NYC in September 2010. The past year has seen several female finishers but compared to Helene, she is twice their age and finished twice as fast. During her run, she met two guys biking across the country and ran into them twice during her run.

Although just a few hundred miles shorter, the southern route offers many obstacles including hot, humid weather and desolate areas. Perhaps this is why the southern states haven’t been crossed but a few times, approximately 8 of the 240 crossings have been on the southern route. No female has crossed the country running the extreme southern route-(Gulf Coast). No runner has crossed the southern route in the summer.

Runner Bruce Johnson, begins his second southern USA crossing in January 2010. www.unitedstatesrun.com

Gary “Walkingman” Hause www.walkingman.org, has walked 20,161 miles across the USA, Europe, UK, Mexico, Central America, South America, Australia and New Zealand. Gary needs about 18,000 more miles to walk to break the Guinness Book World Record of 38,000 miles for walking around the world, set by Arthur Blessit.

Jerry Traylor is an inspiration. Jerry has Cerebral Palsy, but that didn’t stop him from running across the USA in 1995 on crutches. Jerry averaged 16 miles per day and made it in 225 days from California to New York. Jerry has calculated the number of people that have crossed America on foot versus the population to be 1 in 30 million people. When runners say “It hurts”, I tell them to think of Jerry. That should make their pain go away.

The goal isn’t to finish, but having the courage to start. To achieve a cross country run, one must maintain the desire of making a dream, a reality. Crossing America on foot takes commitment to training and raising ones talent, skill and ability to a level possessed by relatively few people.

How do you want the story of your life to read?