I guess it was a month ago, maybe a little bit longer, when chatter started up on Twitter about a challenge/virtual competition. It was with Marathon In A Day. The idea was either as a solo runner or as a group, to run the distance of a marathon (26.2 miles) in one 24 hour period.
This event was scheduled for this past weekend, Sept 1-3, 2017, and before I knew it, I found myself scheduled to run with #TeamUSAplusSimon.
By the time this weekend arrived, it was a fun competition between #TeamUSAplusSimon against #TeamUK. We had a lot of chatter going back and forth between the two teams…egging each other on and knowing we would run our hearts out to beat each other.
#TeamUSAplusSimon was scheduled to run our miles on Saturday. As a team, we had that 24 hour window to run our miles. All of had to run on Saturday. We chatted about time differences and how many miles each person thought they could run and came up with a schedule where we figured we would be running.
I planned on starting my miles by 4:00am because it’s still a little warm in Mississippi. My alarm went off, I hopped out of bed and hit the road just a little before 4:00.
Normally I don’t do screen shots from my Garmin but we had to show “proof” of our miles so this is my proof. 30 miles. It was a fun run!
We had a beautiful sunrise. The Zombie Cows were glaring at me because my headlamp woke them up. LOL!!! You can just HEAR those cows thinking, “Lady, point that light someplace else!” I also met up with an Armadillo. I think this guy was lost. Dove season opened, too, so a few hours I was dodging bullets. I swear the first few days of Dove season the shooting is insane!
We had a person on our team run his very first marathon ever! That was super exciting!!!
When I ran the London Marathon this past April, I met IRL an online friend. We’ve been friends for quite a few years. It was terrific to get to meet him but I really dropped the ball. We didn’t get a pic together! What was I thinking!?! Well, guess what? He was on #TeamUK and his team was scheduled to run on Sunday. His run blew my 30 miles out of the water! Holy COW~that guy can run!!!
Fabulous running, Baz!!!
All the miles are now run and there are a few poor souls who are having to tally all the miles run for all the teams and solo runners. We should know in a week who won what.
While this has been a super fun competition, we should never lose sight of what this was really about: 
There’s so many who suffer from mental illness or know someone who does. The stigma attached to this kind of illness is unspeakably sad. It’s great to see work/progress towards helping those who suffer and in lifting the stigma attached to this kind of illness. That is what this weekend was all about.
So, yes, it was a blast~we were all united in working towards that common goal~helping make progress in treatments and getting rid of the stigma that unnecessarily exists.
#IRun4Aiden
