TRAVERSE CITY — Matt Desmond had never run more than 14 miles at a stretch until June.
Beginning Sunday, he'll run the equivalent of a marathon every day for 10 days in the Run Across Ethiopia, an effort to raise money to build three schools in the African country. Desmond, 41, of Traverse City, is one of eight runners leaving today for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; two are already in the capital. The runners will acclimate to altitude and climate for a few days and await more arrivals.
A support team of at least six people, plus nine family members, arrives in stages through Jan. 11. The entire entourage then heads out across the country, each with various missions ranging from athletic to cultural to educational.
Aiden Voss, 13, a seventh-grader at The Woodland School, is traveling with her father, Hans, one of the runners, and her mom, Maureen, and her sister, Lucy, 11.
Lucy and Aiden, along with Stella and Connor Young, children of co-organizer and runner Tim Young, are going to take videos, mainly of schoolchildren.
"We will interact differently with the kids than they would with grown-ups with big cameras," Aiden said. More reading on Record Eagle
