In 12 hours I will run a half marathon. This is my first run of that distance in a race. My previous is 10K. For those not “in the know” about racing, a 10K is about 6.24 miles and a half marathon is 13.1 miles.

The run is at Bass Pro and I am running for OneSolePurpose. My goal is to raise $250 dollars to help fund kids in Springfield who need shoes. So far, I’ve raised $170. I need to raise $80 more.

Here are a few ways to view this:

• $80 in 12 hours means I need to raise $6.66 per hour.
• I have 780 friends on Facebook and about 300 Twitter followers (which overlap a bit with FB). Let’s call it a total of 800 people. If 80 of you each gave $1 I could reach my goal. Of course that’s a bit hard on the electronic processing, so the minimum is $5.
• If just 16 of you have the minimum $5, I would reach my goal.

I must thank those who have given already. For those who have not, please consider doing so. It’s for a great cause and I have personally seen those who are affected by the work we are doing. This year we are providing shoes to over 5,500 children at 21 Title 1 elementary schools in Springfield, Missouri.

If you are able and willing to help, visit www.onesolepurpose.com and click the link to the page where you can give. In case the URL doesn’t show properly, here is the full link: https://highstreet.ccbchurch.com/w_form_response.php?form_id=50 

Make sure you pick my name - Tom Demers!

I’ll post tomorrow how the race went and whether or not I reached my goal.