Hope man honors fallen soldiers

HOPE — On May 1, Mike Ehredt will set out on a solo run across the United States. He will not be running alone.

By his side, over the entire course of this coast-to-coast saga, will be the memory of more than 4,000 fallen heroes. At every mile, Ehredt will stop, kneel and place a small American flag in the ground. Each flag bears a simple ribbon, upon which the name, age, rank and hometown of a service member who died in the Iraq War has been written by hand.

After six months and 18 pairs of running shoes, the flags will dot the landscape from Astoria, Ore., on the Pacific Ocean to Rockland, Maine, on the Atlantic as part of what Ehredt has dubbed Project America Run.

“I see it as one invisible hand holding the next,” the runner said. “Soldiers linked across the United States.”

Ehredt has had to replan his original route since the idea for a solo run first arose about two years ago. As the number of casualties continued to mount in Iraq, he added miles in their honor.

“When we first started planning, it was at about 4,225,” he said. “Now it’s closer to 4,400.”

Upstairs in the two-story farmhouse-style home he shares with fellow ultra-marathon runner Peggy Gaudet, the commemorative flags have been gathered into bundles of 30. There are 157 bundles in all, laid out in long rows near a stack of shipping boxes that will be mailed to predetermined locations in small towns across the U.S.

To remain on track and on schedule, Ehredt will have to run the equivalent of a full marathon and a 5K race virtually every day for half a year straight.

Fortunately, his athletic pedigree makes such a radical goal possible for this elite long-distance runner. In less than a decade, he has completed the 250-mile Trans-Himalaya Run in Nepal, Eco-Challenge expedition races in Borneo and Fiji, finished the 160-mile, 6-day Marathon des Sables across the Sahara Desert twice and became the 34th person ever to cross the finish line of all four, 100-mile ultra-marathon races that make up the Rocky Mountain Slam in a single season.

According to Ehredt’s research, no one has attempted a distance of more than 4,000 miles, even with a support team accompanying the run. And certainly, no runner has ever gone after such a run as a solo effort.

“I still can’t even comprehend it when I try to get my head around the distance and the hours involved,” said Ehredt, who has been taking daily training runs that average from 3-5 hours as he approaches the starting date for Project America Run, now less than two weeks away. “If I was to look at the big picture, I think it would overwhelm me.

“I look at it as getting up in the morning, punching the time clock, doing my job for eight hours and then enjoying the company of new friends at night.”

The runner will stay with volunteer host families that reside along the back roads his course will cover — a route selected for safety and lack of traffic. In some cases, he will be staying with the parents or grandparents of service members whose names are attached to the flags he will carry with him.

Ehredt, a U.S. Army veteran, first came up with the plan for Project America Run on a chilly February training run, where he reflected on the unfulfilled goals and dreams of service members killed in Iraq and sought some way to honor them.

As he placed one foot in front of the other and racked up the miles, the idea took shape:  One life, one flag, one mile.

“There’s tremendous potential that was lost in these 4,400 individuals and what they would have brought to their families, their communities,” the runner said.

“Nobody wants war, but somebody told me once that when you go into the service and you take the oath, you sign a blank check that’s payable up to and including your life,” he added. “If that’s not honor, I don’t know what is.”

Ehredt can tell you something about a surprisingly large number of the fallen service members he will honor and remember along his run. In many cases, he has profiled these soldiers for the newsletters he sent out in preparation for the journey. As he meets their friends and relatives, he understands that emotions will be raw.

“I wrote the profiles as a way of getting to know what these individuals were like when they were alive,” he said. “But for their families, what might have happened five years ago still feels like it was five minutes ago.”

Project America Run will allow those interested to track Ehredt’s progress in real time, as well as use Google Earth to zoom in close enough to locate the flag locations for particular soldiers as they are placed in the ground.

The runner will push a 20-pound running stroller equipped with a locator beacon, GPS system and an iPhone carrying the names of the service members in reverse chronological order. At every mile, Ehredt will scroll to the next soldier’s name and click on it to mark the precise place, date and time for the flag left in their honor on the route.

“Going in reverse order was purely psychological,” he explained. “I wanted to have a decreasing number as I went along. The last flag that I place will have the name of the first fatality from Iraq. That way, somehow, it feels like it’s coming to an end.”

Despite advice from veteran distance runners — including his girlfriend, Gaudet — Ehredt has stuck resolutely to his goal of making this a solo run from coast-to-coast.

“Meeting people and staying with them — getting their stories — is part of what makes the journey,” he said. “I have to have the person-to-person contact and if I stayed in an RV every night, I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

What began as an inspiration on a solo run will, in the end, play out the same way, the Army veteran noted, no matter what anyone thinks of the project.

“This was never meant as something that was supposed to get approval,” he said. “This is my own thing, my tribute.

“If people take anything away from this, I hope that, if they see a flag out in the middle of nowhere, they pause and reflect,” Ehredt added. “We are who we are and we have what we have because of people who have served in the military.”

Mike Ehredt expects to be running through Coeur d’Alene on May 18, Athol on May 19, Sandpoint on May 20 and Clark Fork on May 21. To learn more about Project America Run and monitor Ehredt’s progress over the next six months, visit: www.projectamericarun.com.