Day 82 - Williamsville, Bloomington & Pontiac, IL

Runners Will, Mary, Shiri and Emmanuel are joined by Drake Zimmerman of the Rotanrians Action Group Water and Sanitation and Karla Weldon, President of Sunset Club of Bloomington

David started the day in the rain in Williamsville, Illinois. He was joined by Adam, a surprise guest runner who received first hand information about BPR from his father - who was a guest runner himself in California! Laurel, whose leg is improving, ran past the Postville Courthouse State Historic Site in Lincoln and was greeted by Jan Youngquist, an enthusiastic photographer for the Lincoln Daily News.

Shiri ran in the blazing heat into a great exchange in Bloomington with lots of people from Rotary International and some Dow employees in front of Carpenters Local 63 Union. Will continued past Illinois State University, where he was enthusiastically greeted by the students. At the Towanda exchange point, Rotary representative Drake Zimmerman presented the runners with a generous donation in support of BPR. After a little encouragement, he then joined Mary as a guest biker during her run!

For someone with a sprained foot and sore knee who has run 60 miles a week for the past two and a half months, the cooler serves many uses. Heiko ices his foot and enjoys a cold cerveza after his run.

The heat continues to be a major challenge for the runners (especially on days with no breeze and high humidity like today,) but they've devised some creative coping methods. Runners are accompanied by a biker that has water bottles, the pilot van passes the runners every so often and douses them with Supersoaker water guns and members of the indefatigable logistics crew are armed with squirt bottles. Not a bad way to avoid heat stroke!

Alissandro, the day pilot.