It happened!!! It finally happened!! This morning at 10:30, Mary started the Run of Hope. She ran from the United Nations in New York City, and started a 15.200 mile long journey of hope, one that will bring safe drinking water to millions of people.

Her start was preceded by speeches by Hillary Swank (the super nice actress, whom we got to meet in person the night before), the CEO of Dow (our gracious sponsor), and Jin Zidell, the amazing visionary who started it all. Many photographers and cameras were present at this special moment. I have to admit that my eyes got watery. As you can imagine, it was a big deal. I don't think it all sunk in yet, the fact that we just kicked of the first ever around the world relay, and hopefully one that will help everyone on this planet look at water in a new way.

After Mary took off, the rest of the runners got into their respective vans and drove up the route. My team Silver (officially it's team grey, but we like Silver better) drove up to Connecticut, about 110 miles up the route. We just got into our hotel a few hours ago. It is now just before 6pm, and I need to get to bed soon because we're getting up at 1am so that we are at our first exchange point well before 3am, when we take over.

Starting then, we'll handle running the next 6 hours of the relay, each of us running 10 miles (approximately 90 minutes of running). Shiri goes first, then Mary, myself, and lastly Emmanuel. Yes, I will start running at 6am, after being up since about 1am. Whoaa. Good times. I bought some Red Bull, so hopefully I won't fall asleep running. We have the same routine on Sunday morning, and after that we fly over to Ireland. I can't wait to get started running; it's been a lot of preparations, and now it's time to go, because water is life, and life is good in Connecticut.