We awoke in Red Wing this morning, at the Rodeway Inn - who had so nicely provided the team with much needed accommodations - to the sound of heavy rainfall. The team running the first section (which happened to be mine....) started at 7am in heavy rain which soon became torrential rain and continued that way for the next couple of hours. But after all once you're totally wet through you can't get any wetter, so you can just relax and enjoy the cool air and extra oxygen that the rain brings with it.

We had an extra runner on the team today - Prithika, who did such a great job of organising our events in Minneapolis yesterday. Thanks, Prithika, for all your hard work and for coming out to run with us - sorry we don't have a photo of your run, but it was a bit wet for camera-work at the time.

It turned out that we seemed to be running at the same speed as the rain cloud because the team covering the middle section of today's miles said that as they drove ahead to their start point they came out of the downpour and ended up running in front of the storm in just a light rainfall. But at least I can say that my running shoes finally got a good wash, something they've needed since way back in the Grand Canyon....

At mid-day we reached Rochester where Yuyudan's parents, Charles and Edythe Hoppe, had prepared a sumptuous and generous picnic lunch for us.

Luckily, considering the weather, we had arranged to meet under a park pavilion. Edythe had very intuitively managed to prepare something for every variation of diet on the team and the meal was topped off with her wonderful pies- apple, cherry or pecan (or perhaps a slice of each for those who had run enough miles to soak up the calories!).

We were very happy that Charles and Edythe had enough time after lunch to come with us to one of our two afternoon meetings in Rochester.

For our first meeting we went to Rochester Boys and Girls Club.

There were about 60-80 kids of all ages out in the playground. They were very excited to see us and very friendly. And noisy!

Atulya had trouble making himself heard at first, but soon our presentation was underway and the children were relaxed and sociable and asked lots of good questions (and sometimes several at the same time!).

They were also eager to run together with the torch. Thank-you to Tony Luna for inviting us to the Club for this boisterous and fun meeting which the whole team thoroughly enjoyed (and we hope you all did too).

Next we went to the YMCA where we met a group of children who had just finished their swim session.

They sat outside on the grass while we talked to them about our run and they managed to quite quickly guess all our countries correctly, even the trickiest one.

These children also asked lots of good questions, and then had their own mini Harmony Run on the grass.

Some of them weren't such keen runners (well they had just been swimming) but they still wanted to hold the torch and make their wish for peace. Thank-you to Jess Wasek for letting us come and visit the "Y".

A shout out to Nicole at Great Harvest Bread for being so excited about the run. This is the real fuel we run on!

Our finish point for today was Winona. Our thanks to the Quality Inn for so kindly accommodating the whole team today.

– Kokila

Distance: 101 miles

Team Members:
Atulya Berube (San Diego), Jagadhata Amrhien (Chicago), Drsalu Gruenstaeudel (Austria), Vladimir Salnacov (Moldova), Mark Collinson (England), Kokila Chamberlain (England), Surya Smolennikova (Russia), Kshetragna Ulanova (Russia), Dima Grygorievski (Ukraine), Sukhada Korshunova (Russia), Yuyudhan Hoppe (Minneapolis), Megabhuti Roth (Minneapolis)

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