From time to time you get to meet someone who you're surprised you've never heard of before. This last year I've had the pleasure of getting to know a retired US Postal Worker, veteran and likely one of the most impressive athletes you've never heard of named Mike Ehredt, who for the last several years has been on often a one man quest to run across the country in a campaign called Project America Run. He has recently finished up filming for a documentary on the project called "12 Million Steps" (scroll to the bottom of the interview to view the trailer) and we caught up recently to talk about his quest and how he got to this point. Here's a portion of our conversation:
Mike, you're retired from the USPS, but you're also a veteran. Tell us when, where and why you served.
I joined the Army right out of High School in 1979 and was stationed in Germany with a Combat Engineer Unit as a Heavy Equipment Operator. At the time I felt the most important thing in my life was to serve my country. It came from some deep-seated obligation I felt. I did not know at the time where my life would take me but I wanted to know that I had at least contributed some part of it to my country.
When did you get the idea for Project America Run? And do you really just run with a cart and flags?
I was running in the winter of 2005 on a very cold night in Colorado, thinking about casualties in Iraq and such and the stories of the those lives, now gone. I decided to build my wall of flags across the country but to give each flag a name and place them each mile and mark the location via gps so that the wall would forever be standing. I ran with a jogging stroller, no car followed me or a support crew. I wanted to do this alone to also possibly see what my limits might be mentally and physically. I carried 300 flags at a time and every 10 days a new box would be waiting at a host family home.
I sort of imagine you running a postal route every day for training, but you're retired now, how did you train and how do you train now?
Back in those Postal days I walked about 35-40 miles a week or 7 miles a day. Carrying a mailbag became my core training and walking fast certainly helped. Doing that for so many years gave me a really good endurance base. I was also running and paddling. I am not a believer in excess when it comes to training. I am very individualistic in that respect and for me, running 4-5 days a week, taking time off and not worrying about "mileage" but the enjoyment is what works. More importantly doing maintenance on my body has kept me injury free and as I get older I realize the importance of that.
Where do you stop every night? How many pairs of socks did you go through? Shoes?
The entire Project took over 3 years to piece together. Each night I stayed with a family who had volunteered a month or year in advance to pick me up at the end of my day at the last mile and its designated spot. In the morning they returned me to exactly where I had stopped the day before. Over the course of both runs I went through 27 pairs of shoes and 24 socks. I found $27.74 cents in change, had 6 flat tires and drank 60 gallons of chocolate milk.
Do you ever take a rest day?
Over the course of 223 days and 6570 miles I took 4 rest days. They were all in the first 50 days as my body was adjusting. After that I had none. I was never sick or injured and never fell behind schedule. There were days of aches and pains but I had a job to do and it had to get done.
Do you ever think about quitting?
I get asked this often. Not once did it ever cross my mind. If you open the door of doubt, you will never get it shut again. Somehow it always works out to do what you love.
What do you think you're accomplishing?
Relating to Project America Run I think I have shown people the power of persistence and that if you believe in it you will do it. I was a kid with bum legs and fused ankles, a mailman with no education. If I could do this, anyone can accomplish something meaningful to add to the world.
Would you like to see all of America do something like this? For those who can't run, what would you like to see people do to honor our service members?
I would like to see people be more active and take action for something instead of complaining about how bad things are. I think just listening to a Vet can be the best gift of all and that Vet may be sitting in a nursing home now or a VA hospital or a park bench. Just as a college graduate has a degree a Vet has skills such as leadership, discipline and conviction that can be useful to many companies but I think America needs to ask them for their help instead of vice versa.
How have you managed to avoid being political and why?
I always felt that being drawn into that arena would taint my Project and its purity. The runs were not about rights or wrongs but about honor and remembrance. When the subject of political views arose I always replied that my run doesn't speak with that voice.
What's next for you?
We just finished up the documentary "12 Million Steps" and will be showing it hopefully in cities across the country. My hope is that people will watch it and appreciate the scope of the wall. Running wise, I would like to take some Vets to Spain and run the Camino de Santiago a 500 mile long 1200 year old pilgrimage route I ran in 2011. I think it would really have a significant impact on them.
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