Belarus is very special! In all honesty, I was getting tired of cities and traffic, even though the cities we have visited have been magnificent. Today I ran from 4:30 to 6pm on a straight road through the farms and fields between Brest and Minsk. Lots of livestock greeted me including cows, goats and chicken grazing on the shoulders. There were also many cats along the roadside and later on we came upon dozens of storks, the bird of Belarus and on its protected species list. We have a Republic Road police escort for the runners.

Before hooking up with the Yellow Team for the exchange, the Green Team lived up to its reputation when we were stopped just outside Brest for speeding 4K over the speed limit. The police let our driver go but not before inquiring about and getting lots of information from our guide as to what we are doing.

When we came to an unexpected bridge closure during my run, the local police came out and escorted me and our caravan across the bridge and through the barricades, then waved us off with a smile. Some teenagers joined me on the climb over the bridge and one challenged me to a sprint. I saw them again several miles down the road and they waved and yelled. The people in this country are friendly. The country is amazingly clean and expansive.

We are spending the night and our day off tomorrow in the capital of Minsk, known for “Belarusian monumentalism.” When the city was rebuilt after the war it was built to be expansive and massive and we are told it will be quite impressive. We have a major exchange point event there tomorrow at 3pm which our guides tell us should bring out a crowd. Crossing the border into Belarus was a bit of an experience. Three teams came over yesterday in a bus and it took several hours. After running last night our team and the Orange Team stayed in “survivor camp” in Poland, actually more like a ratty summer camp cottage, and then took the train across the border. The train reminded me of the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge without the steam. It took us an hour plus another hour for the time change. But the train was in motion for no more than 10 minutes. We climbed on, it rolled to the border and the officials came aboard for crossing paperwork and passport checks. Having already hooked up with our lead Russian guide we were in good hands. Plus, Lansing flirted with a female official who really enjoyed the attention and it got them all to smile. Lansing did however have to delete the photos he took of the border from his camera, under their watchful eye. We then rolled forward a short bit more to the station on the Belarus side and disembarked through another passport check and a very tight crowd waiting for the train and giving us no slack whatsoever.

The rest of the MIR agents who will be traveling with us through Belarus were waiting and whisked us off to a nice lunch before our team headed out into the countryside to start running. We now have a new van and driver that will go with us all the way to Mongolia. Each van has an interpreter-guide through Belarus and we will get new ones when we cross the Russian border. Our Belarusian guides are adorable, young, talented women. The men on the team are thrilled, just as all the women on the team were thrilled with the Italian drivers we had from Ireland to Poland. The road to Minsk is straight. Sections are shrouded by large trees and we are told by Yulia, our Green Team guide, that these were the connecting routes between castles, some of which remain intact. These sections are gorgeous.

I had a wonderful run today, sunny, dry and breezy, with much of it reminiscent of Vermont. I was missing the serenity of my long runs in the countryside at home. Today fulfilled that yen ripe with fresh manure surrounded by endless expanses of green and even a few hills and some rivers. We will be here for two nights and three days but I won‘t run in Belarus again. My next run will be 48 hours from now in Russia when we go back on the 9pm to 3am shift. More on Minsk tomorrow! Please let me know what you‘d like to hear about while we are in Russia for the next month. Just go to www.blueplanetrun.org and click on The Team, then on my photo. It will take you to my blogs. From there you can email me what you want, and also check out the photos that are being added daily. Cheers!