809.7 Miles To Go
I plan to run a long way to bring attention to the health of women and children around the world – 809.7 miles to be exact.
On March 20 next year, board members, staff and friends of MAP International will run in the Publix Georgia Marathon and Half-Marathon in Atlanta to raise awareness and funds to support programs that benefit the health of women and kids in some of the world’s most impoverished communities.
Tomorrow, Sunday Oct. 31, I start my formal training. I have devised a 20-week training program that will, I hope, get me to the finish line of the marathon. If I follow the program exactly, I will run 783.5 miles in training and 26.2 miles in the marathon itself for a total of 809.7 miles. Seems like a long, long way.
The woman and baby in this picture are my motivation. The mother is Maria Ramos. Her baby is Albert 
Geovanni Ramos. I wrote about them last month after meeting them in a very remote community in Guatemala. They are beneficiaries of a maternal/child health program MAP helped to support with prenatal vitamins. Maria was married at 17, had her first daughter at 18 and another at 20. The family lives in a simple tin-roofed house with a dirt floor and a few chickens running in the compound. She makes corn tortillas, beans and a few vegetables on an open wood fire to feed her family. Her husband works every day for a small wage at a nearby commercial farm. There is no doctor or health center anywhere near their village.
Albert, two-months-old in the picture, is a healthy young boy. That is in part because his mother received high-quality prenatal vitamins she would never have had access to if not for our program.
Women like Maria and children like Albert need our help. That is why we are running. You should join us. If you, or anyone you know, wants to join the MAP team, simply register for the Georgia marathon at georgiamarathon.com. Make sure to select MAP International in the “join a team” section. Run the full marathon at 26.2 miles or the half at 13.1 miles and help make a difference for a mother and child.
In the meantime, I will be updating my training along the way here at this blog and on Twitter (follow me at @michaelnyenhuis). If you see me slacking off, you have permission to get on my case. Someone will have to keep me accountable to run all those miles.
