To celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, two marathon runners have assembled a team to unite the country in a marathon relay from sea to shining sea.
The idea started when marathon runners Joe Nail and Wyatt Moss met and became friends while trying to complete 50 marathons in each of the 50 US states.
“As America’s 250th birthday came into view, Joe had an idea: do something epic to bring the country back together,” the Relay for America website said. “A coast-to-coast relay, carrying the American flag from one ocean to the capital. He asked Wyatt to partner — and Wyatt pushed it further. Don’t make it a private feat. Open it to everyone and build the first mass-participation flag relay across the country.”
The idea for Relay for America was born – a marathon relay where more than 250 runners will carry the flag from California to the nation’s capital. Nail and Moss planned a route consisting of 3,016 miles, with each mile dedicated to one of America’s veterans.
The website mentions that the idea started with “a ragtag group of young people on a shoestring budget, with about two weeks to plan something most would spend years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on.” However, the founders of this movement mention that the spirit of American exceptionalism has kept the team going.
“We think that America is still an exceptional place,” Nail said during a Fox News interview. “There’s this narrative — people like to talk about all the things that are wrong with America, and really the spirit of this relay is showing all the things that are right with America.”
The run began Sunday on Rodeo Beach in San Francisco when a group of about 15 people and the runner touched the waters of the Pacific Ocean and started running east, as Moss told his audience on Instagram.
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The home page of the Relay for America has a map where viewers can see the flag’s current location and calculate the time the flag is expected to reach their state.
The relay will be expected to take around 20 days, ending in Washington D.C. on the evening of July 2. The runners are currently averaging about 161 miles per day, running through all hours of the day. As of Friday, the flag had been carried all the way to Utah.
The website offers opportunities for volunteers to work for management, media, comms, operations, press, and bookkeeping to make sure that the flag reaches the nation’s capital on July 4.
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