Most AMAZING 2 Days Ever!

I am exhausted!  I arrived home from a two day, 150 mile St. Jude run at 12:30 this morning!  My team raised $62,500 for St. Jude and, YES, ran 150 miles from Mattoon, IL to Peoria, IL.  I am proud to say that I ran 20 miles, which is a major record for me and I did it with a smile on my face and tears in my eyes!  I met some new friends and I had an amazing time even though our RV air conditioning quit.  Have you ever crammed 10 sweaty runners into an RV with no AC?  Believe me when I tell you that the resulting smell is NOT pretty!

We had a group of 50 runners and 20 support people that piled into 5 RVs to make the 150 mile trek!  Little did I know when I started that this would be the most amazingly hard journey that I would make!  It would test my body and my mind to the point of breaking!

So who do you do it?  Well, I run for the kids who are sick and not able to run!  God gave me strong legs and I am using them to give back!  I ran for Alyssa, the daughter of a friend, who was treated and St. Jude and beat her cancer!  How amazing is that!!

 Here I am running on day one of our incredible journey.  This run was on country roads and busy highways just like this!  Safety is always a concern and right before this shot was take, a truck pulling a trailer almost took me out of the game!  Scary situation but I kept moving forward after all, I was still here and still strong!

My favorite leg of the run was run in the dark!  It was 11:30 PM or so and the temperature was an amazing 62 degrees!  We were in the middle of nowhere on our way to Warrensburg, IL, for showers, and there were a gazillion stars in the cloudless sky!  Totally amazing!  We ran with glow sticks and they called me Glo Jo!  During this leg, we ran into a foggy patch and the chase van lights showed our shadows on the fog!  Again, amazing!

At the end of the journey was Peoria, a satellite campus of St. Jude, and a crowd of people ready to cheer for us!  It was awesome to run into the crowd and high five actual patients from St. Jude who had been praying for us on our journey when they are on a journey for their lives!

In the end, I am a St. Jude runner for life now!  I will continue to run for the kids as long as I am physically capable!