This morning the first team out met up with Keri Frazier, Coach of University Southern of Mississippi Women’s Track Team along with a number of her young athletes.

As soon as we saw them we knew they were eager to run and they looked built for speed. They were very smiley and cheerful and pleased to meet us.

It was deemed that the youngest member of our early morning team, Mark (at 41) would be quick enough to run with them. We mentioned we were not built for speed but for endurance, and we were a lot older than them. They ran around the university campus, each taking turns to run with the torch and they were very chatty and a pleasure to be around, as they had such unbounded energy and enthusiasm.

Their athleticism and wonderful attitude to running certainly inspired us to run faster as we waved goodbye to them and a hope that one day we will meet them all again.

It was a much cooler day today than it has been recently. That was a huge relief for some of us running on highway 49 north towards Jackson, Mississippi. The traffic was busy and fast and some of our runners were not feeling too well, so the rest of us had to run a few more miles than usual.

After running ten miles I decided to run two more miles to get us closer to our finish point. No one had stopped in my first ten miles as opposed to yesterday when quite a few cars stopped to find out what we were doing and to take some photos.

Just as I was finishing my last mile a small white bus pulled over on the shoulder and a man came out. He said he had some children who would like to run with the Torch. I was thrilled to finally share the Torch today even though I was looking forward to finishing my miles at the end of that run.

The youth group named ‘Katalyst’ was from the Byhalia United Methodist Church in Byhalia, Mississippi. Mark McNair, the youth Pastor, and Debby Darryberry, were on the way home with nine children from a health awareness bike ride from Prentiss towards Hattiesburg. They rode about 12.6 miles in this ride and then saw us running with our Torch while on the way home. They had passed us once and then went to eat somewhere. After their meal they passed us on the highway again and decided to finally stop.

They were a wonderful group of kids and adults who ran almost a mile with us on a smaller service road next to the busy highway.

This parallel road had just appeared where they parked by the end of my regular miles. It would have been difficult and dangerous to run with such a large group along the highway shoulder.

But now we had our own quiet road to run safely on.

It truly made this long day of running a worthwhile and joyous run as we finally were able to share the Torch with such active and friendly people, the enthusiastic children and the thoughtful adults.

In the evening two of our three teams checked into the Motel 6 in Jackson where we were kindly treated to two nice rooms for the night. Jenny and Ashley were eager to hold the torch with us and to send the photo to their newsletter as well.

While we were waiting for dinner a reporter from ABC affilate WAPT-TV came by to speak with us.

Kokila (England) and Arpan (USA) eloquently explained the ideals of the run and the enthusiastic response we've experienced since we began in New York about three weeks ago.

In contrast to the absolute scorcher yesterday today the women's team had a nice cooling breeze to gently encourage us on our journey.

A welcome change from yesterday's hot, humid weather.

With no meetings scheduled, today was just the open road for our team, with a nice wide shoulder for safe and happy running.

– Arpan, Mark, Kokila, Salil

Distance: 89 miles

Team Members:
Arpan DeAngelo (New York), Atulya Lee Berube (San Diego), Yuyudhan Hoppe (Minnesota), Mark Collison (England), Kshetragna Ulanova (Russia), Surya Smolennikova (Russia), Vladimir Salnicov (Moldova), Kokila Chamberlin (Wales), Salil Wilson (Australia), Vajra Henderson (New York), Drsalu Gruenstaeudl (Austria)

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