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Hallo, mal davon abgesehen, dass arme Menschen sicher Esssen, Behausung und Zugang zu Kultur nötiger brauchen als Schuhe (O.K. diese komischen Würmer in Afrika sind schon wiederlich), finde ich die Aktion ganz witzig.
Rae Heim was not whining about the heat earlier this week. The 18-year-old Carroll native was too busy running across America.
Barefoot.
She crested a hill in the 91-degree countryside near Victor, stopped to talk, and wasn’t even out of breath. She was more than halfway into a 26.2 mile run, but it was as if she just woke up from a nap. The bottoms of her feet are like slabs of leather.
“I wanted to see if I could,” was the basic explanation.
Turns out, the tall (5 feet, 11 inches), thin and tan woman who will run from Newton to Altoona today (24.2 miles) and Altoona to Waukee on Sunday 22 miles) hated to run.
She dreaded even a run around the bases while playing softball. “It was like a punishment,” she said. But then Heim realized that people thought she couldn’t run.
The only way to prove them wrong? Run Rae, run. She entered road races and last summer met a middle-aged man who ran across America. Now that was proving you could run. She told her parents her plans after graduating early from high school in Carroll in January.
“They said, like, NO!”
Mom Lesleh Heim amends it slightly: “She could NOT!”
But Rae is the second youngest of seven determined children, so mom eventually jumped on the moving train and helped out.
“I believe in raising independent, gracious, generous kids who lead with their hearts,” she said.
Rae leads with bare feet. After starting in Boston in April, she headed to New Jersey, where busted glass and nails littered the roads. She did have to put on a pair of shoes for safety, as she does on gravel roads. When her feet start burning in the heat she will also put on toe socks.
But shoes are like dead weight to her, she found out after breaking a toe last year and shedding her running shoes for comfort.
“We are born to run barefoot,” she said.
Other issues surfaced early on. After bursting out the first week with 40-plus mile days, enduring a twisted ankle, painful Achilles tendon and sore knee, she sat on the side of the road, crying. She called her mom, who had gone from naysayer to supporter.
“My parents taught us that you set your goals and don’t give up,” Heim said.
What started as a personal adventure also became a fundraiser, fittingly, for Soles4Souls. The charity organization supplies shoes to needy kids.
“When I feel like quitting I think of the $2,900 I have raised,” Heim said. “That’s 2,900 pairs of shoes.”
Some days it would be easy to quit on a trip that averages 20 miles a day and will last until October when she reaches Huntington Beach, Calif. In Tuesday’s searing heat, she was dehydrated and a little dizzy. For a while, she pushed a baby stroller with her belongings but now uses a backpack. Her mom watches her every move with a GPS and has friends set up along the route to check on her.
Other than New Jersey drivers who honked and flipped her off, she has discovered something incredible.
“The kindness I’ve seen in people surprised me. You always hear all the wrong with the world,” she said. “But I’ve seen nothing but good in the world.”
Woman running barefoot across USA Sunday, June 24, 2012
DES MOINES, Iowa — An Iowa woman is running barefoot across the United States to raise money to provide shoes for needy children.
Rae Heim, 18, of Carroll, started her cross-country trek in Boston in April and hopes to reach Huntington Beach, Calif., in October.
The Des Moines Register caught up with her this week in Iowa as she crested a hill near Victor in 91-degree heat.
Heim stopped to talk but wasn't out of breath. She said she started running barefoot after breaking a toe last year and shedding her running shoes for comfort. Shoes now feel like dead weight to her, although she wore them through New Jersey, where broken glass and nails littered the highway, and dons them on gravel roads.
The bottoms of her feet are like slabs of leather. When they start burning in the heat, she puts on toe socks.
"We are born to run barefoot," Heim said.
She told the newspaper that she hated to run and even dreaded rounding the bases while playing softball.
"It was like a punishment," she said. But then Heim realized that people thought she couldn't run, and she set out to prove them wrong.
She entered road races and last summer met a middle-aged man who ran across America, which inspired her.
What started as a personal adventure has become a fundraiser for Soles4Souls, a charity that supplies shoes to needy kids.
"When I feel like quitting, I think of the $2,900 I have raised," Heim said. "That's 2,900 pairs of shoes."
There have been a few bumps during her trek.
After the first week of 40-plus mile days, she had a twisted ankle, painful Achilles tendon and sore knee. She sat on the side of the road, crying, and then called her mom.
"My parents taught us that you set your goals and don't give up," Heim said.
Now, she's averaging 20 miles a day. She carries her belongings in a backpack. Her mom watches her every move with a GPS and has friends set up along the route to check on her.
Heim said most of her journey has been pleasant.
"The kindness I've seen in people surprised me. You always hear all the wrong with the world," she said. "But I've seen nothing but good in the world."
Barefoot runner Rae Heim in Longmont; supporting Soles 4 Souls
Heim said the roads in New Jersey and Iowa were the worst, while the highways in Nebraska were the best. (Lewis Geyer/Times-Call)
By Tony Kindelspire Longmont Times-Call
LONGMONT -- The students at Silver Creek High School had plenty of questions for Rae Heim on Friday afternoon:
How far is the run?
How are your feet holding up?
How do you carry your food?
How did you start your training?
Heim, who is 18 and running barefoot from Boston to California, answered each question patiently, to which one male student exclaimed: "You're amazing!"
An oft-used teenage expression that doesn't often hit the mark, except maybe this time. Heim left Boston on April 1 and expects to jog onto Manhattan Beach, Calif., on Nov. 14. Initially the idea for the cross-country run was as a personal test, but she has since turned it into something much bigger than herself: She's using it to raise awareness -- and donations -- for Soles4Souls, a nonprofit that provides people who need them with shoes.
