Day 3: Boston

The teams swapped their tees and tanks from Saturday for fleeces and rain jackets on Sunday. The BPR squad was treated to a typical gray New England day, with a few light showers—which, of course, never slowed anyone down. Jason started the day at 9 a.m. out of Norwood, Mass., and Simon finished up with a run through Boston Common to the cheers of a small but mighty crowd that didn’t mind getting a little wet. “We read about the Run in our local paper and just wanted to come out and thank these amazing people for the incredible feat they are undertaking,” noted one observer.

At 11:45 a.m., Simon ran right up onstage, took the mic, thanked the crowd for coming out and started to share with them the enormous significance of the safe-drinking-water issue, despite having just run 10 miles. Three 20-something Bostonians trekked over to the Common specifically to meet the runners and learn about the Run. Two of them had lived for a short time in South Africa and said that although many South Africans have access to safe drinking water, many of the surrounding countries and outlying territories do not. They congratulated the runners on their amazing commitment to spread the message and promised to log on to www.blueplanetrun.org to donate. They also pledged to motivate their friends to donate. Right on!

Jin Zidell, Founder of the Blue Planet Run Foundation, shows off the custom baton that will circle the globe. The two ends of the baton detatch, creating two cups. The incoming and outgoing runners then toast with a drink of water at each exchange point, before putting the baton back together for its long journey for safe drinking water.

The next challenge was loading up all the gear and getting the team across the Atlantic to Shannon, Ireland, where their fellow runners were poised to continue the Run across Europe. Goodbye, U.S.A.! We’ll see you on August 1! Look out, World — here comes the Blue Planet Run