**IMPORTANT** This page is for donations to help FUND the challenge. If you wish to donate DIRECTLY to the charity, Spinal Research, then please visit the link below;

Donate to the charity Spinal Research

About Me

Hey there! For those of you who don’t already know who I am, I am Eric and starting in April 2018 I will be attempting to cross America using only my feet, whilst raising money and awareness for a charity called Spinal Research. This challenge should take me around 8 months to complete as I cover over 4,200 miles (6,760km). Here is a little background about me.

After growing up in a small English village, I found myself working for the last 4 years in a kitchen in the beautiful Austrian Alps. The last 29 years have been an adventure, one that was certainly full of ups and downs. After living the party lifestyle in Greece for years I found that I was not in the place that I wanted to be. With my continuous accidents and hospital trips I began to realise that it was time to start looking after myself. 2010 was the start of a long journey that has lead me to the person that I am today.

Flash forward to 2013, after moving back to England my health and lifestyle had improved immensely. I was sitting on the underground in London, reading the paper at 6am, and noticed an advert from a charity to run the London Marathon in a few months time. In my tired state I thought to myself “I can do that, it’s only a little bit of running!”, and before I knew it I had signed myself up to my first race. I was still living mainly on unhealthy food, but at least I was not hungover every day, and like many first time marathon runners I had never run further than to catch my train before! After raising over £1,000 for Spinal Research, and running the marathon in a very slow time of 6 and a half hours, I vowed never to run again, this hurts.

A few days later it had sunk in that the pain in my legs from running was the only reason why I did not want to run again and I decided I wanted to do more, I was hooked. Not on the running but on the excitement of it all, doing something good with my time, the energy of race day, and just as importantly the shiny medal you get at the end! Since then I have learnt more about the charity and what they stand for, the vital research which they fund into one day reversing paralysis. I have managed to raise over £6,000 in the last 5 years with the help of my friends, family and the great people who support me, and run many more races ranging from 5km to 100 miles!

Although I am still generally unhealthy, and have a nice belly to prove it! But now it is time for something big, something than I can never forget, something that can connect so many people, get the name of this amazing charity out to as many people as possible and hopefully raise a colossal amount of donations to help fund research for the coming years.

About the run

As you may have guessed already, the challenge is to run from one corner of the United States to the other, making the trip entirely by foot! I will be starting in April 2018 in Lubec, Maine on the Canadian border, and traveling through 15 states and 11 major cities along the way, before finishing at the Mexican border at San Diego, California in around December 2018.

I hope to cover around 50km every day, and take a few days to recuperate and see the sights and the big cities when I reach them! Obviously it is impossible to say that I will be able to make 50km every day, some days could be through mountains, bad weather or in the desert, but I am hoping that the good days will make up for the bad ones! I will be taking everything I need in a modified baby stroller, donned with logos, sponsors and solar panels to keep all my electronics going in the middle of nowhere. I will be mostly living in a tent along the way, but if anybody offers me a bed, sofa or floor for the night, it would be rude not to accept!

You can see a detailed map of the route here.

Why ask for money?

I have spent the last few years planning this crossing and I am very excited to start running at the end of the winter. So far the challenge has be funded entirely by me and some amazing companies who have been excited to get involved (See my sponsor list below, they have all helped to make this challenge happen!). My hope was to fund as much of the trip as possible so that any money that was given/donated to me could go directly to the charity Spinal Research, although I never realised just how much this challenge would cost. You can also see a list of all my purchases for the trip down below to hopefully convince you that I am not asking for you to fund a “holiday”.

I would like to make clear that I will be spending my money first and foremost to survive whilst running across America, any donations given through this page from you amazing people will  be spent only when my funds are gone. At the end of the run any money that is left over from donations here will be donated directly to Spinal Research.

Sponsored Items

• Running Stroller – Out’n’about
• Custom running shirts – Scimitar Sports
• Compression shorts and skins – BioSkin
• Powerpack – Omnicharge
• Running watch – Fitbit
• Wash bag – Scrubba

Paid for by me

• Website
• Return Flights Europe – America
• Insurance
• Visa
• Mobile and WiFi coverage in the US
• Solar Panel
• Tracking device plus subscription
• Lights and safety equipment
• Enough running shoes for 8 months
• Running clothes for 8 months
• Lightweight waterproofs for running
• Water filter
• Camping equipment including Tent, sleeping bag, groundsheets, cooking equipment
• Survival Equipment
• Spending money, around £3,500 (Sounds like a lot but is only around £16.50 a day)
• Emergency reserve money, £2,000

Current total invested by me is around £10,200

Click here for an example photograph of what you can expect as a print when you donate through one of the tiers offering a print at the end of the run 🙂