Walk a mile in her shoes or run 3,000 barefoot

Does everyone remember the song by the Proclaimers called I would walk 500 miles? Well I read a story about a girl who is doing a lot more than that. She is running across the United States. Not only is she running across the country but she is doing it barefoot.

Rae Heim, an 18-year old from Iowa, is running barefoot from Boston to Huntington Beach, Calif. She left Boston in April and plans to get to Huntington Beach in October. She started out just to do this and prove to people that she could run but it has turned into a fundraiser for Soles4Shoes, a charity that supplies shoes to needy children.

I think about what she is doing at 18 years old and then try to think about what I was doing at the same age. I was a freshman in college, wide-eyed and driven. I tried to get my hands in about as much as I could including being a sports anchor on TV, calling high school football games on the radio, writing a movie review column for a newspaper, singing in a barbershop choir (that one might surprise some people) but those are all pretty minor compared to running across the United States to raise money for a charity.

Now I hate running. Well it isn't so much that I hate running but I hate how my legs feel during and after runs because they are carrying around my beer gut that I spent years in heavy training to achieve. I also have the lung capacity of a chipmunk and have to stop every little bit because I am breathing harder than I am running.

All that aside I would love to do something like what Rae Heim is doing. Maybe the answer is not running but I have thought before about doing an around-the-world trip. Doing it in 80 days is not near as much of a feat as when Jules Verne dreamed it up so that angle is shot. I do like a lot of the ideas from the story though so my twist that I would like to do is pick a sum of money (maybe $10,000) and do an around-the-world trip in less than that amount. It would be challenging and I would have to be creative in finding ways to move about but fun none-the-less.

Until I get the money, or more importantly the time ,to undertake this challenge I will be left admiring what an 18-year old from Iowa is doing this summer. She started out running about 40 miles per day until she twisted her ankle and cut it to about 20 per day. She stops and rests for a day or two every now and then but a 3,000-mile run is nothing to sneeze at no matter how you break it down.

If you to want to follow Rae's journey here is the website I found ... http://flavors.me/raeainslee