It's time to RUN!

There is excitement in the air. Nervous excitement. The kind that makes you sick in the stomach but also curious what the next few weeks will bring.  One quote I go back to when I'm about to begin another state run is from my master's program in school administration, "Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior."  I sure hope it wasn't Dr. Phil that said that. I think that would kill it for me.

This run that starts in a few days will be the 30th and 31st states I have crossed on foot. I haven't been stopped yet so perhaps I have a good chance at these two as well.

For this trip, I tried using a new crowd-sourcing website to get donations to support the trip.  The site is Kickstarter and if you haven't spent some time looking at the different projects there, please do. There are many amazing, creative, and inspiring projects happening all the time there. People can pledge anything from $1 to $1 million but as a group of supporters, projects get funded. The only catch is that the project has to create or produce something tangible and the funding goal has to be met before it is successful. If you tried to raise $1,000 and only got $200 in donations before your deadline expired, you wouldn't get anything. However, you can exceed your goal, which is something I never thought would happen to me.  Especially on my first Kickstarter.

I set up my project on Kickstarter and designed the funding to go towards the filming portion of the run. With camera equipment, soundtrack support and audio mixing, these costs can get expensive. I set my goal at $1,900. By the time the project deadline arrived, I had raised $3,327.  That's 175% of my goal!

What was most surprising to me was who the backers are.  Prior to using Kickstarter myself, I thought that all of the backers for projects there were random strangers staring at computer screens late at night, just looking for things to excite them. Not the case with my project.

Almost all of my backers I've known personally for many years.  They are not runners themselves (most of them anyway).  They are not even film documentary buffs.  And they are certainly not the 1%.  But they are very good friends and from their outpouring of support, I gather that they are deeply supportive of my project to run really far and share the experience with everyone through film.

That is incredibly humbling.

My gear is ready. I will begin the run in St. Croix Falls at the western terminus of the Ice Age Trail at 8am in Interstate Park on Friday, August 16.  In less than 17 days I will hope to run 600 miles, arriving at the Michigan / Ohio border by Labor Day with a whole lot of gigabytes of great video to share.

With eager anticipation!

Brian