The organization accepts new and gently used shoes, and for every dollar donated to it, 55 cents goes toward putting shoes on the feet of people in the U.S., and the rest is spread out among people in 128 other countries.
"I like to say I'm running barefoot so other people don't have to," said Heim, flashing bright eyes and an infectious smile.
Ironically, Heim is fairly new to running. A 7-mile race three years ago was her first introduction to the activity, and she fell in love with it, she said. It was breaking her big toe a year and a half ago and having to have a toenail removed that has led to her running barefoot ever since.
The desire to run across the country first caught Heim's fancy when she met Marshall Ulrich, an extreme athlete whose book, "Running on Empty," chronicled his own run across the U.S., at a marathon in Des Moines, Iowa, in October.
In January, she graduated from high school in Carroll, Iowa, a semester early, and immediately moved to Las Vegas with her older sister, Kendall, for the change of pace. She quickly landed a job as a trainer at a gym, which fit perfectly with her plans to run, as her website says, from "sea to shining sea."
"When I started this run, I was going to do it regardless of a charity or whatever," Heim said. "One and a half months before I was leaving my mom said, 'Rae, you've got a really good opportunity to help people.' And I remembered Soles4Souls from before."
A local connection with that nonprofit is how Heim ending up spending time in Longmont on Friday. And her journey -- in fact, the nonprofit the journey is benefiting -- is about nothing if not connections.
It's a small world
Heim was in Longmont on Friday to meet Valarie Allman and her family and to come and talk to Silver Creek High School's cross country team and its Leadership Academy.
As a member of the Academy last year, Allman, a senior this year, collected 1,500 pairs of shoes for donations to Soles4Souls. It was that organization which told Allman know about Heim's run and let her know Heim would be passing through this area.
"(They) contacted us and we thought it would be absolutely amazing if she would come to Silver Creek and tell her story," Allman said.
After her run from Loveland, Lisa Allman, Valarie's mom, met Heim in downtown Longmont and offered her hospitality for the afternoon.
Later, after school let out, Heim spoke to a classroom filled with more than 50 Raptors, who were clearly enthralled with the well-spoken young woman.
"How callused are your feet?" one asked. A fair question, considering Heim is about 2,200 miles and five months into her journey.
While she has spent a few nights in hotels, most of Heim's nights along the way have been spent at the home of host families. She told the students she runs about three days, then takes a day off. Then she runs another four, and then she takes a couple days off. In between, she stays with friends she had never met before.
Heim's mother, a former Canadian Olympic rowing team member, has been instrumental in helping her find accommodations, Heim said.
An example of that is how Heim ended up staying at the home of Marcia Williamson of Fort Collins on Friday night.
Heim's mother, Leslie, works in Des Moines with someone who has a close friend in Lincoln, Neb., which was along Heim's route. The connection was made and the 18-year-old had a place to catch some rest in Lincoln.
The friend in Lincoln has been a friend of Williamson's since childhood, so he called the Fort Collins resident that's how that connection was made.
Meanwhile, Williamson already has called her nephew in Eagle County, who has found arrangements for Heim to stay in the high country.
And so it has gone since the beginning of the trip.
"It's really funny how one little girl has pulled all these people together," Williamson said.
The road ahead
Reading Heim's blog offers snippets of what she was thinking about in any particular location. "Pizza & Kingsize Bed"; "Can You Say HOT TUB -- awww"; and "Yum! Great Cookies, Kind Soul" are a few of the entries.
And then there's this blog entry: "Omaha you need to step up your game. Ava and I were extremely disappointed at your lack of elephants. It was her birthday and there were zero elephants to be found. Wow. The rest of the zoo rocked though, it was so fun. They have a nice zoo, especially the jungle and the aquarium."
Heim said she is averaging about 20 miles per day. Friday she ran the 17 miles from Loveland to Longmont, and Saturday she'll run another 17 to Broomfield. Still to come in the Centennial State are Loveland and Vail passes.
She keeps her belongings, including her stuffed-elephant mascot, Ellie, in a three-wheeled jogging stroller she pushes, and she does carry running shoes just in case: she said she did have to break them out a couple months ago when rolling through the Midwest in triple-digit temps.
"New Jersey and Iowa were pretty much the worst because they don't really have shoulders and their drivers aren't the best," Heim said. Nebraska, she added, had the best roads, with nice, wide shoulders. And the law enforcement there is some of the friendliest she's encountered, she said.
So far, she's been "pulled over" 13 times in various states.
A young lady running barefoot along a highway pushing a stroller apparently attracts attention. Especially in some of the extreme conditions she's had to run in.
"So, it's usually a million degrees when they're pulling me over, and it's usually like mile 17," Heim said. "So, you have three miles to go, and you can imagine, when you've been running 17 miles in 100-degree heat, you're not in the best of moods."
After she lands in Manhattan Beach -- there's no turning back now, she said -- she'll drive home to Las Vegas and think about what comes next. Becoming a history teacher intrigues her, but she also could see herself being a personal trainer.
And what has her education been these past five months as she has run the highways and byways of the U.S. barefoot?
"It's taught me that there's a lot more good out there than there is bad," Heim said.
Tony Kindelspire can be reached at 303-684-5291 or at tkindelspire@times-call.com.
While staying in Fort Collins a couple nights ago, Heim got her first tattoos, on the top of her feet. They read, first the right foot, then her left: "You don't have to be first, but you have to be fearless." Heim is about five months and 2,200 miles into her journey, which started April 1 in Boston and will end in California in November. (Lewis Geyer/Times-Call)
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