I was responsible for the first casualty of the Blue Planet Run. On June 1st at around 10:30 AM (more or less – I think things were running late), I stormed off the stage set up on the lawn of the United Nations (sort of – I had to tiptoe down some steps and around some fragile glass bowls before commencing with the storming) and tore down 1st Avenue, swinging my baton and screaming like someone being chased by a large and scary animal. No one noticed. Well, no one except for the guy in a business suit who I smacked into and bopped with the baton. To my credit, I apologized. To my shame, I left a big sweat print on him and continued running.

My inaugural leg of the Blue Planet Run ended a few minutes later at the 6th Avenue entrance to Central Park. My own legs were shaking from the overload of adrenaline and I was hopping around asking “Can I go? Can I go? Can I go?” Richard Johnson, a member of Blue Team and the actual first runner, however, gently pried my fingers from around the baton and calmly turned to run his leg through Central Park. I was scooped into a van, adrenaline, sweaty shorts, and all. I met up with Silver Team, the team I belong to, at the first ten-mile check point, which, ironically, was a busy McDonald's in the middle of an acre of baking concrete.

I was a little less eager to run my first true 10-mile leg at 4:30 AM the following morning. In fact, I was profoundly grumpy until sunrise, when the sky turned purple and then pink and then gold and the air felt fresh and cool. My route snaked through downtown Hartford and finished at a Walgreen's somewhere outside town. The capitol building in Hartford looked like the happy ending of a fairytale -- a castle, rosy and crenelated, magical and imaginary – in the early morning sun. And, more practically, since sunrise occurred a little before 6:00 AM, the sun coming up meant that I was nearly done running for the day! About halfway through the route, I ran through a bank of TV cameras set up alongside the road. Excited, I waved my baton at a few bewildered cameramen. Yeah, Blue Planet! Later, it occurred to me that a Race for the Cure was scheduled that morning for downtown Hartford. Ah, well.

My second 10-mile leg a little more than 24 hours later was even harder. Sore, tired, and hungry, I started running at 6:00 AM outside of Attleboro, MA. I needed the first four miles or so to warm up and hit some sort of stride, but once I started running on Route 1, I felt much, much better. Route 1 rolls leisurely through scenic New England towns, which makes for a pretty run. And Route 1 has its own off-kilter charm. For instance, I passed a self-satisfied group of wild turkeys perched improbably on a beat-up couch laying on the side of the road. I also ran past (or over) an extraordinary number of squashed possums. Now that I'm thinking about this, I'm not sure how possums reproduce, since they make up a large proportion of all the roadkill I've seen.

Silver Team is on the very early morning shift (3:00 AM to 9:00 AM) for the next three days; I'll be running at sunrise through Ireland, which sounds gorgeous on paper, but may be slightly less nice in reality!